Red Faction Armageddon

Hello again gamers! It's Sunday night, so that means it's time for another review. This week, it'll be Red Faction: Armageddon; devloped by Volition, and based primarily around some awesome full scale destruction mechanic. Sound good? Shut up and read the review!

STORY
Red Faction: Armageddon takes place 50 years after the events of RF: Guerrilla. Mars has become uninhabitable since a group of cultists, led by Adam Hale, destroyed the terraformer, forcing all the surviving Mars colonists underground. Players take control of Darius Mason as he is fooled into unleashing a long buried menace and takes steps to make things right again.

The story is a lot more focused than Guerilla ever was, in part due to the linear progression of the game. Instead of giving you a huge sandbox to go nuts in, Volition have opted to keep the game more story focused, which you would think was a good thing. Unfortunately, very few of the characters are actually interesting, and the story plays out like a space horror movie.

The character "Frank Winters" was occasionally really funny, as was Darius' back-and-forth with his gears AI, "S.A.M", but more often than not, it would have been more bearable if the AI had stayed silent. Darius' relationship with Kara seems like a token effort, but takes a surprising twist near the end, which I was honestly rather surprised about.

PRESENTATION
Red Faction: Guerrilla had the notable problem of being set on mars, so the setting would be comprised of a multitude of different red/brown shades. While Red Faction Armageddon is also set on Mars, it doesn't seem to share this problem. At least, not all the time.
For the majority of the game, Darius will trudge through dark red or brown caverns while fighting off aliens that look like people in bug costumes. Occasionally, you'll make your way to caves with different coloured lighting, and they actually look really cool.

The sound presentation was overall pretty meh. I didn't find anything outstanding about the voice acting or soundtrack, so there really isn't a whole lot to dwell on here.
Not sure if this counts as presentation, but the destruction physics still look as amazing and fun as they did in Guerrilla.

GAMEPLAY
Red Faction: Armageddon is a third person shooter at its core, with destruction gameplay and occasional vehicle sections. The shooting works well enough, the guns are fun to fire and the enemies are fun to kill. No problems here.

The biggest problem with the gameplay is the fact that you're fighting aliens for the majority of the game. Aliens who have little need for bridges, and who aren't particularly hindered by walls. The tactical application for destructable and re-buildable environments go right out the window when you're fighting an enemy who isn't affect by the way that you change the landscape.

Thats not to say the destruction isn't fun. It just makes the gameplay associated with it feel very shallow and token. Volition would have done well to base the gameplay more around that gimmick, and make it have more of an impact on the way we engage our enemies.
There are some really fun weapons here, ranging from guns that shoot high powered grenades, to magnet guns, to Singularity cannons(think giant cyclone of exploding debris).

The vehicle sections are some of the most fun parts of the game, allowing you to pilot Mechs, Walkers and some kinda little Spaceship...thing. These assist in your attempts to destroy everything you can see, which ranges from buildings and signs to aliens and occasionally people. Theres no real challenge in these sections, but damned if it ain't fun.

REPLAYABILITY
The game features a New Game+ feature that allows you to play with the upgrades and weapons you unlocked in your previous playthrough, including a farting unicorn. I shit you not. But beyond that, the game features a variation on the horde mode, as well as ruin mode, which should sate our appetites for destruction because it's pretty much "BLOW SHIT UP".

OVERVIEW
While it does have a more focused stroyline, and significantly improved graphics and visuals, Red Faction: Armageddon just isn't as appealing as it's predecessor. I've been trying to pinpoint where the game goes wrong, and I keep coming back to the shallow applications of the destruction physics. If the ability to blow up a bridge, or reconstruct a wall helped in some tactical way during combat, it would seem like less of a gimmick. As it stands, Armageddon is an average third person shooter, saved only by the fact that you have a magnet gun that allows you to launch parts of building at aliens.

Ok, that bit of the game works pretty damn well.

Next week, A retrospective of Fable III I'm thinking. Unless I get my hands on something new between now and then. See you next time!