Demo Fever!

I was feeling in an experimental mood tonight and so I grabbed the demo for Volition's Red Faction: Guerilla and Ubisoft's HAWX.

I've not really been following the new Red Faction, so I assumed it was another first person shooter. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was Saint's Row 2 on Mars.

My experience with Saint's Row 2 was not a good one. I found it shallow and packed to the gills with unlikeable sociopathic characters. I played it loing enough to take down one of the gangs - the heavily tattooed one lead by Lieutenant Worf (the Brotherhood?) - and knew it wasn't for me.

The Red Faction demo is much too short to reveal anything about the characters in the game, although the ever-so-slightly overwrought action movie trailer thing before the demo proper doesn't bode well.

All I can talk about is the gameplay, and I think this is a game that I'm just predisposed not to like. I don't like 'rampage games' and Red Faction: Guerilla seems like it's going to be a rampage game in a big way. The Geo-Mod 2 thing means that the building collapse in realistic ways, and if that doesn't start ringing alarm bells, I don't know what will. In the ten minute demo, there's shooting, gunplay, whacking people with sledgehammers, stealing cars, a battlemech section, and a turret on the back of a truck. It ticks all the boxes sure, but I want something more.

The only rampage games that I've ever liked is the Mercenaries games, and to be honest, they do everything that Red Faction seems to do, and does it better and funnier.

HAWX didn't really appeal to me either, but for a very different reason. It's a great looking game, but the controls are really, really fiddly. I bet there's a great game in there, but I'm not interested enough to struggle with weird camera angles to get some dog fighting done.