What I'll be playing this July 4th weekend: Red Faction: Guerrilla

I can't imagine a better way of celebrating Independence Day than helping a ragtag band of rebel miners on Mars topple their greedy corporate oppressors. Also: Who knew smashing up buildings with a sledgehammer could be so much fun?

Available now for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (a PC version is also on sale), "Red Faction: Guerrilla" (which first hit stores in early June) plunks you—Alec Mason—down on the barren surface of Mars, where a group of guerrilla miners is struggling to topple the once-benign, now evil Earth Defense Force.

As depicted in "Red Faction," Mars is a dreary, dusty place, dotted with industrial structures, abandoned vehicles, and crates full of ammo (isn't that always the case with shooters?)—and naturally, it's crawling with EDF soldiers.

Sounds pretty standard, right? But here's the cool (and incredibly addicting) part of "Red Faction": just about everything on the planet is, as the official Xbox.com description puts it, "completely destructible."

See, being the miner that your character is, Mason comes armed with (among other things) a fistful of explosive charges and a sledgehammer, perfect for smashing enemy outposts, tanks, buildings, or just about any structure you happen to stumble across.

The more structures you destroy (and boy, is it fun to smash things in this game), the more scraps of broken-up junk you can salvage—and the more you salvage, the more you can trade in for new weapons and equipment upgrades at the guerrilla safe house. You'll also help liberate more and more Martian sectors from EDF control.

The open-world design of "Red Faction" means you can pick and choose your missions, as well as help out your fellow guerrillas when they engage the EDF in a firefight. There's also a 16-player multiplayer mode that I've yet to dip into.

The graphics in "Red Faction" (I'm playing the Xbox 360 version) aren't exactly awe-inspiring—they don't hold a candle to "Killzone 2" on the PS3, for example—but the gameplay is a blast. Indeed, I'm gonna jump right back into the mayhem once I'm done writing this post.

So, what are you planning on playing over the long July 4th weekend?

Note: This will be my last post of the week; I'll be back on Monday the 6th. Have a great (long) weekend, and careful with them firecrackers.