Super Nerd Sundays Presents: A Week in Red Faction: Guerrilla

October 3rd - 2:45 PM

I just returned home after fixing my computer. I’ve got half of next week’s Congratulations! done and I’m updating all my games. Oh! Red Faction’s gone up in price on Steam, and I no longer receive bonus games with it. Oh well, sometimes these things happen. I’ll still totally throw down my money. Three hours to download. Hm. Ah well, time to masturbate!

October 3rd – 6:00 PM

After several “near misses” I regained consciousness and decided to check on the status of Red Faction: Guerrilla’s install. Imagine my delight when I saw it had finished! Then I remembered that Steam games run that annoying fucking first time config on their initial boot. After watching Keyboard Cat play people off for fifteen minutes I’m ready to play!

October 3rd – 6:25 PM

My generic everyman is in some sort of abandoned playground with a sledgehammer and some explosives. This game’s tutorial is already well beyond every other game’s tutorial. Kudos, Volition!

October 3rd – 6:35 PM

My brother keeps peer pressuring me into finishing my “objectives” instead of having fun. I’m sure this trend will in no way persist through the entire game.

October 3rd – 6:40 PM

OH GOD MY BROTHER HAS BEEN SHOT! THE HUMANITY!

October 3rd – 6:45 PM

Having recovered emotionally from my brother’s brutal murder I’ve decided to blow some shit up. I’m a little bit high on caffeine right now so my thoughts aren't clear but that playground was pretty fun. Maybe the actual game will come close.

October 3rd – 8:00 PM

I blacked out for the last hour and a half. I remember some explosions and a guy being hit really hard with a hammer, but that’s it. I have this strange feeling of euphoria, like I had fun, but my brain kind of rejected it. I’d still be playing but my friends from Massachusetts called and they want to play DotA clones against people who do nothing but play DotA clones. Time to have some fun!

October 3rd – 11:30 PM

After some fucking horrible games with those fucking assholes I thought were my friends but who just did everything could to make me lose and six beers I’ve decided to start playing Red Faction: Guerrilla again. After a cordial parting in which the word “fuck” is used for less than 60% of all verbage in my sentences I decide that Red Faction: Guerilla was a lot of fun earlier and that I should totally head back and play some of that to blow off steam. I’m also going to quit drinking after this next beer.

October 4th – 12:30 AM

FUCK YOU INTERNET! FUCK YOU EDF! SO WHAT IF YOU SHOOT ME AND KILL ME! I BLEW UP YOUR BUILDING BY DRIVING THROUGH IT AND MURDERED LIKE SIX OF YOUR GUYS WITH A HAMMER! ALSO I FUCKED YOUR MOM! YEAH!

Brb, more beer.

October 4th – 12:45 AM

After being told by the prick at 7-11 that he wouldn’t sell me any more beer until I put my pants back on I somehow completed the transaction without police assistance and made it back home to play more Red Faction.

October 4th – 1:00 AM

This game is more fun while I’m drunk. Also harder. And as I drink more I care less about how bad the storytelling is, which is good. I wish they’d let me upgrade the weapons I enjoy using most, instead of forcing me to upgrade ones which are kind of “shitty,” and I get angrier about that when I drink more, but maybe if I keep it up I’ll stop caring at some point. Back to the game!

October 4th – 1:30 AM

Im njoying rf alot. sa good game but no i hav to driv and s relly n hard. thnk im gonna take a brake n watch frakes/geeks.

October 4th – 2:00 AM

freaks and geeks is such a good sho. still don’t get why it was cancel.

October 4th – 3:15 AM

After a nice sober-up session with James Franco and those other, less handsome cast members I start back in on Red Faction. Suddenly I realize why this game is so familiar. The Combine has reached Mars. I can’t do this alone! I need Freeman!

October 4th – 3:45 AM

After spending almost an hour trying to complete the last mission in Parker Sector and drinking steadily I decide that a little sleep is in order. I lay my sledgehammer to the side of my computer, considering giving my monitor a love tap for a moment. In the end I think better and try to shove my tongue inside of my PC's case. I shock myself.

October 4th – 12:30 PM

I wake up with a headache and a vague idea of what Red Faction: Guerrilla is: Half-Life 2: Episode VII and some sort of Space Grand Theft Auto VIII. With this in mind I sit down and beat the shit out of Parker. Patting myself on the back I decide that it’s best to take a break after my victory and make breakfast.

October 4th – 1:15 PM

If I was a Martian rebel this is what I’d eat, eggs and potatoes with too much hot sauce. It’s energizing and substantial and it cost me like, a dollar to make. Time to put that energy to good use by taking a nap.

October 4th – 4:30 PM

At some point during my nap I woke up and started playing Red Faction again. I honestly don’t know when, but I’m really enjoying this game. Dust is a great place to hang out and I’m enjoying murdering law abiding citizens with my hammer and explosives. I’m waiting for Fox News to play this game and then discuss it as a terrorist training program. I think I’ll write a letter to get the ball rolling on that.

October 4th – 10:30 PM

I have no idea what’s been going on, but Dust is almost entirely clear. Now I only have the final mission and side missions to play in this area and I can’t bring myself to finish the game. As much as I want to see the next area I don’t want to miss out on resources and missions and the experiences they offer. So I’m not going to deal with any of them for now. Time to tour the old applications on my computer. Has Dawn of War II changed a lot lately?

October 4th – 10:45 PM

After fifteen minutes waiting for a match I realize that no, Dawn of War II has not changed since its patch. I go back to doing side missions and blowing shit up.

October 5th – 1:30 AM

I have work tomorrow. Better finish up this mission and go to bed.

October 5th – 2:30 AM

I finally hop off the computer and get to bed. I have four and a half hours to sleep.

October 5th – 7:00 PM

After satisfying the crude needs of my body vis a vis food and Youtube I decide to finish up things in Dust. It’s not that I don’t like the area, but it’s better this way. I bite my lip and stay strong as I walk away.

October 5th – 8:00 PM

After a much, much better finale mission I enter the Badlands and am treated to my first clusterfuck as friendly units bombard a valley where I’m trying to capture a briefcase. I am literally running from my allies fire when I suddenly realize that this game perfectly models what would happen if my co-workers were given ballistic weapons and asked to assist me in combat. Kudos, Red Faction.

October 6th - 2:30 AM

Once again I seem to have been transported through time and space to my current location. I spent the night cleaning out the Badlands and before long I had most of the side missions finished. Then I realized I could explore Oasis, where the game is even more like Half-Life 2, but it’s also even more like Halo. Then I stopped and mined a little bit and blew up a bridge. It’s kind of foggy. The important thing is that I found the McGuffin. And I upgraded the McGuffin so I have the McGuffin device, which isn’t actually as awesome as the cutscene made it seem because RF:G insist on neutering every enjoyable gun by giving it a shallow clip and a downright tiny ammo pool.

Even upgraded I can’t be the one man army I so obviously and justifiably want to be. What the fuck, Red Faction? It would be one thing if I was being overwhelmed by powerful enemies, but I’m just getting swamped because I don’t have enough bullets. Which, again, would be fair if you had a combat system which rewarded conserving resources to win fights, but you don’t. The battles are sloppy, and when I win I feel like it’s because the AI doesn’t know what it’s doing, not because I’ve done a great job. In summary your combat makes me drive through lots of buildings instead of being able to choose a strategy the way I want to but you are still very fun thank you.

October 6th – 7:00 PM

I’m going to play a quick bit of Red Faction: Guerrilla before I write some of my statements of purpose for grad school and then sit down and help a friend buy a new computer. I’m still kind of angry at it.

October 6th – 9:30 PM

I think I said something about writing things earlier, but I don’t remember. I think I might’ve been angry at RF:G earlier too, but it’s really tough to say. Right now I’ve just spent over an hour banging my head against targets of opportunity and I really couldn’t care less. I have to go buy soap and food or some bullshit. It’s hard to imagine why but I don’t want The Ladies to think I’m less fly than originally advertised so off to Safeway I go.

October 6th – 10:15 PM

After crashing into the wall of Safeway, hitting a manager in the jaw with a hammer, and grabbing my shit I had to run the two miles back to my house because none of the residents of Portland had the balls to step out of their cars and help me get home after my brave assault on the capitalist mecca. But now I’m here with soap and shampoo and some more hot sauce and it’s time to have some fun.

October 6th – 11:30 PM

I find myself reluctant to finish up in the Badlands. Not necessarily because I want to explore, but because of how dead the regions become after I’ve “liberated” them. Nothing seems to actually change, and I don’t gain any personal benefit from doing so, but the entire area I’ve been treating as my personal playground is transformed from a vibrant battlefield to a wasteland. If I was looking to track down all the demolition challenges and dick around with them for a while that would be one thing, but that takes fuck all time. The end result is that I feel punished for moving the ball ahead in this game. Red Faction: Guerrilla’s narrative causes me constant annoyance. But I’m still playing it.

October 7th – 1:00 AM

I close out the night by carrying out some light operations in Oasis using the rocket-launcher dump truck. I just re-read that sentence twice and I can’t tell if I should be proud of video games or ashamed. I guess I’ll default to pride, because all things considered it’s pretty awesome.

I find that the challenge of the Badlands vanishes fast in Oasis, where I have more resources in general and the terrain is more negotiable. The fact that Oasis doesn’t ask me to destroy a massive bridge which helps me as much as my enemies is also nice. Not that blowing up that giant bridge wasn’t fun.

But it comes back to my original qualm. The game doesn’t generate challenge by introducing a scarcity of resources, it forces challenge on you by offering lots of places to restock resources and limiting what you can carry severely. If Red Faction wanted me to play a conservative, pensive game they wouldn’t have rockets and exploding barrels lying around like they were on sale, they’d force me to carefully consider where I place each det pack before I blow a building.

But they’re all too willing to let me blast the shit out of whatever’s nearby, then run out of supplies after a few seconds, not because I didn’t ration them, but because I’m being battered by guards and asked to run and gun when I want to carefully prepare my assault. It’s fun, but it makes every engagement into the same trial and error clusterfuck. Oh well. Time to go to sleep after one more mission.

October 7th – 7:10 AM

The blaring of my cell phone alarm wakes me from my slumber, face down on my keyboard. I seem to be in a safe house conversing with Sam but I have no idea how I got here. I consider showering and changing my clothes before work but I decide that it would be a better use of my time to transport a nearby vehicle back to a safehouse so I can buy that last arc welder upgrade.

October 7th – 8:30 AM

At work, where there’s an alarming lack of explosives. I’m writing an email to my boss about it.

October 7th – 10:00 AM

After a brief conversation with my supervisor it sounds like the issue is going to be “fully resolved.” His words!

October 7th – 6:30 PM

After a long day being followed around by uniformed gentlemen making sure I didn’t put a second copier through a wall during the course of the day I decide to sit down and try to get a few more missions done in Oasis before I clear out The Badlands. After around an hour of failing and retrying unreasonably difficult rescue missions I hurl my monitor across the room and select a new one from my “monitor closet.” I then log on to Gmail and hear from the same soulless friends who ruined my life on Saturday that real time strategy games have had destructible buildings for years. Intrigued, I decide to investigate.

October 8th – 1:30 AM

After losing five hours worth of Heroes of Newerth games I return to Oasis and try my hand at a few more missions. Soon the landscape is all but stripped of missions, a lifeless, pleasure-less playground ready to be plundered tomorrow. It’s like a high school filled with treasure with no principal and a gang of rowdy teens ready to cause hijinx. This can only end well.

October 8th - 7:30 PM

After briefly giving myself food poisoning by eating fish tacos I’d planned to finish just before first purchasing Red Faction I settle in to finish up the last few missions in Oasis. This’ll be easy peasy!

October 8th – 9:30 PM

Fuck this game and fuck anyone who’s still reading this. Red Faction has gone from being a pleasant diversion to being appallingly difficult. Not in its core gameplay, but in the “puzzles” they want me to solve. I’m forced to function now as the sort of aforementioned one man army I mentioned the game keeping me from becoming. I’m literally angry with rage.

I take a break and pay one of the young Somali children in my neighborhood to act as a moving target as I hurl another monitor at them. I miss and am doubly frustrated. Fuck you, Volition!

October 8th - 9:45 PM

I return home, hat in hand, after buying and drinking an entire forty at a nearby corner store. I apologize to Red Faction: Guerrilla, remove my penis from my pants and we get started again.

October 8th – 11:00 PM

I’m struck, while writing this journal, how repetitive many of this game’s actions are. Generally you’re just blowing shit up, an inherently fun activity, but sometimes the game forces you down a different path. Right now I’m trying to rescue three hostages from a EDF stronghold and it could’ve possibly be more frustrating, partly because they’re located on three separate floors and destroying the infrastructure of the building in any way would kill all the hostages. So I’m fighting off dozens of soldiers while trying to keep a handful of colonists alive and avoid destroying assets while clearing out ever returning waves of troops.

It’s less challenging than frustrating, perhaps because I can’t see “the trick.” I try to remove enemy emplacements, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I try to move as quickly as possible, rescuing the hostages in different order, but again, no difference. In the end the whole thing makes me want to walk away from the game I’ve enjoyed playing so much. The design elements seem to fight one another rather than meshing. Maybe if I could scout out the area and take a taciturn approach to the whole thing it would make a difference, but right now this rescue mission simply recalls how similar all of the missions to date have been by sucking the fun right out of them, and it’s making me want to punch through a wall.

October 9th – 12:00 AM

After almost three hours of trying to beat one mission and failing I’ve decided to give up on a mission for the first time in Red Faction: Guerrilla. Maybe later, eh? Instead I’m going to attempt to prep Oasis for a nice easy win. I expect that after the last three hours it’ll feel like a god damn vacation.

October 9th – 1:00 AM

After a series of really easy missions I rethought my approach to that impossible fucking mission and cleared it in a few seconds. It’s nice to know a game based on “free form rebellion” makes it feel just as much like pounding a nail through your dick to play in any way other than the “correct” one as the next title. After clearing out two areas and receiving some pretty helpful items that I still have to fucking buy, thanks for that Volition, it’s been a “productive” night. Top on my list of accomplishments? Learning that game developers who aren’t from Belgium are dicks. And the ones from Belgium are queers, so they’re just being nice as a by-product of people being dicks to them. Or something. I’m kind of drunk right now.

October 10th – 8:30 PM

After briefly and awkwardly interacting with my co-workers I returned home to play some more RF:G and drink myself into oblivion. I have to admit, the “Free Fire Zone” section was pretty much as infuriating as possible at first, with a “drive through a desert while being shot at by unseen targets” section which should’ve swept GDC.

Eventually that whole surprisingly-easy-low-tension drive gave way to a brief segment where I “assaulted” an enemy base. Read “assaulted” as “drove over guards, planted explosives, and then tried as hard as I could to escape.” I had to do this three times in rapid succession, but luckily dying didn’t net me any penalties. In fact it was kind of helpful, since I knew where all the baddies would spawn.

After completing those two asinine missions I’ve been informed that the Free Fire Zone, which I only just now visited, is now liberated. Huzzah lifeless desert! Enjoy your newfound freedm!

October 10th - 10:00 PM

After “liberating” that new area I decided to try some side missions. Turns out they just scale towards being uninterestingly frustrating towards the end of the game. After thirty minutes of swearing at my computer I decide to play different games to cleanse my pallet before I make a fresh approach.

October 10th - 11:30 PM

haff a bottl of whiskey annd a lost game of LOL later im baaaaack!

jk, jk, not a robot, but i m playin’ this game. I’m gonna kick fucksticks off mars. i can haz marzzz!!!!

October 10th – 1:00 AM

Fuck lolcats and fuck all you people. Whiskey is my only friend, and even she’s betraying me. Six times is an unreasonable number of times to retry a mission. I hate you and hope you die, Red Faction.

I’ll see you tomorrow.

October 10th – 11:25 AM

After starting up RF:G and finishing up a few more missions this morning I decided I would end the journal here, in Eos. I’m poised to beat the game but I want this whole journal to be relatively spoiler free. There isn’t a lot to spoil in RF:G. You blow shit up, that’s sort of the entire game, but there’s a lot to repeat. Drive, explode, drive. Find a new way to blow something up or move. Be treated to a brief cutscene intended to animate just how generically evil the EDF is and how desperate the Martians are.

I’m going to finish the game, and I’d recommend it to anyone whose interest has been even mildly piqued by this journal, but I’m not sure I’d call it GOTY. Maybe once I play some multiplayer that’ll change, but Red Faction: Guerrilla has proven a smart game with some stupid aspects. Enough, in fact, I think to warrant an entire essay.

But it remains, and likely always will be, incredibly fun.