Way back in 2001, was a first-person that allowed players to blast huge chunks out of walls and terrain using the then revolutionary 'Geo-Mod' engine. Now with Lucasarts' much-maligned Fracture making a right pig's ear out of the idea of terrain deformation, developer is changing tack with Red Faction: Guerrilla, instead using its proprietary Geo-Mod 2.0 engine to raze buildings to the ground rather than changing your landscape.

Five years in the making, is a fresh start for the franchise, shifting the perspective to third-person and doing away with the linear narrative of the previous games. The entire experience has been totally rebuilt from the ground up, offering a completely that's ruled with an iron fist by the oppressive EDF organization. Going hands-on with the game, we found the overhauled gameplay works extremely well, with a great deal of gratification to be derived from simply smashing things up. As reluctant hero and member of the Mars uprising Alec Mason, you're encouraged to run riot, using your trusty sledgehammer to bring structures tumbling down in a huge smouldering heap of rubble.

Set fifty years after the events of the first Red Faction, Mason begins his campaign following the death of his brother at the hands of the shady EDF. Joining a camp of rebels where you can save your progress and store a vehicle, Mason becomes a symbol of hope for the resistance, meaning your actions boost the morale of your followers. This first camp acts as your hub for the opening portion of the game in Parker, the first of six large populated sectors. And although Parker is in keeping with the typical sci-fi vision of the red dusty planet, with it's mountainous orange hued valleys and tangerine skies, we're promised that the other locations will offer markedly different vistas. From the dustbowls of Parker, Badlands and the barren scrapheaps of Dust to the lush greenery of Oasis and Eos, Volition have made sure that the environs are both interesting and full of activity. Just make sure you steer well clear of the Free Fire Zone, unless you want to be torn to shreds.

Controls are simple and intuitive making the game a joy to play. More important though, is the game world, which possesses a far greater solidity than studio stablemate 2 and its (admittedly quite good) realisation of fictional city, Stillwater. The process of taking your sledgehammer to proper structures that have been built from the ground up with proper physics-based architecture is hugely rewarding with each swing taking huge chunks of debris out of the construction. Strategically placed exploding barrels can be picked up and thrown or placed to cause larger amounts of damage should you wish and later we put these to good use when we come across a timed challenge requiring you to carefully place them at optimum weak spots to destroy a small cylindrical structure as quickly as possible. Red Faction: Guerrilla is packed with plenty of these small distractions, each tailored to extract the maximum amount of pleasure from the act and resultant spectacle of demolishing an otherwise serviceable building, without drawing focus from your core objectives.

After a few hours jumping around the world, collecting black ore, stealing EDF armoured transports, killing innocent colonists (causing morale to drop) and wreaking general havoc by reducing every edifice in sight to its composite parts, we move onto the component of the game. Multiplayer in Red Faction: Guerrilla is available in two flavours - 16 player versus and Wrecking Crew. Wrecking Crew is a standalone multiplayer mode where players take it in turns to cause the most destruction before passing the pad to the next player. It's a great little party game that will provide you with hours of fun after you've finished enjoying the main game. Our hands-on bypasses this mode however, taking us straight to the deathmatch mode, with a roomful of journos all itching to smash the world to pieces while engaging in some intensive competitive gunplay.

Guerrilla doesn't skimp on the arsenal available to you during these matches with a range of inventive guns which are also available during the single-player campaign. Weapons like the assault rifle, shotgun and handgun are conventional and nothing particularly special as you can imagine, but like the repurposed mining equipment you'll use, is nothing short of brilliant. Our firm favourites are the saw blade launcher which fires out huge circular shuriken-like projectiles, the throwable sticky mines and Nanite cannon - a device that shoots tiny ravenous insectoid organisms that dissolve anything in their path instantly with a neat corrosive effect. Think Blade thrusting a silver stake through the heart of a vampire and you're close.

The real crux of Guerrilla's multiplayer has to be the backpacks though, which are available in several different varieties, each granting a special power-up. Certain backpacks enhance your physical abilities such as running and jumping whereas others act as devastating weapons like the tremor, concussion, firepower and the rhino, which turns you into an unstoppable charging force just like um, a rhino funnily enough. There are more besides these too and experimenting with combinations of weaponry alongside the backpacks is all part and parcel of the fast-paced, raucous fun. Tearing through the multiplayer maps, wiping out bridges to make things more awkward for the opposition or vaulting through a roof to launch a surprise attack upon the enemy is immensely entertaining and should ensure that you're playing the six different modes for a very long time indeed.

Guerrilla's gameplay features read like a wish list of things you'd like to see in a game of this type, including beefy vehicles, vast amounts of firepower, a compelling open world and huge tanks and bi-pedal mechs to commandeer. Everything we've seen of Red Faction: Guerrilla so far points towards this being a fantastic open world game and one that you'll undoubtedly play with a big, stupid smirk across your face. It's been a long wait for this to arrive, and there're still a few months to go before it hits the shelves, but based on this showing, we think it might just be more than worth it.

By Richard Walker