Up until the movie Total Recall hit cinemas; I have to admit that I wasn't really much of a Sci-Fi buff. I never liked the original Star Trek series and while I got into Star Trek TNG a bit, the whole genre never really grabbed me. My view of Sci-Fi changed with Total Recall though and it was the first time that I'd heard of such concepts as ‘Terraforming', ‘Memory Implants' and the whole ‘reality versus delusion' angle that the author of the original story, Philip K. Dick seemed to love. I was hooked, and while a lot of Science Fiction movies have come and gone (some with cool stories like Sunshine, some with loads of cool violence like Event Horizon), Total Recall holds a place in my heart as being an almost perfect blend of both.

What's that got to do with Red Faction: Guerrilla (from here on in RFG) I hear you ask? Well the game takes place on Mars, there's an oppressive force in charge (the Earth Defence Force, or EDF) and pretty soon into the game you find yourself joining The Red Faction (the Mars resistance) fighting for your survival, and ultimately – the future of Mars. All that's missing is Kuato, alien artifacts and Michael Ironside's freshly severed hands.

Your character, Alec Mason, arrives on Mars to quickly find himself in the middle of an uprising by The Red Faction and instead of a typical level based shooter, the developers – Volition, drop you into an open-world where you're free to explore, complete side missions and progress through the single player campaign entirely at your own pace. Of course RFG isn't the first game to throw us into a giant open-world, and it won't be the last. The trick hinges on giving players enough side missions, activities and a compelling story to draw them through and ensure progression allowing the developer to tell their story in an interesting way.

So, have Volition achieved this? Have they provided enough in the way of interesting things to do that can keep you interested long enough to want to see RFG through to its end? Well, yes and no. The game is streets ahead of the excreta filled attempt at open world gaming that was ‘Spiderman 2'. It's better than the deplorable ‘The Incredible Hulk' and in many ways even more enjoyable at times than Grand Theft Auto IV, yes it pains me to say that. Best of all though, it's not the torrid stinking glitch and bug festival that ruined Saints Row 2 for me.

So.. is there enough variety in the types of missions and activities? I hate to say it, but there probably isn't, as while loads of fun, RFG does get repetitive suffering the same fate in this area as most other open-world games. Also when compared to Volitions recent release, Saints Row 2, the variety of side missions on offer is pretty slim. The key to the games success though is the new ‘Geo-Mod 2.0' and the Havok physics engine that allows for some of the wildest destruction yet seen in a game. One can only imagine what Saints Row 3 would be like, powered by this engine.

If you haven't been following the development of RFG and the Geo-Mod 2.0 engine, it's fair to say that while the building destruction in last year's Battlefield: Bad Company was awesome; my one complaint was that nothing was 100% completely destructible. There would always be an empty shell of a building left regardless of how many grenades you lobbed at it. Sure, you could mow down as many trees as you liked which appeals to the hidden psycho in all of us, but I'm sure that I'm not alone in wishing I could have brought a whole building down to take down a sniper on a rooftop, or to crush some baddies shooting at me with the very building they're using for cover.

Well in RFG you can do just that. Every building in the game can be completely blown apart piece by piece, levelled with enough rockets, bombs, by driving an armoured car through it, or even by ramming it to pieces with a Mech walker or some other piece of heavy earth moving equipment. It's extremely satisfying to not only be able to tear buildings apart piece by piece, but the amount of shrapnel, parts of walls, shattered glass and enemy troops that starts flying around with no slow-down is at times, absolutely amazing. If you haven't completely destroyed a building you'll even hear the groan of what's left struggling under its own weight before it eventually collapses in on itself.

Picked up from the wreckage of each building you destroy is salvage, the in-game currency that can be used to purchase and upgrade weapons which are neatly stored in a locker for you in each Red Faction safe house. The range of weapons on offer is quite good also. From machine guns, rocket launchers, remote explosives, missile launchers up to the kick arse Nano Rifle there's a lot of variety in how you can take the fight to the EDF. You can carry 3 weapons at once, each one mapped to the controller face buttons with the A button reserved for the sledgehammer. Sure, you can melee with the guns, but you get a lot of satisfaction running into a group of EDF and beating the utter crap out of them with the sledgehammer as one hit takes almost every foot soldier down.

To help you traverse Mars there's also a good range of vehicles available, and in a nice touch, the civilian vehicles differ between the areas you visit. From earth moving trucks, tiny people movers through to futuristic looking taxis and of course the EDF armoured cars, personnel carriers and tanks, there's plenty of variety there also. Quite a lot of fun can be had stealing an EDF Armoured Personnel Carrier, and then ramming it through their buildings. There's no shortage of explosives available to you, but also there's something very enjoyable about ramming large vehicles through buildings. If there's one complaint I have about the vehicles it's that I could never get into one of the very cool looking EDF aircraft to rain destruction down from above. Come on Volition, couldn't we have had one single aircraft based side mission?

There's no denying just how incredible the building destruction is in RFG, it's easily the best in a video game ever seen and overall the graphics look great. Mars looks craggy, raw and nasty with sharp angular rock formations and each area has just enough points of difference to keep things fresh. The EDF sometimes come at you in swarms but their intelligence leaves a lot to be desired. The game can still be a challenge at times however, even with the slightly dumb enemies and the awesome power of the Nano Rifle.

After completing the single player campaign and liberating Mars, which took me about 15 hours, Xbox Live awaits with 21 multiplayer maps and a good variety of multiplayer modes, many designed to take advantage of the destroyable buildings. There's a few standard options such as Deathmatch (Anarchy), Team Deathmatch (Team Anarchy) and Capture the Flag, but there's also Seige mode where each team takes a turn attacking or defending buildings and Demolition mode where only one person can destroy buildings, so has to be protected by the rest of the team (think, a VIP style mode). For offline play RFG has its own party mode called Wrecking Crew where you take turns with friends destroying buildings. It may sound simple but there's a stack of options and game modes to choose from. Why you can't party up and play Wrecking Crew online though is beyond me.

One part of the single player game that hasn't made its way into multiplayer is the vehicles. To spice things up and create variety, each multiplayer map has a number of different backpacks that you can wear. There's quite a few such as a jet pack, a rocket boost, increased weapon damage, extra speed, health, the tremor pack (that creates sound waves that damage buildings) as well as the Rhino which lets the wearer become a human wrecking ball. Once activated it gives you a short burst of speed and destructive power which not only allows you to smash through walls, but also potentially kill anyone unlucky enough to get in the way. Quite a few games I've played have the habit of degenerating into ‘who can get the rocket launcher first' but overall multiplayer is a lot of fun and has been mostly lag free but I hope Volition patch the matchmaking system to allow locale settings which in my opinion, any Xbox Live multiplayer game that wishes for longevity with Aussie gamers, must have.