A phoenix is a mythological firebird that is periodically reborn from its own ashes, a symbol of cyclical renewal. It's also, according to several former employees of Chorus developers Fishlabs in Hamburg, an internal title for the massive cost-cutting project begun by Swedish conglomerate Embracer Group in June 2023.
The current incarnation of a bewildering series of mergers, renamings and acquisitions that date back to the founding of Nordic Games in 2004, Embracer have spent much of the past decade buying up video game studios and licenses, from Deus Ex developers Eidos Montreal to the adaptation rights for The Lords Of The Rings. According to a February 2023 earnings report, by the end of December 2022 the conglomerate had 134 internal studios on the books (including table-top developers) and owned or controlled over 850 IPs, with 224 games in development. Our Graham warned of the perils of such consolidation in 2019, and his misgivings have been borne out. Following the reported collapse of a billion dollar Savvy Games investment deal, Embracer set out to recover their debts by cancelling projects, laying off staff and closing whole studios. Fishlabs - acquired by Embracer in 2018 alongside their parent company Koch Media, nowadays Plaion - were among those burned by "Project Phoenix", first losing a dozen people in September 2023, and then around half their remaining workforce in November. In the process of these reductions, Embracer also binned off two video game projects – a sumptuous sci-fi metroidvania that was in full development, and a "visual prototype" for a brand new Red Faction game.
]]>T'was 2009 that Red Faction Guerrilla first appeared, an astoundingly ballsy and destructive Martian open world game before everything was open world games. And goodness gracious, it was fantastic. You played as a freedom fighter for the Red Faction, rebelling against the terrible authoritarian energy company EDF, who control the populations of Mars. And your tasks primarily involve knocking things over.
]]>Mars's calendar is objectively superior to ours. For starters, their Independence Day comes one day sooner than America's, and trades up the fireworks for driving giant mining robots through buildings. At least, that's what I'm drawing from the pun-ishingly named Red Faction: Guerilla Re-Mars-tered's new release date trailer. This polished-up version of Volition's space demolition sandbox is due out on July 3rd, and they've even gone and licensed Chris Remo's fan-song 'Space Asshole' to accompany it.
]]>I'll never forget that magical summer of 2009 when everyone went around smashing buildings to pieces with an ostrich-shaped hammer. Well, the noughties are back in fashion, baby, and Red Faction Guerrilla is back too. Volition's smashtastic shooter is being snazzed up a little for a re-release as the new Re-Mars-tered edition, publishers THQ Nordic announced today. They put the hyphens there to highlight the wordplay, not me. Re-Mars-tered will have fancier graphics and, they tell me, will come as a free upgrade for people who own the original on Steam.
]]>We've already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin' and a-shakin' in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol' Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well - as do a host of other games from 2017's great and good.
Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you're so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I'd have gone for in each category.
]]>Two hostages. One building. Five government guards with reinforcements waiting in the wings. In most games, I'd try to sneak in with a silenced rifle, methodically popping enemies in the head one-by-one. But in Red Faction: Guerrilla, I don't even have a gun in my inventory, let alone a silenced one. What I have instead are explosives. Lots of explosives.
I rig five charges at random points on the outside of the building, retreat to a safe distance, and squeeze the detonator. Glass shatters and debris flies off at all angles, a steel girder whizzing past my left ear as concrete and metal crumble down on top of the EDF soldiers, crushing them alive. But, predictably, the hostages are caught in the chaos. One is buried in the rubble, the other limping out with her health in the red.
The game tries to make me feel bad, alerting me that 'morale' in the local area has fallen to account for the dead guerrilla fighter. But I really don't care. Because blowing up buildings is fun – and Red Faction: Guerrilla makes it more fun than any other game out there.
]]>We don’t do scores on RPS, but sometimes we mourn for the inability to deploy a 7/10. The ur-score, the most double-edged of critical swords, the good but not great, the better than it deserves to be, the guilty pleasure, the bungled aspiration, the knows exactly what it is, the straight down the line. One score that can mean so much.
There is one particular type of 7/10 game that heralds joy, not disappointment: the solid, maybe ever so slightly wonky action game with no interest in being anything more than a solid action game.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
The game that killed the franchise. Red Faction: Armageddon was Volition's only real failure, a sequel to the stunning Red Faction: Guerilla, but one that failed to pick up nearly enough sales. THQ ditched it, and then moments later went under, the rights passing (along with Darksiders) to Nordic Games (who will likely sit on both like ancient dragons, jealously guarding their treasures and never letting anyone else ever touch them again). But you know what? It wasn't too bad.
]]>Red Faction Guerrilla is a cracking game for rolling around as a giant space asshole, smashing every building to the ground and giggling at its destruct-o-physics. But what then? What when everything is smashed and only you remain standing? You can't smash yourself, Hammerman.
Why, you rebuild it so you can start smashing all over again! Something I did not know RFG has, because it was limited to multiplayer, is a gun which rebuilds smashed things. Now it's in singleplayer too, as Nordic Games are admirably - and somewhat puzzlingly - still patching it.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
There was a point back in 2009 when I became obsessed with Red Faction: Guerrilla. I've always liked destructible scenery in shooty, 'splodey games and Guerrilla looked like it might change the landscape of action gaming forever. No more would we tolerate canned collapses - instead, we'd demand authenticity of a sort, with physics engines ensuring that every building caved-in and crumped in a believable fashion. Hammer time.
]]>Games For Windows Live? No mate, come on, that's a fairy tale. Just something people made up to scare kids. This 'orrible bogeyman that made all your videogames malfunction and constantly scream at you to login, yeah? No such thing, mate, no such thing. I mean, look around you, look at all these games that they used to say it hid in. Dawn of War 2? Dark Souls? Dead Rising 2? Resident Evil 5? BioShock 2? Super Street Fighter IV? I can't see any Games For Windows Live, you great ninny. Whassat? You swear blind that it roared its terrible roar and gnashed its terrible teeth and rolled its terrible eyes and showed its terrible claws in Red Faction Guerrilla? No way, mate. Take a look. Nothing there.
]]>Griefing in a single player game may seem slightly self-defeating, but in a game like Red Faction: Guerilla it's just so incredibly tempting. A game that makes everything but the ground itself destructible and then gives you a giant hammer is asking for trouble - when you realise you can smash up your own bases, including their inhabitants, it becomes a battle with your own consciousness not to constantly destroy it, ally moral be damned. This is something that clearly couldn't be resisted by Idle Thumbs who have created a superb song about the exploits of a Space Asshole. You can watch it below.
]]>We've been following the development of Volition's Sci-fi open-world terrorist freedom-fighter game for a while. But now, finally out on the PC, we can review say wot I think...
The first mission in Red Faction: Guerrilla is to destroy a building with a super-powered sledgehammer, and it just sort of gets better from there. The PC version is out this week, and will include the DLC released for the console versions for free. If you want to wait for a detailed verdict on the game then we'll have one for you next week, but in short: BIFF!
Meanwhile, you can check out the trailered explodaction below. Hammertime, etc.
]]>The swollen internet marketing thorax of THQ has disgorged another pair of Red Faction trailers for you to crack open with a click, and then discuss, as medieval crones might have discussed the entrails of a chicken. Does the chunky scenery speak prophecy of a genuinely destructible world? Does the game footage of much shootiness tell of glad tidings, or bad? It's hard to be clear. Consulting the terrifying RPS crystal ball, we are forced to say that we'll wait 'til we get some more hands on time, and then - only then - make final, immutable judgment.
]]>Sitting down to play an early version of Red Faction on an almost-sunny London day, I do get a moment's cognitive dissonance when I think of myself here, at a corporate event, playing a multi-million dollar product of capitalism designed to simulate the thrill of armed insurrection, when I could just head across town and get involved in the real thing. Except if I did that, I'd probably get in more trouble when I hit someone with a sledgehammer. And I wouldn't get to play with nanite-disolverers. Or, at least, I don't think I would. Man!
So - Red Faction then.
]]>“We’re ahead of everybody by five to ten years in terms of destruction,” Red Faction Guerilla lead designer James Hague tells Eurogamer. "...we wanted to go toward fully-dynamic for everything. It’s a very different technical direction from where other people are going.” Judging by the insane super-hammer trailer that Volition have just released, he might just be right. I've been quietly sceptical about this, and I'm still rather expecting it to mess up, but that hammer... colour me interested. More varied destruction - presented by some dude I think might be from that program about big men breaking stuff - beyond the jump.
]]>Destructo-scenery specialists Volition have been talking about their new game, the third Red Faction title, including an explanation of their reasons for pulling the camera into third-person. Apparently it makes seeing all that destruction a little more satisfying. What we know so far is that it's going to be an "open-world shooter" set on Mars, so there's a little less linearity to your smashing of glass, shattering of concrete, and other Martian geo-mod guerrilla behaviour.
That footage beyond the click.
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