Unlike the previous Red Faction games, Red Faction: Guerrilla will be a third-person shooter, as opposed to a first person shooter that was the original Red Faction and Red Faction II. One main reason for the perspective switch is because the changing environments from the Geo-mod feature are easier to see in third person but harder to avoid in a 1st person point of view.

In Red Faction: Guerrilla, the protagonist, Alec, will be able to run, jump, hijack vehicles, and use weapons to traverse across the open world of Mars and fight the EDF (Earth Defense Force). Weapons in the game will include: machine gun turrets, rocket turrets, remote charges, a sledgehammer, machine guns, and many others. A special weapon, the Grinder, is a homemade, improvised weapon made by miners that launches charged blades at enemies and objects.

Vehicles will be a returning feature to the game. These vehicles include: APCs, a 6 wheeler cargo truck, a walking construction mech, a jetpack, and possibly many others.

In the E3 2008 demo, it was shown that the player may use guns, melee weapons, vehicles, and explosives to destroy nearly every part of the environment, and allows the player to “tear the EDF presence down brick by brick”.

The game will have a radio function, which allows various characters to give Alec information. A two part HUD and a GPS with goals marked on it is included in the game. An all new cover system will be integrated into the game as well. The Geo-mod will add a whole new element to the game. A new feature to the game are equipable "Backpack" items. so far, there are 4 types of Power Packs, with more expected for the final version of the game, each with unique powers ranging from a standard jetpack to a "Rhino" pack that allows the player to charge through walls and opponents.

Multiplayer has been announced for the final version of the game. Rather than Alec, the player will use separate characters for multiplayer. It has been announced that the game will feature several multiplayer modes. In the Beta (see below) there is an equivalent to Team Deathmatch called Team Anarchy and a Capture The Flag Style game which uses the Geo-Mod Destructable Environment feature to capture different objectives. Locations for multiplayer stretch across the single player campaign with locations as the capital city Eos, and Parkers mining outpost. Along with Multiplayer is an offline only multiplayer gamemode known as Wrecking Crew. Wrecking Crew has a few different modes all of which are based around causing as much damage as possible in a limited amount(whether ammo, time, or both). At the beginning of the game the player picks their weapon and backpack to start out with to destroy as much as possible and after each match the winner chooses the weapon and backpack loadout.