Red Faction: Guerrilla Message Board

Darksiders 1 & 2 and Red Faction: Guerrilla & Armageddon comprise the second batch of weekly offerings from Humble Indie Bundle, with all four PC games currently on offer at ridicucheap prices. Pay up $1 and you'll pick up Darksiders and RF: Armageddon, with the soundtracks to both included along with the 'Path to War' DLC for Armageddon.

However, if you're willing to pony up more than the average paying price, you'll also get Darksiders 2 (plus soundtrack) and RF: Guerrilla. At the time of writing, the pair can be yours for around the very, very silly $7.50 mark.

Meanwhile on Android, there's another Humble Bundle for the platform called the Mobile Bundle. Featuring in the latest charitable collection are Contre Jour, Anomaly Korea, Plants vs. Zombies, and Bladeslinger. As ever you can pay what you want, but an average-cough up (around $5.50 at the mo) lets you unlock the secrets of The Room, and generally shoot up stuff in Metal Slug 3. The soundtracks to all, except Contre Jour, are also included.

Darksiders 1 & 2 and Red Faction: Guerrilla & Armageddon comprise the second batch of weekly offerings from Humble Indie Bundle, with all four PC games currently on offer at ridicucheap prices. Pay up $1 and you'll pick up Darksiders and RF: Armageddon, with the soundtracks to both included along with the 'Path to War' DLC for Armageddon.

However, if you're willing to pony up more than the average paying price, you'll also get Darksiders 2 (plus soundtrack) and RF: Guerrilla. At the time of writing, the pair can be yours for around the very, very silly $7.50 mark.

Meanwhile on Android, the sixth Humble Bundle is also here. Featuring in the latest charitable collection are Contre Jour, Anomaly Korea, Plants vs. Zombies, and Bladeslinger. As ever you can pay what you want, but an average-cough up (around $5.50 at the mo) lets you unlock the secrets of The Room, and generally shoot up stuff in Metal Slug 3. The soundtracks to all, except Contre Jour, are also included.

A few months ago, THQ and OnLive partnered to give away free MicroConsole devices with pre-orders of Homefront. OnLive is launching another THQ promotion, and this one is arguably a better deal, because it doesn't include a copy of Homefront.

From now through June 6, if you buy a "Full PlayPass" for Red Faction: Armageddon through OnLive, you'll get a free MicroConsole, allowing you to play streaming OnLive games on your TV -- and a free copy of Red Faction: Guerrilla. Eventually, you're going to end up with a pile of these MicroConsoles!

Since its inception, the Red Faction franchise has been heaped with praise for its capacity for environmental destruction -- a fact that hasn't eluded the series' handlers. In an interview with CVG, Red Faction: Armageddon production lead Dan Sutton explained, "In Guerrilla there was a kind of moral issue. When you were destroying buildings, you thought, 'Should I really be doing this?' But in Armageddon we've completely thrown that out and we're basically motivating players to destroy everything in sight."

That quote is surprising in two distinct ways: First, we can destroy everything in sight? So, like, the whole planet? Wouldn't that ruin the game a little? Also, we were supposed to feel bad when destroying buildings in Guerrilla? We ... didn't get that. It's hard to feel guilty about something when you're busy giggling and yelling for your friends to come check out this totally dope new crater you made.

Since its inception, the Red Faction franchise has been heaped with praise for its capacity for environmental destruction -- a fact that hasn't eluded the series' handlers. In an interview with CVG, Red Faction: Armageddon production lead Dan Sutton explained, "In Guerrilla there was a kind of moral issue. When you were destroying buildings, you thought, 'Should I really be doing this?' But in Armageddon we've completely thrown that out and we're basically motivating players to destroy everything in sight."

That quote is surprising in two distinct ways: First, we can destroy everything in sight? So, like, the whole planet? Wouldn't that ruin the game a little? Also, we were supposed to feel bad when destroying buildings in Guerrilla? We ... didn't get that. It's hard to feel guilty about something when you're busy giggling and yelling for your friends to come check out this totally dope new crater you made.

The official THQ online store (which has the new logo that's look like it's asking, "THQ?") is sporting some spiffy sales this weekend, offering some pretty great games for just a few bucks. The highlight of the sale is probably Metro 2033, which for the PC is only $10. But you can also find Company of Heroes: Gold Edition for only $7.50, the underrated (I said it) Darksiders for $10, and Red Faction: Guerilla and Titan Quest: Gold Edition for only $5 a piece.

They're not all winners (hey there, World of Zoo), but if you need to catch up on some PC titles, THQ (?) has you covered.

#movies Syfy and THQ have begun production on the two-hour Red Factions; Origins television movie, with stars from Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood, Stargate Universe, and everyone's favorite liquid metal Terminator joining the cast. More »

#thq Fans willing to give digital download a try when THQ's Darksiders releases on the PC this week will get a free game for their trouble, scoring Titan Quest, Red Faction: Guerrilla, or Company of Heroes depending on where you buy. More »

During a recent presentation of Red Faction: Armageddon, we asked what the designers at Volition felt were the top five changes made from Guerrilla to the latest installment. Red Faction: Guerrilla stood out as one of our favorites in 2009, so we were interested to see if Volition would be covering up the same blemishes that we'd had in mind. You'll find the answers from RF:A's Lead Level Designer, Jameson Durall, after the break.

#volition Volition, the studio behind Saints Row and Red Faction Armageddon, is entering a new space. The Illinois-based developer is currently collaborating on a "new action role-playing game" with "a high-powered creative talent in the entertainment industry." Who could that be? More »

#gameface A U.S. soldier plays Red Faction: Guerrilla inside his tent at a forward operating base in Dand district of Kandahar Province in Afghanistan. as seen on Boston.com - thanks Gordon. More »

#e32010 Let's cut to the chase: You're gonna want to see Red Faction: Armageddon's magna-gun in action. More »

THQ has never been shy about reflecting on the job it did marketing Red Faction: Guerrilla's launch. "I'd give us a 'B' on the launch of Red Faction: Guerrilla," CEO Brian Farrell admitted to investors last July. Today, on a generally upbeat earnings call -- sales are up and quality is definitely up! -- Farrell again questioned the launch of the title, but this time with a new focus, saying, "I think we did a great job on the game, I think we did an average job on demand creation."

Demand creation is the new game in town at THQ's Core Games unit, and Farrell thinks the company has got this nut cracked for the next Red Faction title. "I think you'll see that in spades," Farrell said about creating that all-important demand creation for the future Red Faction. "You'll see it in the way we unveil it later this month." But it's not all about building hyp-err, demand creation -- THQ has got the SyFy movie and all those free copies of Guerrilla to help with that -- it's also about improving the quality of the game itself.

Danny Bilson already told Joystiq that the next game would be more "narrative" and Farrell reaffirms that goal. "It's got a new storyline; we think that was one of the weaker points [in Guerrilla]," Farrell said. "Red Faction's always been a technological showpiece, and we wanted to add production values in terms of story and environment this year. And when you see the new Red Faction, it's just a much more appealing game universe."

When can you smash this more appealing game universe, you ask? Farrell mentioned a fiscal 2011 release window, which is open now and ends in March 2011, for the as-yet-unnamed sequel ... right when Bilson told us to expect it. But first things first, we'll learn more about this new, more narrative Red Faction "later this month." And then we'll tell you. (See, that's how this relationship works.)

In a lengthy post-mortem on Gamasutra, design director James Hague breaks down how his team at Volition developed Red Faction: Guerrilla's many, many missions while working with an enormous, open world where pretty much everything can be destroyed. Beyond the seemingly minor decisions (order of actions within a mission, for instance) being problematic, the sheer enormity of RFG's terraformed Mars and its fully destructible environment drove the game's developer to deliver on the promise of freedom not just between missions, but during them as well. This, as you might imagine, caused quite a bit of a hitch, resulting in the eventual boiling down of some mission objectives to their most basic elements.

"To truly fit into the open world model, missions have to provide the same sense of freedom that the world itself provides. And to make that work takes a change of mindset. It means letting go of being a control freak and instead embracing the chaos that's inherent in open world design," Hague says. For him, game design is often a struggle for how to control the player, and thusly, the player's experience. In the case of RFG, though, he exclaims the team had to "stop caring" about said control. "You can't control what the player experiences every moment. That's not a failure; it's what comes with letting the player do what he wants."

Hague goes into far more detail over four pages of individual mission dissection, so if you're a fan of the game like we are, we'd suggest checking out the whole piece -- it may not be as rewarding as destroying a tower and watching it fall on scrambling soldiers, but then what is?

Here's the good news: According to our budget-minded buddies (budgies?) at CAG, GameFly has a sale on several appealing Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 titles, including Batman: Arkham Asylum (360 / $19.99), Bionic Commando (360 / PS3 / $9.99), Brütal Legend (360 / $14.99) and The Beatles: Rock Band (360 / $21.99). We also spy some stellar deals on Red Faction: Guerrilla (360 / PS3 / under $15) and 2D fighter BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger ($19.99 / $24.99). GameFly games are guaranteed to be in working condition and include manuals and cases.

And here's the bad news: The sale comes to an end on March 30. Also, our industry is woefully ill-equipped to produce a product called "Bionic Batman and the Brütal Beatles" and will succumb to creative and financial bankruptcy long before you ever get to play something of such magnificent magnitude. Oh well.

In an interview with Joystiq during the 2010 Game Developer's Conference, THQ's executive VP of Core Games Danny Bilson let a few new details slip about the upcoming sequel to the critical-smash hit Red Faction: Guerrilla. "The new game takes [Red Faction] to a whole new place, it kind of goes back to the old Red Faction because about 80% of it is underground," Bilson said. According to Bilson, the as-yet-properly-named sequel -- which he describes as a "hybrid" between the first two titles in the Red Faction franchise and Guerrilla -- is planned for release in March 2011. (In February, THQ's annual investors conference call vaguely stated a Guerrilla sequel was planned for the company's "fiscal 2011" window.)

Bilson was tight-lipped on other details but did confirm the upcoming open-world third-person shooter would be far more "structured," akin to a "narrative" shooter. The sequel will still feature the destructibility Bilson says cost THQ "a fortune" to develop for Guerrilla, but will have a much greater impact on cities built closer together in the tight confines of the new underground world.

Although Guerrilla captivated most critics (netting a Metacritic average of 85 across three platforms) the third-person shooter failed to meet THQ's sales expectations. While Bilson said it would have been easy to scrap the characters and setting in the upcoming sequel and shift it into a new intellectual property -- effectively severing its connection to Guerrilla's poor retail showing -- he felt the quality in the previous entry was too great to abandon the Red Faction universe.

The strategy now, says Bilson, is to expose gamers to the series in order to prepare them for the future, citing the recent Red Faction: Guerrilla giveaway promotion as an example of giving the title the exposure it "deserved" at launch. "Giving away the stock now, on Red Faction, is getting more people exposed to the IP because we're going bigger on Red Faction next time," Bilson told us. "If the game wasn't so good, we wouldn't be giving it away at all."

THQ is bundling Red Faction: Guerrilla with UK copies of Metro 2033 on PC for the game's launch on March 19. To repeat, this has only been announced in the UK for the PC version of the post-apocalyptic Moscow metro romp. We're currently checking with THQ to see if a similar deal is planned for the States; in the meantime you can pick up Red Faction: Guerrilla for free now with a Steam pre-order of Metro 2033.

With a new Red Faction not that far off in the future, it appears that THQ wants to make sure everyone gets a chance to play last year's underrated entry.

If Just Cause 2's previous trailers have taught us anything, it's that the second game in Eidos' "do crazy sh##" series will absolutely relish in the lengths to which it enables you to live out its mission statement.

As evidenced once more in the second "Anatomy of a Stunt" trailer, wherein the game's main character mounts a speeding fire engine and takes on an aircraft, the game certainly seems to be jam-packed with the kind of insanity we like from our games (ask Red Faction Guerrilla!). Just wait until the trailers introduce a shark into that equation -- and the shark's on fire! But hey, you gotta save something for March 23 when the game comes out, right?

Got yourself a copy of Darksiders but, for whatever reason (admit it, you lost it), don't have the slip of paper it came with containing the "mystery code" redeemable for a free copy of Red Faction Guerrilla and digital art book? Seems you're not out of luck -- unless you bought it second-hand (or "pre-played," if you will).

Vigil has announced via its official Darksiders blog that those without codes, but who purchased the game new can still get the free RFG and disc full o' artwork. It's a little more work than simply clicking a link and typing in a code, but, hey, free is free. Those who want in on the promotion must fill out a form, provide "your original purchase receipt of a NEW copy of Darksiders," the barcode from the cover insert and, like everything else, pay shipping and "handling" (we never quite got what that is, exactly).

You have until March 7 to get in on the promotion, whatever your situation may be.

[Thanks, NBA Kirkland]

Got yourself a copy of Darksiders but, for whatever reason (admit it, you lost it), don't have the slip of paper it came with containing the "mystery code" redeemable for a free copy of Red Faction Guerrilla and digital art book? Seems you're not out of luck -- unless you bought it second-hand (or "pre-played," if you will).

Vigil has announced via its official Darksiders blog that those without codes, but who purchased the game new can still get the free RFG and disc full o' artwork. It's a little more work than simply clicking a link and typing in a code, but, hey, free is free. Those who want in on the promotion must fill out a form, provide "your original purchase receipt of a NEW copy of Darksiders," the barcode from the cover insert and, like everyone else, shipping and "handling" (we never quite got what that is, exactly).

You have until March 7 to get in on the promotion, whatever your situation may be.

[Thanks, NBA Kirkland!]

Early copies of Darksiders contained an insert (see above) that quite explicitly asked buyers to not to throw it away -- that's what "do not discard" means. Today it was revealed that the code will net the bearer a free copy of Red Faction Guerrilla for PS3 or Xbox 360. The code will also grant them "a digital Hellbook disc featuring Darksiders art, videos, and other awesome stuff." Yeah, that's great but let's get back to that whole "free game" thing.

The offer is only available in the US and ends March 7, 2010. We've got a call in to THQ about whether recent Darksiders printings still have the card. Of course there's a catch: there's a $5 shipping charge; however, we can guarantee (because it was all over our "Best of the Rest" for 2009) that $5 is an incredibly small price to pay for hours of joyous Martian destruction.

[Thanks Salvador and Stephen McB]

With a Steam pre-purchase of THQ's upcoming Metro 2033 (which releases March 16) for $50, deal-seekers will also nab Red Faction Guerrilla for free. The Red Planet Revolution sim is regularly priced at $20 -- but, you know, the right Steam sale comes along and that price drops like a Martian communications tower.

Our recent hands-on with Metro 2033 gave us a "good" vibe, but we definitely need more time with the game to see if the feeling lasts. Red Faction Guerrilla, however, made it onto five Joystiq editors' "Best of the Rest" of 2009 lists, and it's totally worth picking up -- even if you have to pay for it.

[Via 1UP]

Dear Europe, Man, you guys don't even know it yet, but you just got access to something wonderful. Direct2Drive recently launched a European-focused branch of its digital distribution racket, which allows shoppers to purchase games using Euros, instead of America's bizarre, chartreuse currency. If you've shied away from D2D's storefront due to its adoption of dollar bills, you've got no reason not to use it anymore. At the very least, give it a look-see whenever the store is doing one of its absolutely ridiculous fire sales. Oh, there's one right now! Red Faction: Guerrilla for 12,50€? You so crazy, Direct2Drive!

Get your ass back to Mars.

Ah, Total Recall references -- does it get any better? Well, five times the XP for five days in Red Faction: Guerrilla is a start. Any of you Quaids out there who jump online for some jetpack-fueled fun will get quintuple XP from today up until Monday, December 21. And if you've not downloaded the multiplayer DLC pack yet, check out Volition's Twitter feed, @RedFaction. Volition's going to be giving away codes for the DLC to a few lucky followers throughout the event.

The dev team behind Guerrilla makes a friendly wager that may not turn out so well.

Europe joins the Red Faction on PC.