Red Faction Beta Now Recruiting

Shooter fans suffering from game-fatigue, might want to
examine the Red Faction: Guerilla multiplayer beta that is available for 360
owners with an IGN or FilePlanet account and a gold subscription. If you are at
least eighteen years of age, and have some experience with first and
third-person shooters, you should qualify.

If you took the third-person camera and open environments from
Lost Planet, added the experience ranking system of Call of Duty 4, threw in a
dash of Team Fortress occupations, the recipe for Red Faction:Guerilla
multiplayer could surely be found. The multiplayer beta featured quick,
painless matchmaking through two modes- a team deathmatch, (here called ‘Team Anarchy’)
and ‘Damage Control’. The latter playtype was the more interesting of the two;
inviting opposing teams to destroy enemy structures with a sledgehammer, and then
rebuild friendly buildings with a device that looked like a flame thrower. The radial
map is a near perfect size and design; players are always close to an objective
and there’s plenty of areas to seek cover.

One interesting wrinkle in gameplay are the small backpack
stations littered across the battlefield. By pressing the ‘Y’ button, players
can access one of five performance-enhancing abilities, ranging from super
speed, enhanced firepower, and a jet pack. Players can activate these powers
with the left bumper, while the right bumper in conjunction with the face
button used to choose between weapons, the sledgehammer, and the building
torch.

While we enjoyed a number of heated, engaging battles while
playing the Red Faction beta, we hope the multiplayer is not the main focus of next
year’s title. As it stands, the title feels too derivative of other 360
mutiplayer titles, with almost no new innovative, defining feature. Hopefully,
a strong single-player campaign in addition to a competent multiplayer element will
convince players that joining this Red Faction is a worthwhile cause. 

Tidegear Says:

To start off, I won’t claim to be an expert on shooters or a professional at online play… far from it. I tend to prefer a solid single player or coop experience over a chaotic multiplayer free-for-all. I am, however, fairly familiar with the genre, what’s new and what isn’t and some of what makes multiplayer shooters great. The Red Faction: Guerilla beta had a few surprises that I didn’t expect yet was intuitive enough that it wasn’t long before I was figuring out how to utilize the various backpacks and weapons. This yielded a few fun moments and kills.

The matches I played all ended up being “Team Anarchy” which is essentially team deathmatch. I was wishing the beta would switch things up a lot more. The mildly innovative backpack powerup system and the destructible environments just aren’t enough to pull me in. Aside from those two factors, this game feels a lot like any other online shooter. Even the weapons I toyed with yielded fairly boring results but they seemed to at least work well. Here’s hoping for a much better single player experience and much improved multiplayer for the game’s retail release.