English
Gamereactor
reviews
Red Faction: Armageddon

Red Faction: Armageddon

It's time to return to Mars, sledgehammer in hand, to throw down with an alien infestation that tears through the underground-dwelling colonists.

Subscribe to our newsletter here!

* Required field
HQ

Never, ever underestimate how fun it can be to blow shit up.

The Red Faction-games have always been about wanton destruction, and Red Faction: Armageddon is, in many ways, not an exception to this rule. But in the last game in the series, Red Faction: Guerrilla, it often felt as the actual game had been tacked on top of the (rather impressive) engine instead of the other way around. The open world, where you drove around on the surface of Mars, was fun and all, but it took second seat to smashing things up with your sledgehammer. The cool ideas that game had, with the revolt mechanics, never really managed to step into the spotlight they might have deserved.

Red Faction: Armageddon

Red Faction: Armageddon shuns the open world to return more to the series' roots, turning the sandbox into a more traditional third person shooter. After a cataclysmic event, where Mars' terraformer is destroyed, the colonists on the red planet have to take underground - which is where most of the game takes place. An open world is replaced by caves and tunnels and after my initial disappointment has settled I realize that it is actually a better game for it.

This is an ad:

The destruction is still important, of course, but it doesn't take up as much space as in Guerrilla. Instead it becomes a part of the overarching mechanics and while stuff blows up in spectacular ways it never happens in same "in your face"-way as it could do in the previous game. The selling point here is more that of a tight action game, which Red Faction: Armageddon delivers well.

Red Faction: Armageddon

That's not to say that it's an amazing game in any way. It delivers exactly that, and nothing more. The controls work, they do what they are meant to do. The graphics look good, but are far from spectacular. The story has its moments, but despite some good voice acting it doesn't really manage to grip me. See where I am going with this?

Red Faction: Armageddon is simply entertaining, which goes a long way. In an age where we stare ourselves blind at blockbuster games with the hottest graphics and blockbuster moments, we tend to judge games like Red Faction: Armageddon way more harshly than they deserve. It's popcorn-entertainment, a good game to spend a couple of hours with, and it performs that job splendidly. It doesn't matter that it doesn't look as hot as Crysis 2 (and honestly, I have had more fun with Red Faction than I did with Crysis 2, but that's probably just me) when you're tearing down a makeshift shelter using grenades and machine gun fire, desperately trying to defend yourself from an approaching horde of Martian monsters.

This is an ad:

There are times when the destruction can get frustrating, such as when a bridge suddenly gives way under you and you have to run back up for the third time (damn you, enemies with rocket throwers). There are also a couple of times during the campaign that it's hard to keep track of everything that goes on at the same time - the enemies are easy enough to spot using the radar, but holes in the ground that turn out to be deep shafts that will instantly kill you are easier to accidentally die from. Checkpoints are, luckily, common enough to make this a minor annoyance, but it doesn't mean that I haven't yelled at the TV a few times after having tumbled to my death in the middle of a hectic firefight. The environments are generally dark, and sometimes it's easy to get a bit lost - but a nice GPS-feature, similar to the one used in Dead Space, will quickly get you back on track again.

Red Faction: Armageddon

A nice bonus is that all the upgrades you buy throughout the campaign is shared between single- and multiplayer - even between single player saves, which means that me and the friend that has got his own save on my console will benefit from upgrades that I have bought.

Where the game does lack compared to Guerrilla, in my mind, is multiplayer. Armageddon features a Horde-like mode, called Infestation, where you and up to three others fight against ever larger hordes of monsters. It works well, and can be a lot of fun, but I miss the competitive game modes from Guerrilla which were the only reasons why I kept going back to it. There's also a mode (similar to Guerrilla's Wrecking Crew) where you're supposed to destroy as much as you can within a strict time limit, with leaderboards if you want to compare yourself to others, which might be entertaining for a couple of rounds. Nothing spectacular though.

Red Faction: Armageddon's biggest issue might be its timing - there's a pretty good selection of games that has just been released, with many major blockbusters waiting around the corner. There's nothing here that really stands out, which makes it easy to miss. But when we hit another slump in release schedules, at which point Armageddon probably has slipped down in price, I'd definitely recommend you to pick it up if you're looking for a solid third person action game.

Red Faction: Armageddon
07 Gamereactor UK
7 / 10
+
Solid controls, fun destruction, entertaining
-
Nothing truly stands out, some frustrating moments
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

Related texts

0
Red Faction: ArmageddonScore

Red Faction: Armageddon

REVIEW. Written by Petter Mårtensson

"...we tend to judge games like Red Faction: Armageddon way more harshly than they deserve. It's popcorn-entertainment, a good game to spend a couple of hours with, and it performs that job splendidly."



Loading next content