Red Faction: Armageddon Review

Bringing Down The House

by Betheo

©2011 Beth Sasagi

I love explosions.

I really do!

Games where you can demolish buildings and foes alike in fiery displays of power and destruction are games that I always have and will more than likely continue to enjoy.

That is precisely why when gifted with the review of Red Faction: Armageddon, I was thrilled and decidedly ecstatic about the concept of blowing up buildings, terrain and enemies all at the same time.

Is it a worthy successor to Guerrilla, or the same game with a new coat of paint?

This time, with less Bruce Willis

The first point on Red Faction: Armageddon that I have to discuss (aside from the joy of blowing things up) is the difference between this title and the others in the Red Faction series (I, II and Guerilla).

This time around, you aren’t focusing on defeating an oppressive, tyrannical corporation; now, you are taking on ancient evil alien forces who wreak, as you would guess, ‘Armageddon‘ on Mars. It doesn’t help that the terraforming equipment is destroyed as well, which opens the door for all kinds of shenanigans.

• Red Faction: Armageddon trailer

Cue the game’s protagonist, Darius Mason (for fans of the series, it is a fun note that he is in fact the grandson of Alec and Sam from Guerilla). Darius is a rough and tough (and probably crazy) contractor/mercenary who is one of few people out there still venturing on to the surface for money (and probably the thrills associated).

It is also made clear that the aliens attacking is, well, kind of your fault for letting them out, something that I had a good laugh about due to the fact that, in the same situation, I would have probably done the exact same thing (probably less cool-like and with more ‘corner huddling’ crying).

Gameplay is thoroughly enjoyable, with the title continuing the 3rd person view employed in Guerrilla and with the always fun-to-use Geo Mod engine (improved since the original title). If you’re not familiar, it allows near-complete control over your surroundings as you use the weapons in the game to bring down walls, buildings and aliens.

The control scheme is fairly simple and leaves you only needing to have the reflexes to take down the aliens before they get you. Unlike its predecessors, Armageddon does not have an open world to run around in, instead focusing more on the storyline and, as a result, creating a game with less confusion. And, a greater feeling of being part of the adventure, rather than running around insanely (which I did anyway, I must confess).

Getting a feel for Mars

The range of weaponry in the title is a little bit of overkill; not in the sense of the weapons themselves, but in the sheer fact that ammo is EVERYWHERE. The abundance of ammo did remove some of the thought process from the game, leaving me instead to just stick with plasma cannon whenever I wanted to muck about destroy things.

Vehicles in Armageddon are just fun, plain and simple. My personal favorite and a prime example is the Exo suit; running around and just obliterating enemies in this baby left me constantly quoting the end of Aliens (much to the chagrin of my flat mate who would hear me shouting out at 3am).

• Red Faction: Armageddon screenshots slideshow

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The Nano forge in the game gives you a diverse range of options to kill the aliens in different ways and generally annoy them. Setting off shockwaves to suspend and hurt them, going berserk to just simply go nuts, and let’s not forget Impact to just blast things in your path, Armageddon will never leave you bored.

I did, disappointingly, find myself relying on them constantly to mix up some of the combat. As much as I enjoy blowing things up with weapons, it can get a little old after a while.

The enemies in the game are a concept that I felt that somewhat degraded the general idea of the Red Faction series as a whole.

Traditionally, you would destroy buildings and walls to hamper the effort of the attacking force, whereas in Armageddon, it doesn’t really do much as they would just simply climb over or jump across the obstacle you tried to make to save yourself a bit of a headache.

This leaves you mostly just resorting to killing them without having to plan different tactics for each encounter (not to say I didn’t just blow up EVERY building I could for the sheer sake of it!).

Visually, I found it to have a dark, gritty tone, as you are primarily exploring dark tunnels interspersed with encounters to continue the storyline.

When you are on the surface, I found the contrast to be a relief from the creepy darkness and an enjoyable idea to what I always imagined living on Mars to be like.

Eliminating the aliens is really where the graphics are at their best; the graphic manner of destroying them and the gross, glowing blood combine to add a rather savage enjoyment to the playing process.

Explosions: the secret to life

Overall, this was a game I thoroughly enjoyed. I rarely replay games in this day and age due to the fact that replay value is in slow decline, and games generally don’t entertain me quite like they used to.

Armageddon, though, gives me incentive to actually go back and give it another run.

Because, as I said originally, I really do love explosions, lots of them.

OXCGN Silver Award

“8/10

©2011 Beth Sasagi

xxxxxx

• Red Faction: Armageddon screenshot gallery

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