Most shooters start the player off with some kind of assault rifle, maybe a sub-machine gun if the designers are feeling stingy, plus a dinky little side-arm that never actually sees any use. Not so Red Faction: Guerrilla. In this game, right after the introductory cutscene, you’re given a humongous sledgehammer and a satchel of remote-detonated explosives. Then you’re set loose on the Martian landscape to do as you will. That is a fair representation of this game is all about.
You’ll find that most of your time on Mars will be spent wrecking stuff. Of the two starter weapons, the sledgehammer is the more reliable but it’s always satisfying to bring down a building with lots of enemies inside with explosives, especially when you become skilled at identifying structurally weak spots to slap them on. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg that is your arsenal. You also get the grinder, a bulky machine that fires razor-edged metal disks, the thermobaric rocket launcher that is really good at filling an enclosed space with a big explosion, a nano-rifle which infects the target with nanites that dissolve it, and, if you’re lucky, the awe-inspiring singularity bomb, which creates a miniature black hole.