Red-Faction-Guerrilla
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Red Faction: Guerrilla abandons GFWL for Steamworks
Following "over a month" of QA testing, the Steam version of destructible world shooter Red Faction: Guerrilla is now officially available. Unlike the original PC version of Red Faction: Guerrilla, the Steam edition does not rely on the now-defunct Games for Windows Live service for online functionality. Instead, it utilizes Valve's digital distribution service and the myriad features that come with it. Thus Red Faction: Guerrilla now features support for Steam Trading Cards, achievements and online leaderboards. To sweeten the re-release pot further, the game's developers also added a new "Behemoth" mode to the game as well as six new Wrecking Crew maps. Despite these changes, the Steam version of Red Faction: Guerrilla will recognize existing saves from the game's original release. If you own the Games for Windows Live version of Red Faction: Guerrilla, simply update to the new Steam version, start the game as usual and it will automatically attempt to import saves created prior to the patch. If you don't own Red Faction: Guerrilla, now would be a good time to grab a copy. The Steam edition is discounted to $3 for the next 48 hours. [Image: Nordic Games]
Red Faction: Guerrilla opens Steamworks public beta
Red Faction: Guerrilla is the latest game to completely shed its Games for Windows Live coat, and will now begin testing full Steam support features, Nordic Games announced. The publisher invited players to participate in a public beta of the game's new Steam-based functionality, which includes matchmaking and multiplayer support via Steamworks. The game's public beta will also feature leaderboards, voice chat and achievements via Valve's PC gaming service. Those interested in participating in the beta are instructed to follow this guide, selecting Red Faction: Guerrilla in step one and using the password "nordicrfgbeta" and the beta branch "publicbeta." First launching in 2009, Red Faction: Guerrilla was part of the $4.9 million set of intellectual properties purchased by Nordic Games in THQ's liquidation auction in April 2013, seeing itself as a "middle man" for potential sequels in its new series. The publisher told Joystiq at Gamescom in August that it's "not the right time" for Red Faction: Guerrilla 2. [Image: Nordic Games]
November's Games with Gold: Volgarr the Viking, Viva Pinata
Microsoft has announced next month's Games with Gold lineup, revealing that the Rastan-like barbaric side-scroller Volgarr the Viking will debut for the Xbox One as a free download for Xbox Live Gold subscribers. Members will also receive a free copy of Rare's Xbox 360 Viva Pinata sequel Trouble in Paradise starting on November 1, and Volition's havoc-raising third-person shooter Red Faction: Guerrilla will join the program on November 16. [Image: Crazy Viking Studios]
Nordic Games explains who the f they are, plans for THQ assets
Nordic Games spent $4.9 million to acquire THQ's back catalog in April, but has yet to reveal any concrete plans for the intellectual properties, although it certainly knows what you'd like to see. And, with any luck, will announce some plans by Gamescom. "We want to carefully select which franchises are up for getting a sequel or new installment. We closely monitor the communities on that," said Reinhard Pollice, who handles Nordic's business and product development. He mentioned the games receiving the most feedback are Darksiders, MX vs. ATV, Red Faction and Titan Quest. Personally, Pollice would also like a new Deadly Creatures, but there are other challenges. Nordic has described itself as a "middle man," since the company doesn't have internal studios or the capital to make the AAA sequels that fans of these games would expect. This is particularly true in the case of Darksiders, which Nordic would need to seek another publishing partner to help out. "Darksiders is really big. We know we need a partner for that. An established development team that can pull out such a big action adventure. We obviously talked to former team members and, if they are free, we want to somehow involve them. If they are allowed to because, you know, some of them found other jobs or are with Crytek now," said Pollice. He expressed that Darksiders is the franchise Nordic wants to do right by, to continue the story that's already been established. As a fan, Pollice doesn't want to mess up Darksiders and he wants to make sure that nobody else ruins what's been started in the first two games. Although, with the road ahead, he said, "I would not look for a Darksiders 3 before two years from now."
Humble Weekly Bundle serves up Darksiders 2, also Android bundle
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.
Amazon THQ sale: Metro 2033, Red Faction Guerrilla, more for 91% off
The Tantalizing THQ Medley on Amazon includes downloads of Metro 2033, Homefront, Red Faction Armageddon, Red Faction Guerrilla, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, all for $12. Regularly priced, this bundle comes out to $118, so that's a savings of 91 percent. Buying all six games is cheaper than getting one by itself, so if you're in the market for any of these, it's your lucky day.Actually, it's your lucky days: The Tantalizing THQ Medley will be on sale through January 20 as Amazon's Deal of the Week.
$5 Metro 2033 kicks off THQ week on Steam
As part of THQ Week, Steam has thrown a very hefty discount on one of 2010's hidden gems, Metro 2033. The post-apocalyptic Russian shooter is currently on sale for $5, as in five bucks, as in less than a greasy, unhealthy combo meal. Steam is also offering the THQ Hit Collection for $50, half the usual price. The Hit Collection includes favorites like Darksiders, Red Faction: Guerrilla, Saints Row 2 and ... others like Homefront and Red Faction: Armageddon. Finally, the whole THQ catalog (minus Saints Row: The Third and Space Marine) is 33 percent off this week, with more discounts coming in the days ahead. Finally, in other Steam news, Ninjabee's Ancients of Ooga is today's daily deal, available for $5.
Steam discounts Tales of Monkey Island, Red Faction and Black Ops
Steam has an eclectic, temporary assortment of discounts available over the next few days, including a markdown on the Tales of Monkey Island series to $12, 75 percent off the first three Red Faction games and a 33 percent markdown (and free weekend!) for Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Armageddon a free OnLive MicroConsole with Red Faction pre-order
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!
Red Faction: Armageddon wants you to destroy everything in sight
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.
THQ puts PC games on sale, including Metro 2033, Darksiders, more
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.
Volition's top changes between Red Faction: Guerrilla and Armageddon
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.
THQ's summer sale dropping 75% off select PC titles
If you're anything like us, you'd much rather explore the future wasteland of Metro 2033 and Mars' wartorn settlements in Red Faction: Guerrilla than run around outside under that giant boiling sphere in the sky. It's trying to kill us all, you know, right? Anyway, you'll be glad to hear (like we were) that THQ is making our collective choice to stay inside that much easier by dropping up to 75 percent off of a mess of titles over on its website -- the two aforementioned titles are only $12.50 and $5, respectively. Perhaps you'd rather shoot feces onto surrounding buildings while wearing "bigass chains?" Saint's Row 2 is also only five bucks! The rest of THQ's stable is similarly on sale in a dramatic way, but the sale only lasts until Monday (and is only for US residents -- sorry!), so we'd suggest getting on that. The full list of 75 percent off titles can be found just beyond the break.
Next Red Faction to be unveiled 'later this month'
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.)
Red Faction: Guerrilla dev post-mortem: to embrace true open-world freedom 'you need to stop caring'
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?
GameFly sale: Bionic Batman and the Brutal Beatles
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.
Next Red Faction planned for March 2011, focus on franchise's roots
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."
Buy Metro 2033 on PC, get Red Faction: Guerrilla for free in UK
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.
Just Cause 2 plays chicken in second 'Anatomy of a Stunt' trailer
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? %Gallery-65577%
Darksiders' free Red Faction promo open to anyone who bought it new, no code required
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]
