Available right now on both Live and PSN is a demo for upcoming third person shooter/demolition simulator Red Faction: Guerrilla. The short answer to ‘should I download it?’ is yes, right now and stop being so lazy. It’s a free demo, what’s wrong with you?

For the difficult to persuade the long answer after the jump.

If the name sounds familiar it’s because Red Faction (and its sequel) was a reasonably well received first person shooter in the early days of the PS2. It was okay, not super great but okay. The real draw of Red Faction was destructible environments. With the right weapon or vehicle you could make your own doors or tunnels where ever you liked; but while this was a cool feature it wasn’t implemented super well and wasn’t particularly useful for the actual gameplay.

Red Faction Guerrilla seems to be a very different game. It’s still the story of a Mars mining operation where the poorly treated miners fight back against the nasty company in charge, but the game is now a third person shooter with many missions happening out doors. The game has a distinct Grand Theft Auto feel with your ability to run around freely in the huge environment, jumping in any vehicles you see and taking back Mars by sectors.

The demo mission is a lot of fun. Basically you need to get from point A to point B and steal a great big excavation robot, like a mining truck with legs, and walk it back to point A. Between the two points are a heap of vehicles, buildings and structures that you can destroy which is immense fun. You’re starting weapon is a great big power hammer which makes short work of most walls and smaller structures but you quickly find a few guns and explosive mining charges. The mining charges are good fun as you can affix them to any surface, including vehicles, and then remote explode them when you’ve stuck as many as you please.

There are plenty of bonuses to be had by destroying enemy buildings and structures like radio towers. Destroyed structures net you some valuable raw materials that are identified as glowing bits of rubble but it wasn’t clear what these were for from the demo. They seemed like currency.

The demo is, unfortunately, timed and you need to complete your objective in the short period (ten minutes I think) you have. This is complicated by the fact it’s just so much damn fun pausing to blow the hell out of stop and watch buildings collapse. Plus the open plan areas practically beg you to be creative when tackling your objective. Personally I skirted the patrolling bad guys and blew a small hole in the back of the warehouse where the robot was stored, then hopped in, crashed through the front and proceeded to stomp the bad guys into oblivion.

The retail version also promises a multiplayer mode with various weapons of mass destruction to use on your friends.

The demo was enough to sell me on the game. It’s moved onto my rather crowded Anticopatometer. If you haven’t all ready download it and give it a bash then come back here to discuss on our forums.

Click here for Red Faction: Guerrilla demo discussion.