Red Faction: Armageddon has gamers returning to Mars for some more destruct ‘em up action. Having been in iterative development since the first Red Faction game released in 2011, developer Volition introduces the Geo-Mod 2.5 game engine in Armageddon. Players are able destroy most of the environmental objects and buildings, and this has become the hallmark of the series.

Story

The game is set on Mars in the year 2170, fifty years after the events of Red Faction: Guerilla. The evil Marauder cultist Adam Hale destroys the terraformer responsible for generating an Earth-like atmosphere and making the surface of Mars habitable, forcing the Mars colonists to flee underground and live in the mines excavated by their ancestral settlers.

Gamers are introduced to Darius Mason, grandson of Martian revolutionary heroes Alec Mason and Samanya, the protagonists from Guerilla. Little is revealed during Armageddon about the 50-year gap in events because this has presumably been saved for the SyFy network’s TV movie, Red Faction: Origins, which supposedly fills the storyline gap.

Darius Mason will start the game by fighting off pesky cultists, and then being tricked into unleashing a long dormant species of Martian creatures on the rest of planet. The Martians are a race of vicious warriors whose social structures are akin to those of termites. They range from agile crawlers that will skitter around cavern walls and ceilings to brutish tanks that use their size and strength for offense.

Both Marauder and colonist settlements are torn apart by the encroaching Martians, and Darius sets off to bring Adam Hale to justice and an end to the scourge.

Geo-Mod 2.5 and destructible environments

Red Faction: Armageddon ditches the open world gameplay of the previous title, Guerrilla, replacing it with a more traditional story-driven third-person shooter style. This has given the game a better sense of direction than its predecessor, and the storyline unfolds at a brisk pace. While this approach may have given the game focus, it has also reduced it to a linear shooter with a single story.

Let’s not forget that Guerrilla was criticised for its repetitive nature and weak plot. It seems that this time around, Volition has tightened up on the storyline, and done a few interesting things to combat repetitiveness, but the loss of the open world is a big one for fans of Guerrilla. The open world environments seemed the perfect place to explore the destruction mechanics of the gameplay, with ample opportunity to incorporate this into cool scripted plot points and large scale destruction sequences.

Instead, the destruction mechanics merely exist in Aramageddon; with few spectacular examples of its use, it never really becomes the star of the game. It is great fun to toy with, and can be used offensively in many cases, but it does seem almost ancillary to what is otherwise a fun third-person shooter. There are moments where destroying a building has specific gameplay implications, such as removing a Martian nest, or more specific instances such as shutting down a perpetual-motion magma powered engine to avoid death.

It’s a really fun mechanic and throughout the game idestroying buildings never becomes tiresome. In fact one can invent their own little challenges to see how efficiently they can bring down a large structure. Still, it feels as if more could have been done with this element; however, it is certainly a feature that adds an extra layer of fun to the title. I hypothesise that limitations on consoles meant compromises had to be made. Here’s hoping for a next-gen Red Faction that returns us to the open world and really delves into the possibilities afforded by the Geo-Mod technology.

Gameplay

Volition hits most of the right notes with the rest of the gameplay – a roughly 7 hour romp. Other than the Marauder cultists and the occasional appearance of an armoured exoskeleton or walker, there are about six variations of Martian. There are small (relatively speaking) crawlers with a melee attack that skitter about the caverns, approaching from all directions, eventually encircling Darius if players aren’t quick enough at picking them off on their approach. Of course Darius is armed with the traditional gyroscopic Maul which is handy for up-close encounters.

The Martians steadily increase in size, and ability. Larger variations usually have a ranged attack, and coupled with their ability to leap around caverns and attack from all angles, they become particularly troublesome. Certain Martians have the ability to psychically mess with Darius’s vision, creating a convincingly hazy visual distortion affect until they are dealt with. There are a few variations of brute as well, and these guys will typically require a bit of cunning, manoeuvering, and destructo-envrioment usage to be killed.

All together the enemy AI was well-implemented and challenging. With the Martians’ ability to flank from all directions, there’s a constant demand for the player to remain vigilant. It also means that the various levels will offer some replayability, as the Martians don’t appear to resort to the same AI pathing each time.

There were a few moments where the game bugged out, with a scripted objective update or event not taking place. The frustrating thing about these was that the player is left feeling they haven’t completed a task correctly until they realise something has gone wrong. Thankfully the auto-save checkpoints are tightly spaced, so I didn’t have to backtrack far.

Weapons

There are plenty of interesting and fun weapons with which to take out enemies. The Magnet Gun is one of the most compelling. The player will place two points using the gun; the first attracts to the second with accelerated results. This can be used in a few imaginative ways, such as sending Martians crashing into each other, into buildings, buildings into Martians, or buildings into other buildings, resulting in a cascade of debris.

Powerful dual-wield pistols, a plasma laser, plasma cannon, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, and a gravitational singularity cannon are but a few of the other weaponry options. All are fun to use and each has its own charm.

The aiming mechanics provide the option for a ‘lock-on’ feature. While purists may scoff at this option, for first time players of the game it is very useful without making the game a cake-walk. Because the Martians are crawling about all over the place, the entire area around the player could be crawling with them at any time, and one must still be acutely aware of their surroundings, even if their aiming leaves something to be desired.

Vehicle sections break up the on-foot action, and the best of these is probably the opportunity to step in to a LEO, a military grade armoured exoskeleton. LEO is armed with unlimited rockets and machine gun ammo, and has the fantastic ability to charge through any material that isn’t solid rock. This means buildings will tumble with impunity, and the swarms of aliens the game conveniently hurls at the player during the LEO sections are satisfyingly pulped.

Other vehicle sections include a trip on a core magma barge, manning the mounted assault cannon, a stint piloting a fighter ship through the narrow underground caverns, and a few sections in command of a nigh-unstoppable armoured walker. The walker portions did occasionally become frustrating thanks to the machine’s tendency to become hooked on the landscape.

Upgrade system

Darius collects salvage as he goes about his business – the game’s upgrade currency. Darius can then upgrade various skills and abilities, which add some extra layers to the combat. There are the various passive improvements to his aiming and weaponry, and there are some offensive and defensive skills, such as a force blast that sends too-close aliens flying about, and a self-explanatory regenerative shield bubble.

Visuals

Players will spend most of their time running around in the mines and caverns beneath the surface of Mars. These are decorated with human settlements – buildings, outposts, generators and mining equipment. Further toward the core of the planet players will come across crystal caverns, lava floes and the Martian nests. A few forays are made to the surface, and these areas look similar to the underground, except there is some sky.

Visually things are attractive, with plenty of lighting effects to contrast the dark areas and create foreboding shadows in which the Martians lurk. Attention seems to have been paid to texture detail and nothing stands out as sloppy or rushed.

Unfortunately the console versions’ resolution of 960×540 lets it down a little, creating fuzzy-edged, hazy visuals prone to v-sync tearing. The PC version reportedly offers far better image quality. For an in-depth analysis of the visuals in Red Faction: Armageddon I suggest you read Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry analysis of the game.

Sound

The sounds effects are good all round. The sound of a building tumbling down is sufficiently meaty and resonant. Metal screeches and groans, pre-fab buildings buckle and crumble, and the whole mess crashes down with a hearty rumble of the sub-woofer and complementary shake of the controller.

The soundtrack was suitably sci-fi all round – meaning it leans heavily on the synthesiser. There were a few irksome moments where the music for a particular section became repetitive, but moving on to new areas these were juxtaposed by music that seemed to blend perfectly with the environments and action taking place.

Multiplayer

Red Faction: Armageddon offers two multiplayer modes – Extermination Mode and Ruin Mode. Extermination mode is essentially a 4-player survival mode, in which players will use all the skills they have developed over the course of single and multplayer games to fend of waves of Martians. The mode is set in one of the many environments explored during singleplayer. Although it is not particularly original, it’s a load of fun and very challenging.

Ruin mode allows players to either free-roam on one of many levels taken from singleplayer and see how much unlimited havoc they can wreak with their weapons, or alternatively how much score they can rack up within a 1 minute time limit. These scores go into a global ranking pool. An online pass key is required to play this mode, which accompanies a new retail copy or can be bought online.

Conclusion

Red Faction: Armageddon offers a fun third-person shooter with a great destructible environment mechanic layered on top. The weapons are fun and interesting and the enemies challenging and clever. It does lack a bit of scope and this is especially apparent when held up against the possibilities presented in Red Faction: Guerrilla.

Armageddon is in no way bad. It will be up to the individual gamer to decide how badly they want to knock down buildings and shoot Martians – enough to warrant a full retail purchase price, or waiting until it hits the bargain bin.

Red Faction: Armageddon review (PS3) << Comments and views