The Red Faction series has never been known for exacting on greatness. Volition’s first outing landed quickly after the PS2’s launch and dazzled early adopters with its geo-mod technology that let you blow holes into everything. Its sequel, Red Faction II, had less “modding” to it, but polished the visuals and delivered an above-average linear experience.

Enter Xbox 360, PS3, and countless of other superior FPSs to the market — Volition knows better than to come into the same fold. Red Faction: Guerrilla is a third-person shooter that brings back the destruction of the first game in the series.

In the demo we tried, you are pitted immediately back on Mars with a sledgehammer and a few other standard weapons. During the one mission available, you are free to destroy everything in your path. And by everything — we mean EVERYTHING. Enemies are taken out with a swift strike, a couple of hits to vehicles disable them, and buildings are demolished with a few more.

Nothing is more satisfying than, in what we played, taking down a building piece by piece, rebar by rebar, until it’s whittled down to nothing but rubble at your feet. Standard firing weapons definitely come second from what we’ve played and that should give RF: Guerrilla a unique angle when it ships.

Volition encourages you to break every wall and bridge apart by awarding collectibles along the way. As soon as you make it across the first section of the demo you are tasked with bringing a massive tank back to your base and it ends with you blowing up enemy followers in the back of a transport vehicle.

There’s a tremendous visceral feeling from pounding and laying waste to everything you see, but we fear that might be it. The story — while a small detail to complain about — is already lacking in originality (D3’s Earth Defense Force 2017 says “Hi”) and the framerate was less than ideal when the destruction really got under way.

Hopefully those small worries are ironed out and Volition turns out a great action game that gives us a sandbox big and varied enough to tide us over before the equipped sledgehammer gets worned out on June 9th. At the very least, it’ll have Batman: Dark Asylum and Prototype contending for your $60 on launch day.