Red Faction: Guerrilla had a brilliant sandbox core, but got weighed down with things like health bars, mortality and plot. So how do you fix it? You cheat!
As Jaz McDougall writes in Issue 243 of The Escapist, Red Faction: Guerrilla had a wonderful core that encouraged the player to unleash a wide swath of hammer-y chaotic destruction upon the soldiers occupying Mars. Unfortunately, the plot and the player character’s pesky mortality got in the way of blowing up everything in sight. The obvious solution, then, was to take the easy way out: Use a PC training program.
It was important that I give Guerrilla a fair trial, though. I dutifully play through the missions, hiding behind cover and using the oh-so-familiar assault rifle to lay down suppressing fire in extended skirmishes with the tyrannical EDF forces. To the game’s credit, the missions are varied, and a select subset are pure and simple demolition challenges. Sadly, far too few of the early struggles involve smashing things. Eventually, that innocuous file in my downloads folder is starting to look like the only way I can liberate this game.
Alec Mason looks the same as he does every day, but today his plans are different. I mash the F9 key, and suddenly Alec is rich. I move him into the upgrade shack and buy everything – particularly, I upgrade his ability to place mines, from three or four at once up to a dozen. I hop into a jeep and press F4 – imperceptibly, the jeep becomes invincible. I put the right half of my truck on a ramp and inch up it until it tilts, then hop out again and place all 12 of my remote mines on the rear underside of the jeep. Then, I set out for the nearest EDF encampment.
To read more about how cheating liberated Mars – and Red Faction – from the oppressive grip of its creators, read “Guerrilla Warfare” in Issue 243 of The Escapist.
