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[Johnny C]

Okay so I rented this game and I think despite its issues I'm sold on a purchase at a later date. There's a crazy amount of shit to do and an equally crazy amount of shit to blow up, the proper missions are comparatively quite sparse and as a result intensely imaginative, and have I mentioned that you knock buildings down and shit? Guess how fun that is. ANSWER: IT IS EXTREMELY FUN.

That being said there are some rather frustrating flaws. The weapons, for example, actually don't feel very powerful at all - your sledgehammer is beyond powerful but quite frankly I expect explosions to do a little more than demolish drywall. The rocket launcher in particular is rather pathetic, and the disintegration weapon is powerful against some objects and then, stupefyingly, completely ineffective against others.

I mean, consider how ludicrous the following scenario is: you've got a gun that shoots nanites, which are basically little machines that just love to break down matter. This is explained in a cutscene, where your character fires a gun at something and watches it disintegrate in a little orange puff. Later, you drive your truck through an EDF guard station and begin wrecking pretty much all their shit. There is a medium priority target - a flight tower - in this compound. You whip out your nanite gun and fire a few shots at its load-bearing walls. The building groans and collapses. Your guerrilla reinforcements' whoops turn into cries of "look out!" as the EDF reinforcements arrive. The EDF have brought a tank with them. Grinning, you take aim and fire at the tank with your nano rifle only to watch absolutely nothing happen. You try again and again, eventually emptying five shots into the goddamn thing with no effect. Frustrated, you haul out your rocket launcher and fire a shot at it. When the smoke clears it's still fucking there! What the fuck? No wonder the Red Faction is getting their ass kicked - apparently, the EDF has tech that's impervious both to explosions and multiple exposures to clouds of tiny machines made expressly for the purpose of consuming matter.

This is compounded by a couple of issues. For example, the gunplay is kind of bordering on terrible, and all you fuckers who said that Saint's Row 2 had really good gunplay are going to be the ones in charge of explaining why the gunplay in this game is so shitty cause the same people made it. Why can't I lock on to targets in a third-person shooter? Why is there no custom mapping, meaning that in order to crouch I have to hold a goddamn button down the whole time? In two of the control schemes, why is that button the left analog stick? Why does it take ten shots from an assault rifle to bring someone down? And why, again, do my rockets and satchel bombs seem to have no effect on everything from tanks to soldiers? Could you explain why the weapons I take from enemies seem so unable to take down my enemies when they so easily dispatch me? And who decided that the best activity for Take Your Daughter To Work Day at Volition was to let her be in charge of programming the cover system? Every single gun battle is less a matter of strategy, prioritization and skill, like it should be, and more a matter of getting shot a billion times and dying then having the sector's morale go down because apparently you couldn't keep you shit together long enough to not be overwhelmed by a wall of angry soldiers in invincible tanks.

RF:G also shares one massive flaw with Prototype, and that's the sheer volume of enemies you have to face and their comparative skill versus the fact that your guy has an arsenal of weapons, your level of skil and like zero tolerance for getting shot or hit or anything. Alec Mason and Alex Mercer (just started typing the sentence and couldn't believe what happened when i typed) both have an annoying habit of fucking dying all the fucking time, and while this accurately simulates the experience of fighting against innumerable, better-equipped foes, I don't really play video games to have the reality of how embarrassingly ill-equipped I am for that scenario hammered home. I didn't rent Red Faction to find out what it would be like to be shot a billion times and die, I rented it to find out what it would be like to look at a bridge and then find out the best way to blow it the hell up.

With all that said, it's still a really fun game. When you manage to take down a structure it's a thing of pure, blissful beauty, all grinding, heaving metal and the delightful crunch of rubble. It's alarmingly cathartic to wreck shit with your sledgehammer. The vehicle controls are the kind of loose you'd expect with Martian gravity, and also some of them do very satisfying double duty as movable agents of demolition. I kind of can't believe how clever the missions are, or how immensely enjoyable they can be - one early mission has you behaving as a decoy, which means taking a reinforced truck and crashing it at full speed through a series of sensor towers in order to make the military really pissed off and totally ignore the Red Faction troops moving into an EDF-controlled location. And as a moment generator it occasionally borders on the sublime - realizing I'd accidentally taken a small bridge out earlier, and being hotly pursued after rescuing a couple of dudes from military arrest, I ran my hijacked military transport at top speed over a large hill to the left of the gap and ramped across the ravine. While I was doing this, the guy manning the gun on top of the vehicle laid some suppressing fire directly into my nearest pursuer, causing his vehicle to explode and its charred corpse to follow me on the ramp. Unable to swerve in time, the other EDF vehicle drove straight off of the gap and hit the ravine headfirst, causing the vehicle to flip upside down and allowing me to continue unmolested towards my safehouse.

Mostly, it's just disappointing that a game which has the capacity to provide extremely enjoyable moments like those above also has the capacity to make me go "fuck this shit" and fight down the urge to just put in Skate 2 where I can do whatever I want, when I want, and not get shot a billion times and die. It's worth the play and it's worth a purchase, despite its flaws (i have sunk so much time into it so far). Hwever, those flaws need addressing, especially because the only flaw pointed out in reviews (the blandness of the environment) isn't actually that big of a deal and is getting played up compared to shit like the cover system (which 1up actually had the nerve to call "solid" leading me to suspect that we were playing different games).

Has anyone else played it? Does anyone else have thoughts?

[Johnny C]

Also we can talk about the plot as long as you mentally frame it properly, meaning that you recognize that this is a game in 2009 where you improvise weaponry in order to drive out an oppressive occupying force from your homeland.

[Melodic]

I thought Skate 2 was pretty terrible, actually. I mean, I liked the original much more.

[Johnny C]

Skate 2 isn't terrible, that's a ridiculous thing to say.

[KvP]

Jesus you're sounding just like me.

Anyway I'd just like to point out that the inconsistency with regard to destructibility has always been an issue in Red Faction. From the sound of it this game is a lot better than the ones that came before it (rarely have I played a game as awful as Red Faction 2) but the series has always prided itself on its destructible environments but its boasts have generally been smacked up by inconsistent design - back in the days when they used their blocky quake 3-esque engine (can't remember if it was an Unreal or Idtech engine) they had to specifically design the environment so that only certain things were destructible, but the vast majority of things weren't destructible. They might be capable of making everything destructible by now but I'm sure doing so would create a lot of headaches for QA.

[A Shoggoth on the Roof]

I played the demo and  it was really fun, I don't remember having trouble killing people though. Maybe it's because I only shot a few, and then an armored jeep showed up 'cause i pissed them off, and then I spent the rest of the demo running over everyone and crashing into everything with whatever nearby vehicle I hadn't totaled yet.

[Melodic]

Skate 2 is pretty bad compared to Skate. In particular, the game is ugly as hell.

[ackblom12]

Goddamn you Johnny, I somehow found myself in the electronics section of Target on the way home with my credit card out on the counter. Some days my card just be out.

Anyways, I'll give some impressions later.

[Johnny C]

Skate 2 is pretty bad compared to Skate. In particular, the game is ugly as hell.

[INT: Night - maybe? A dark-lit room - definitely. The glow of a television softly illuminates the couch on which MELODIC is sitting, holding a wireless Xbox controller.. It's an immaculately kept paisely couch; the only things out of place on it are a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos and an Xbox 360 game case, ajar, sitting to his right. Cut to: close-up of game box. The light illuminates it perfectly: you can see it's a copy of SKATE 2. The manual sits on top of it, askew. It's clearly been pored over several times. Cut to: Shot of the television. The NEW XBOX EXPERIENCE starts up. MELODIC signs into his account and starts up the game. As soon as the opening cinematic begins, he starts groaning in disgust. Cut to: MELODIC, looking like a dog shit right under his nose.]

MELODIC: [scowling] Ugh! How utterly hideous. [He sweeps everything off of his coffee table, throws the controller in disgust and exits the room. Cut to: TV showing the character creation menu.]

[Johnny C]

the graphics aren't quite as slick but ugly? you've been spoiled rotten and i want to know by whom

[Melodic]

Fuck poly-count, fuck dynamic lighting and anti-aliasing, Skate 2 looks like shit because you can't do budget grunge.

Skate looked pretty good because everything was clean, and so even a low-resolution texture could be stretched into infinity and look okay. Skate 2 tries the same thing, but uses low-resolution textures smeared with what may be rust, or mud, or whatever else is dirty. They stretch that into infinity, and instead of looking okay it looks absolutely fucking terrible. The game is UGLY. All of the buildings look identical, all of the grunge elements look like blurry vomit. It was like skateboarding in a world where, sometime during the course of your prison sentence, everyone everywhere collectively got sick over everything, which in hindsight was probably a good fucking idea.

Not only does Skate 2 look totally terrible, some of its "innovations" are totally the pits! I kind of liked being able to skate wherever I wanted, pull off sick combos down the Rez, etc. etc. I would almost be allowed to do that in Skate 2, except someone thought it would be really cool if I spent my hard-earned money on some douchebag with a crowbar to make the places I want to skate, skatable. I sure am glad skateboarding isn't the main focus of the game, otherwise it would be seen as very un-cool that I have to pay to FUCKING SKATEBOARD.

[ackblom12]

Guys, I just got done driving the armor truck through Sensor Array Towers and at one point I Jumped a rather wide Ravine, crashing through a tower on the way through the air and landed on a soldier. I then peeled out on his face.

[Johnny C]

Not only does Skate 2 look totally terrible, some of its "innovations" are totally the pits! I kind of liked being able to skate wherever I wanted, pull off sick combos down the Rez, etc. etc. I would almost be allowed to do that in Skate 2, except someone thought it would be really cool if I spent my hard-earned money on some douchebag with a crowbar to make the places I want to skate, skatable. I sure am glad skateboarding isn't the main focus of the game, otherwise it would be seen as very un-cool that I have to pay to FUCKING SKATEBOARD.

man not even the right thread for it but how stingy are you that this is a complaint, by the end of the game your funbux equal something like $2mil and you can also freeskate, like, everywhere in the freeskate mode

[Melodic]

Y'know what I don't like?

Everything humanly possible.

[glyphic]

I beat the game a while ago and have still been playing it. I enjoy pissing off the EDF enough that they will send those big-assed missile tanks for me to steal and wreak havoc with.

But there is a definite screw up in the AI. It is less "let's flank this dude and work as a team" than "let's spawn just out of eye line until there are thousands of us, even if that literally means spawning behind the player while he is in a position where there is no possible way to approach him from behind and then walk towards him while shooting until he runs out of ammo and eventually dies trying to kill all seventy thousand of us with a hammer."

Additionally, the colonists will casually drive off of bridges that you've destroyed. Plus, the bridges will sometimes repair themselves, but the autonav doesn't realize it. Plus, sometimes parts of buildings will magically be supported by themselves. For instance, A huge chunk of a building being supported by one of the girders in the roof, even though all the parts of the building that touch the ground have been destroyed.

THE BADLANDS. It takes roughly five full minutes to get from your base to any other notable location.

I totally let all the bad crap slide though, because the game had exactly what I wanted;  the ability to place explosives on a garbage truck that has a rocket launcher mounted to the top of it, drive up an embankment, ramp into the air, fire a missile into the side of a building, slam the vehicle into the building, crushing everything, flee the scene, and detonate the explosives, leveling the entire structure.

TL;DR- The game has a ton of flaws that range from hilarious to outright infuriating but it is still hells of fun.

[Melodic]

Okay, so I rented it. Johnny C, I don't get what your dealio is with the controls. Despite playing almost exclusively PC FPS titles, I was able to shoot these baddies pretty consistently. Yes, it's just like Saints' Row. No, that's not a bad thing. The sticky reticule is fairly blunt, and I found it actually being a little TOO auto-track-y.

Also, you can make crouch a toggle in the controls menu.

On everything else, I pretty much agree with.

[Hustler]

I made what was for me the rare decision of not waiting until this game dropped to around $20, getting it from Newegg for $40 a couple weeks back.  Multi is loads of fun, the maps are fairly generic but several modes exploit the game's strongest point (beating the piss out of everything that stands more than six inches off the ground), and the backpacks really add flavor to everything, making up for the fact that most of the weapons are not as original (although the Shredder or whatever it's called certainly bucks that trend, not many games give you a launcher for saw blades that look suspiciously like giant ninja stars).  As for single player, I have fun with it, but agree with some of the points.  Buildings have oddities about what will and won't affect them, and the gunplay, while functional, is not all that special.  Also, House Arrest missions bite the big one.  The rest of it, however, is big dumb fun akin to what was found in Mercs 2, except the destruction's on a smaller scale and it's less likely to glitch out.  It wasn't my primary motivator for the purchase, but I'm having a good time with it.  All in all, I think it's a great way to kill a couple hours, even if it's probably not Game fo the year material.

[Johnny C]

Okay, so I rented it. Johnny C, I don't get what your dealio is with the controls. Despite playing almost exclusively PC FPS titles, I was able to shoot these baddies pretty consistently. Yes, it's just like Saints' Row. No, that's not a bad thing. The sticky reticule is fairly blunt, and I found it actually being a little TOO auto-track-y.

not as auto-track-y as say a targeting system which would be really nice, is my point. or maybe a cover system that works, like, at all.

Also I didn't play the online multiplayer but the local multiplayer is pretty much "h.o.r.s.e." but with destroying buildings, so that rules.

Double also I didn't mind House Arrest actually! The EDF Raid missions were clearly the best though - the Jenkins missions were alright but it was more fun to just kind of freeform go in and assault some structures with a giant team of rebels.

[LTK]

Excuse the necroing of this thread, but since I recently bought and played the PC release of this game, I wanted to say a few things. First and foremost: The PC version has every flaw Johnny pointed out, but maximized one thousand times. The controls for every single function are complete and utter shit, without exception. From menu selection and scrolling to aiming and firing to driving anything, they all suck. I feel like I'm using an analog stick instead of a mouse everywhere, and I cannot use analog sticks for the life of me. Cars, driven by WASD, take a full second to respond to any of the keys. No kidding. The aiming reticule is incapable of moving at the speed of the mouse, is fixed to one speed only, which makes any slow-moving-projectile weapon a nightmare to use. And although you can take cover, you cannot shoot from out of cover. What. Concering the buildings and how they fall apart, I have the distinct feeling that the geomod engine architects could not figure out how to make a building stand upright while keeping the materials act realistic, so they just made everything made for support of hardened titanium and everything else of sand. Structures do not fall down when one metal beam is still in place, even though everything else on the ground floor has been blasted away. Assignments, compared to missions, are irritating and useless and almost completely unrewarded regarding scrap.

I'm starting to wonder if it was worth the €17,50 I paid for it.