by GrathiusXR:

©2009 Arthur Kotsopoulos

Red Faction: Guerrilla, the third game in the franchise, hit the shelves just after E3 2009 and exceeded all expectations with its change to an open world 3rd person perspective and plenty of destruction.

Now Volition have released their latest item, #1 of their 3 part series, Demons Of The Badlands.

Moving away from the linear semi-corridor shooter it once was on previous generations of consoles, Red Faction: Guerrilla offered much more in terms of visuals and destruction, boasting what has to be the most impressive destruction engine I have seen, the Geo-Mod 2.0.

• Demons Of The Badlands Trailer

With buildings collapsing in a realistic fashion and everything but the environment being able to be blown up, Red Faction: Guerrilla offered an unfortunately short but sweet single player experience that was welcome in the drought of games during the month of June.

Only a  couple of weeks after its release Volition/THQ announced that the 1st of 3 planned DLC  (downloadable content) for the game would be made available sometime in August for Red Faction: Guerrilla entitled Demons Of The Badlands and would be a prequel to the events in Red Faction: Guerrilla.

This add-on follows the story of Samantha (Sam) who is the Red Faction’s tech girl in Guerrilla. She’s the gal you see to buy all the unlocked upgrades to your various weapons, except in Demons of the Badlands she is not with the Red Faction, but with her sister and the Marauders.

The story so far

So the story tells the events leading up to Sam joining the Red Faction.

Sporting her own Marauder version of the famous sledgehammer, she takes the player on a short action-packed burst of fun exploring a whole new area of Mars which in itself is quite big.

Unfortunately though, there are only 3 vehicles available which are all marauder-styled and a few new additions in weaponry to add to the total of the existing tools of destruction. Lluckily you can still steal the EDF vehicles and wreak havoc with them.

Add in some Marauder action which follows the exact same clever destruction puzzles and beacon races in Guerrilla and the game provides some fantastic fun for only a small price at 800 MS Points.

RF: Guerrilla was criticized for being extremely short in length and DotB, whilst offering some quality gaming, suffers from the same fate and is the DLC’s only real downfall, other than the fact that it doesn’t offer anything new to the formula.

If you’re a hardcore gamer like myself who loves to when playing a game sit down for a good number of hours then you’ll be disappointed after having finished it so quickly.

The DLC doesn’t really go to any extremes to push that one step further from RF:G.  What I mean by this is that there aren’t really any sequences that top the satisfying destruction of the massive bridge in RF: G after you attain the Nano Rifle.

At times it seems that the EDF’s intensity in some parts is turned down and then ramped up in others, which to me shows a bit of inconsistency with the A.I..

But enough about this, it’s still good!

Demons of the Badlands offers the same great fast paced action as its main counterpart and adds in new ways to pick off enemies and blow stuff up using the new sledgehammer, the Marauder charges and a Marauder-styled grenade launcher with a fire rate like the rocket launcher and allows EDF to be taken out in a whole new fashion.

Add to that the voice acting, the visuals, the smooth framerate, the explosions and most everything is top notch and plays all the same except for the fact you’re a different character this time around with access to a few new toys.

It’s great to see so shortly after the game’s release an add on is already available for a great price of 800 MSP and offers enough variety and fun to warrant a purchase, but anyone in their right mind would know off the bat that Volition would only offer greatness after Guerrilla.

Hopefully the next 2 installments offer this much fun and are just a couple of hours longer. Heck I wouldn’t mind if it is a whole new mini-story in itself- perhaps a whole new area on Mars following another rebellion of Red Faction troops?

Whatever the case may be, if Demons of the Badlands is anything to go by, then THQ/Volition have a few tricks up their sleeves and I cannot wait for them to announce the 2nd DLC for the game.

It’s tough to score a piece of DLC like this, but based on the fun I had in the short burst I say it’s well worth the purchase for the enjoyment sitting down after a long day’s work and experiencing some more Red Faction fun!

• Red Factions; DLC #2 Coming soon

©2009 Arthur Kotsopoulos

”7.5/10 

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