Red Faction: Armageddon

Red Faction: Armageddon is here. For all the Red Faction fans out there it has been two years since the release of Red Faction: Guerrilla. Published by THQ and developed by Volition, this futuristic shooter takes place deep in the crust of Mars. After a cultist/terrorist group blows up the Terraformer, the machine that would make the atmosphere habitable, you and the rest of the Martians are forced to move underground. The main character, Darius Mason, is an engineer and several years later he is sent on a job that will change the lives of everyone on Mars.

The game starts out with you riding in a vehicle, with the Red Faction, in order to stop the cultist group from destroying the Terraformer. You quickly get thrown out the vehicle and barely survive by hanging on a ledge. Pulling yourself to safety you are now separated from the rest of the squad. Fighting your way back to catch up with the captain, you will run into several cultists. Finally after breaking through the forces you are still too late in order to stop the cultists from destroying the Terraformer. Five years later you get a call to do a job off at a Marauder temple. You break through an artifact and all hell breaks loose in the caves of Mars. When the game really starts to take off you find yourself doing several small tasks in order to help the small settlement defend and provide water to the people. The story is mainly told through cutscenes and over the radio. You get your task and it is basically a pretty linear game from there. They do not provide much in the way of exploring there are hardly ever any branching paths and when there is one you are rewarded with some minimal "Salvage", the currency to get upgrades. The character development is not the strongest and there is not a whole lot of background given on Darius Mason other then that he is an engineer. He travels with "SAM" a computer that analyzes the situation and tells you where to go and what you should do. This character helps set the pacing of the story as well as some useful tips on how to defeat some enemies. Though overall character development in this game is not amazing it is not the worst. What is amazing however is the gameplay that will let you blow up anything you want, rebuild it, and blow it up again.

Darius uses the nanomites in order to repair things as an engineer of the Red Faction. This allows you to repair pretty much anything and it is what you will be doing for most of the game. It is either repair this or destroy that, though it seems very simple the physics engine makes it very satisfying. You are also given a lot of weapons that each have there special attribute that will help in your destruction and killing of the true Martians. One example would be the Magnet Cannon. This simple gun allows you to place one anchor on and enemy or an object and a second anchor on anything else. This will then pull the first anchor towards the second, either smashing it or simply speeding it up to destroy whatever is in its path. There are several other guns in the game that have equal or greater destruction capabilities as well. One thing that is upsetting is that since you are underground for most of the game there really are not any opportunities where you can totally demolish large buildings. Though it is still fun with what you can destroy. Another feature that is in this game is the Exoskeleton suit you can wear that gives you the ability to destroy anything that moves. The LEO exosuit is great for breaking down doors and ravaging through large groups of enemies. Another gameplay feature includes the multiplayer option that can help it stand out in a crowd.

The multiplayer in Red Faction: Armageddon is just a co-operative survival match, called Infestation, where two to four people will battle for as long as they can against wave after wave of enemies. There are a couple maps but this is pretty simple last stand/horde/firefight mode that seems to be in more and more games as the years go on. It is fun when you get a group of people that know what they are doing but you can find yourself running around reviving people constantly which can take away from the experience. There is a also the Ruin Mode where you can challenge your friends to a game of who can tear down the most stuff in the time given. There are leaderboards for this so that you can see how you stack up to others in your ability to break stuff. This works great with the new engine they are using and this is a good way to put it to use. It is fun to just jump into a map and break things, good if you want to blow off some steam. This game is able to pull of the destruction side of things very well, it does everything that it promised and it does it extremely well.

This game is able to do what it has set out to do though it is not an outstanding game. The story feels kinda of repetitive and cliche' where you are constantly being asked to repair stuff and constantly killing more and more enemies where all they do is introduce a new baddie and then throw more mixes of bad guys at you at once. It can get tiring after fighting the same creatures and the little wrinkle they will occasionally throw in would be this beacon of some sort that will give all the aliens a power boost making them stronger. You yourself will get stronger as you get more salvage and upgrade your abilities making your ability to crowd control a lot better, helping to destroy large groups of enemies with ease. The strength of this game rest on what you expect from any Red Faction game, the destructible environments.

Overall this game seems to do what it has set out to do, that being the able to destroy anything and everything that is remotely man mad in the game. It is a lot of fun to play and as long as you are looking for some time to kill it will be a lot of fun for you to go through the story and you can even get some buddies to do the infestation mode. This game did not disappoint me and I am enjoying it, but to someone who is looking for something completely original then you should check elsewhere because this game does borrow a lot of cliches as well as having some repetitive gameplay with a couple curveballs thrown in to keep it fresh. All together if your a fan of the series its a great game if your a little weary you will definitely have some fun with this one as well.