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Out of this world

“Red Faction: Guerrilla” is a fun, refreshing, well-made sci-fi shooter that makes you wonder why so few other video games take advantage of the possibilities of the medium, instead of just rehashing the same old slop.

That’s not to say it’s revolutionary, but “Red Faction” takes what it needs from today’s state of the art and goes in new and interesting directions. I’m pleased to report it’s one of those rare titles that far exceeded my expectations.

One big reason is the setting: Mars. In the future, humans have terra-formed the Martian atmosphere to make it breathable, and an offshoot society has developed there that don’t take too kindly to bein’ pushed ’round by all these big-shot city-slicker types from Earth, hear? So troops of the Earth Defense Force are garrisoned as an occupying army in Martian towns, maintaining the kind of order that comes from the barrel of a space gun — and the people of Mars are not gonna take it anymore.

But the resistance fighters of the eponymous Red Faction don’t have high-order weaponry or air support, and they would certainly be ground into red dust in a conventional battle against the EDF. So you and the Martian independence movement fight as partisan irregulars, trying to bite the space elephant until he dies or retires from the fight.

This awesome premise is only improved by elegant game play and combat, a single-player story line that moved swiftly and stayed interesting, and wonderfully imaginative production design of what life on Mars looks and feels like.

“Red Faction” also advances the shooter trend of destructible environments: Buildings don’t break up in predictable ways, and you can wreck absolutely everything on the map, including walls, scenery such as industrial pipes — everything. This means you have the choice to radically rethink solving the game’s tactical problems — maybe you don’t want to do a frontal assault, because you can demolish the wall in back and get in that way.

“Red Faction’s” bad guys also were a pleasant surprise. The EDF soldiers behaved almost like human opponents in a multiplayer mode, consistently making the most effective tactical choices in battle. They rammed me with their vehicles, stole back EDF vehicles I’d stolen from them and used their fixed weapons.

As always, some quibbles: You play on a giant map, moving from mission to mission in 4x4-style Space Bigfoot vehicles. This can make the game feel like “Grand Theft Auto: Mars,” with a lot of your time spent commuting from a hostage rescue to demolishing an EDF factory. I also would’ve liked more and better weapons than the stock space pistol and space rifle you use most of the time.

The biggest complaint: Your fellow resistance fighters are as useless as the bad guys are resourceful. After a few battles in which the game sent “reinforcements” for hit-and-run engagements with the EDF, I could tell why the Martian resistance was in such bad shape — they didn’t use cover, they couldn’t get into some vehicles with me, and worst, I couldn’t give them orders.

But this problem leads me directly to another thing I loved about “Red Faction”: The computer-controlled civilian characters are always part of the background.

At one point, I pulled a stolen EDF space Humvee off the road and began laying down suppressive fire with the rooftop machine gun. More EDF bad guys arrived in vehicles and dismounted to fight. But the background action of the game continued — civilian and mining vehicles continued to travel back and forth on the roads. Trucks pulled around the bend and crashed into the EDF vehicles, killing some of the bad guys, and their civilian drivers either climbed out of the cab and ran, or tried to turn around and escape the firefight. It seemed like the kind of thing that would really happen ... in a future space firefight ... in a mining town on Mars.

Sustaining that kind of plausibility is pretty good for a video game.