Red Faction: Armageddon

Review from Matt - Friday, 29 July 2011 @ 5:02pm

Maybe it's just me, but I always thought "fighting for the Red Faction" sounded like a menstruation euphemism. I mean, it's not as good as "riding the cotton pony", or "a visit from Captain Bloodsnatch", but it's pretty solid.

I was going to do this whole review by making a lot of period puns, but I decided that Australian Gamer deserves a higher standard of journalism than that, and our audience expects more than stupid bodily function based humour.

For the record - there are 7.

Divind is the sort of action thing done by a guy like... Iisac. James. Chris. Whatever.

The red is of course Mars. Mars is not actually a red planet, and the surface of Mars when filmed by the Mars Rover was actually digitally colorized to conform to public expectations of it.

Not the first time NASA's faked footage to deceive the public, amirite? You know what I mean.

Red Faction as a series follows the exploits and adventures of a family called the Masons, who just seem to always be there when shit gets bad, like the Jessica Fletchers of Mars. In this particular case young Darius Mason finds his carefree existence challenged by a terrifying new enemy.

Darius Mason couldn't be more generic if you surgically removed his facial features and called him Mister Protagonist.

I don't have a solid relationship with the series. I watched and played a fair bit of Red Faction Gorilla and was impressed by what I saw. It appealed greatly to me, not because of its story, but because of its physics. Though I must admit that much of what I saw or played was largely out of Kotex.

Ok, this is actually a pretty cool image

The most fun to me was not to blow the ever-loving fuck out of everything, but to chip away at it, to find the least you could damage to make a structure topple. It was like single player Jenga with explosives.

You could run around and bash up buildings, and then pick up the "salvage" that was formed as a result, before continuing your adventures. It was a new genre called "salventure"! 

I made that up, but you can use it.

Armageddon starts off positively. You have to destroy a bunch of fortifications and lead your menstruate through an enemy base, taking out guard towers and buildings.

I hope you enjoy it: it's almost the last time you will be permitted to have fun!

After that, Armageddon moves largely indoors, and takes away from you the big fun structures to blow up, in favour of shacks and shantytowns. RFA also takes away the open world, replacing it with a strictly linear narrative.

Does anyone else get an image of the thing from the Men In Black film clip? Just me?

A short time in the soldiers dressed in rags you started off fighting are replaced with aliens. It doesn't take very long before things suddenly start to resemble Dead Space. Only without the scary bits. Oh wait, that is Dead Space.

The initial monsters are relatively small, and a single melee hit is enough to kill them, either a shoulder bash or stampon their heads.

But it doesn't take too long before things get bigger, from creepy small things to just over humanoid size to gigantic alien critters that can give (and take) an absolute walloping in an expected sort of cycle.

But it really is just all aliens. It's just a logical progression to bigger and bigger monsters, then more and more of them.

You start off with the standard issue military assault rifle. There's also a shotgun, a rocket launcher, and a sniper rifle. These standard weapons are a shooter legal requirement, but against the end enemies they're about as effective as facts on a Creationist. Here you need to pull out the big guns. Some are destructive wallops of power that smash apart the scenery (and any beasties beastying about in it), while others are... Actually really that's about it. They're all about blowing things up to increasing amounts.

The highlight technically is the Magnet gun. You fire this twice, the first is an anchor, and the second is the thing you want to mess with. In this case a video is worth a billion words, so I've whipped one up a little below.

While technically impressive my favourite is the gun that shoots black holes which collapse and then explode, taking everything out around them. Like shooting monsters with Rupert Murdoch's career.

Though it's hard to look past Mr Toots, the reward for getting through the game once, for sheer shits and giggles.

So the guns are a highlight. Low point is almost everything else. The story is adequate, and it doesn't feel too much like they tried to pad it out, but it's uninspired. The action is fun, but against only monsters takes away variety. Its fun potential in the physics engine is squandered by trying to be too much Dead Space not enough Jenga.

Though they've taken some libraties with the science of Mars and atmospheres and so on, there's still a decently realized environment here.

It makes lightning. And zaps you. WIth the lightning.

Gameplay varies up every now and then too. I particularly enjoyed a long sniping section of sneaking around to blow up towers (sadly only three), trying to take out enemy scouts and being a sneaky bastard until one of their menses me and then just going balls-out gun crazy. There are also sections of gameplay variety like a turret section that feels as fresh and contemporary as an all Bros mix tape, and as cutting edge as that last reference.

Red Faction Armageddon is like that rich kid in your neighbourhood who won't let anyone play with his amazing toys. All the good toys seem to be sadly locked in a cupboard, and you have to watch some dick swan about instead. It could have been fantastic. But in the end it's nothing more than an underwhelming shooter. Period.

Pros

• Guns are really particularly awesome
• Physics engine is good for the minutes you're allowed to play with it
• Graphics and story are solid, if nothing unexpected

Cons

• Best features of the game engine hidden from view.
• Only adequate as a shooter.
• Can only carry four guns, so you can't play around as much as you would
• Waaaaay too much ammo for basic guns