10 Ways Video Games Blew Your Mind (Without You Even Realising)
6. Geo-Mod 2.0 Technology - Red Faction: Guerrilla
The Red Faction series was never particularly strong in the story department - thankfully, that's not what we play Red Faction for. We of course, play Red Faction for the opportunity to use whatever we have to hand to level the very environments in front of us.
Never was this more perfectly implemented than in 2009's Red Faction Guerrilla, the third instalment in the franchise. While the Geo-Mod engine was much-touted in the first 2 entries (and sadly downplayed in Red Faction II), it wasn't until the introduction of Geo-Mod 2.0 in Guerrilla that environmental destruction achieved its full potential.
Beyond simply blowing ever-expanding holes in the environment and its structures, Geo-Mod 2.0 had its world constructed from weighted ragdoll physics models, all linked to a stress-based collapse model. Attack the bottom of a building with your massively overpowered hammer, smashing away its lowermost components and eventually it would lose structural integrity, finally collapsing into rubble and kicking up an almighty dust cloud.
Unfortunately the game's sequel, Red Faction: Armageddon, dropped the sandbox elements of its predecessor and returned to a level-based structure, which limited the destructive potential massively. Environmental destruction in gaming has not since featured as heavily as it did in Guerrilla.
We can only dream of its resurgence.