
	Platform Playstation 3 Genre Action / Shooter Publisher THQ Developer Volition ESRB M (Mature) Released June 7, 2011

- Destroying the environments and buildings is fun - Explosions look great - Repair mechanics is a great idea - Ruin mode is entertaining

- Weak story - Not much character development - Can sometimes be repetitive - Online pass requirement

Review: Red Faction: Armageddon (360) Review: Duke Nukem Forever (360) Review: Red Faction: Armageddon (PC)
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Red Faction: Armageddon

Score: 7.0 / 10

Red Faction is a video game series developed by Volition, and Armageddon is the fourth game in the series. As with the first Red Faction and Guerrilla, the story takes place on Mars. The story starts off with the main character, Darius Mason talking about a bit of his family background, about how they settled on Mars, fought for their freedom and have bled for it many times. This time is no exception, as the enemy, a self proclaimed “Messiah” Adam Hale has his cultists destroy the Terraformer, disrupting and therefore destroying the atmosphere. Humans are now forced to live underground into caverns and mines. Now your objective is to try and

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save the human race from Hale and his alien cultists creatures.

It is a pretty generic story and does not bring anything new, but traditionally Red Faction has never been known for its story. Throughout the game, I never really felt any attachment to any of the characters, as they did not do a good job of introducing the characters or giving us backstory on them,

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they were just soldiers for the most part. The voice acting is good, but it’s hard to give good delivery of the lines when the dialogue is so cheesy.

The gameplay is a mixed bag, what I mean is that the levels range from being extremely exciting to extremely boring. It is a third person shooter much like Guerrilla so the mechanics of the game will be familiar to those who have played the previous game. The best part about the gameplay in Armageddon is the destruction of the buildings. You can quickly turn a multi story building into a pile of rubble using various guns. One of the best guns is called the magnet gun. With this gun, you can attach one end of the magnet to an object such as a boulder, and then attach the other magnet to another object such as a building, and watch as the boulder smashes the building, bringing the rubble down on any enemies who may be in the building. It’s also very cool because if the enemies do blow up your cover or a building you’re hiding in, you have the ability to repair that building, bridge, or whatever you need.

Unfortunately, the game is not always this fun, as previously mentioned the human race is now living underground, therefore there are no buildings to blow up or items to use the magnet guns on.

The environments down in the caves are not very interesting either; a cave is a cave with not much to work with unfortunately. Not only can the levels get boring, but they can also be quite long, and you find yourself wishing the level would end so you can get back to the fun stuff.

You’re not always running around on foot, you’ll often have to do missions in a mech. The good thing is that it's not always the same mech, sometimes they are small, and sometimes they are massive and can storm their way through almost anything.

There are different modes rather than just campaign mode; these include Ruin Mode and Infestation mode. Both of these modes are fun, and the best part is they focus on destroying things, not dragging out the levels. Ruin mode puts you in an area, and you destroy as much stuff as you possibly can until the timer runs out. You will get to choose between 5 different maps, 4 of which you have to unlock by beating the par score for the each map which you do by destroying anything and everything. There are two modes in Ruin Mode, the first being challenge and the second is free play. In challenge mode is where you must beat the par score, free play is so you can take a look around the stage to see what you can destroy and plan out the destruction if you want. You can also put your score on the online leaderboards if you are good enough. Infestation mode is where the replay value for the game can be found, online and LAN mode. You can play up to 4 players and there are two modes, “Defend” and “Survive”. The difference is fairly obvious, in defend mode you must defend the buildings against the aliens and in survive mode you must survive against and destroy the swarm of aliens. When you or another player dies, you can be revived by the other players but it will drag your stats down. Depending on the difficulty, you may feel as if you must compete for the best stats while at other times you must help one another just to survive the wave which can be immense fun. After every wave you will receive the stats and you can see how you compare to the other players in your group.

Red Faction Armageddon isn’t the best third person shooter game, but if you enjoy blowing things up, then this is the game for you. The destruction and repair mechanics in the game are phenomenal and fun. However, if you are looking for a game with a good story and characters you learn to care about, you may want to look elsewhere. You probably will not want to play campaign mode more than once, but there is replay value to be found in ruin and Infestation Mode.

- J'Tonello

(August 11, 2011)