Red Faction: Guerrilla

I've been playing a bit of Red Faction: Guerrilla and while I think it's fun, there's some missed opportunities in there too.

The one that really bothers me is the AI of civilians. It's too good for what it is.

That's a bit of an odd statement, but to see what I mean, you have to go out of your way to watch the little folks go about their daily routine; people browse the (nearly empty) shelves of (nearly empty) shops, they lounge around, propping up the bar in pubs, they carry space two-by-fours around on their shoulders when you smash up their houses with deadly sledgehammer action. It all works towards a sense that they've things to do outside of being collateral damage for your high-explosive exploits.

The trouble is you have no reason to see any of it. Since you spend most of your time tearing around the wilderness in excitingly impractical space-taxis and Mars-buses, or running around military bases, you rarely see the effort the developers have put into the idle behavior of civilians. You've no need to explore the insides of buildings aside from picking up hidden Quantum Bomb caches that aren't really worth the effort. Most of the work put into civilian AI, especially indoors, seems to have been... not wasted, as that implies they shouldn't have bothered with it, but under-utilised, as the basic flow of the game almost never puts you in the thick of it.

That aside, I like the game. If only the sound guys could have got a bit further away from petrol engine sounds when doing the effects for some of the cars. I hope that if we ever do get to the point of terraforming alien worlds, we can do a little bit better than internal combustion to run our rides.

Anyways, 8/10, good effort.