Red Faction Guerrilla was one of my favourite games when it was first released, i spent hours exploring Mars and of course destroying everything in sight. There was something about watching huge structure fall to their knee because you had been using whatever tools you had at your disposal to cause as much destruction as possible.

It was nearly 10 years ago since the game released and I was excited to go back and cause some more chaos on Mars, there isn’t a game I can remember that is as enjoyable as Red Faction when it comes to destruction.

You play as Alec Mason, set to reunite with his brother, but it doesn’t last long as his brother is killed by the EDF and Alec finds himself joining up with the resistance know as Red Faction, trying to liberate six areas by completing missions and destroying structures in effort to get control back from the enemy.

Completing missions will reduce the amount of control the EDF have over an area, you’ll also improve the morale of a sector which means you’ll get support from the AI when fighting the enemy. Everytime you destroy a building or complete a mission you will earn salvage, this can be used to unlock and upgrade weapons such as Rocket Launchers. When you got the EDF’s control down to zero, you would take part in a final liberation mission to gain full control.

As I mentioned at the start, the fun is in the destruction, it’s great to experiment with different combinations of weapons to bring a building down, you don’t have to use weapons, you could for example use a vehicle to smash straight through the centre of a structure, or even better, cover the vehicle in remote explosives and dive out at the last moment to watch your work from afar.

The side missions in the game are generally entertaining, I most enjoyed the challenges which would give you structure, a set weapon type and a time limit in which you had to bring down a building using the specified weapon. On the other end of the scale were boring transport missions which saw you drive a vehicle from part of the map to the other.

Like all the remasters that have been released in the past couple of years the visuals have been updated to make the game feel new. You’ll notice immediately that the lighting, shadows and textures have been improved, but once you begin to watch the cutscenes you’ll be begging to remember just how long ago the game came out. The game runs smoothly, even during the times where you are destroying huge structures.

Apart from visual improvements, there is no new content (not including the bundled DLC) which means no guns or explosives, vehicles, buildings, missions or challenges. Because of this you’ll struggle to enjoy the game a second time around as the world is quite bland with big gaps between areas for you to destroy.

Multiplayer returns and it’s as fun as it always was, whether you are working in teams to defend your own structure while trying to destroy your opponents buildings, it’s still very tactical, trying to balance those who are attacking with those repairing and defending your own area. The Wrecking Ball mode is still a favourite, where you take turns to destroy an area with limitations on how you’ll go about it, you can fully customise the map and options which will keep things fresh.

Red Faction Guerrilla ReMARStered has brought back some great memories, it was great to jump back in, but it also highlighted a lot of the issues I chose to ignore first time around. The still isn’t a game that deals with destruction like this one does, but the world is crying out for a bit more life.