Red Faction Armageddon

So after being bugged continuously by one of my best mates (yes i do have some) to get this game i finally gave in and visited blockbuster to rent this game out for the fair price of £5 for a weeks rental and i have to say I'm quite glad i did decide to rent it.

Firstly because it is a really fun game to play, this game offers endless slaughter and destruction and it never gets old especially as this game offers you lots of different ways to cause such endless chaos such as the magnet gun which works quite simply, you fire one magnetic node at one thing (your enemy for example) and another magnetic node at something else (lets say a building) and watch as they collide against each other (enemy splats into building, lulz are then had), A gun that fires mini black holes which pretty much implodes anything nearby, or once you have completed the game your given a handheld unicorn that can shit rainbows......nuff said.

Secondly because a week is all it takes to fully complete this game, at the time of writing this i have one day left on the rental and only 4 achievements left to earn. Ok one of them is to complete the game on the Insane difficulty setting but due to the rewards given to you at the end of the game, such as the ability to purchase in game cheats and to start a new game with all your unlocked weapons and upgrades, insane mode shouldn't be too difficult.

So in Red Faction Armageddon you play the roll of Darius Mason who is the grandson of Alec Mason who was the protagonist of Red Faction Guerrilla or as i like to call it Saints Row Mars. Anyway the game starts off with a monologue from Darius before focusing on several squads of Red Faction soldiers (Darius being one of them) heading towards a building known as the Terraformer (which allows the surface of Mars to become habitable) in order to aid in it's defense from a terrorist cult who wish to destroy it and drive the Red Faction and the civilian population underground into the old mining tunnels.

Well it wouldn't be much of a game if the Red Faction succeeded in their defense now would it? Sooo the Cultists destroy the Terraformer and drive the population of Mars underground, several years later Darius is a freelance mercenary and is hired by some rather suspicious people to do some digging in some ancient temple and accidentally awakens an ancient bug like alien race which then proceeds to try and kill all of humanity (oh silly Darius) and it's up to him to stop it.

The style of gameplay has drastically changed once again and now its a third person "over the shoulder" shooter filled with linear vehicle and track sections designed to break the flow of gameplay and add moments of "awesome" to whats going on and i have to say it works quite well....It's a method of gameplay thats used over and over again in these sort of games and when its done right it creates enjoyable gameplay and memorable moments within said game.

The main thing that makes this game stand out from similar games like this is the destructive scenery and the fun weaponry. Most things in the game can be destoryed using any of the weapons available to Darius and repaired back together again using the Nano Forge which is a device attached to Darius's arm which can repair almost anything using nano particles, later on in the game you can even upgrade it using salvage which is earned by blowing stuff up to use an array of special abilities such as a protective Nano Shield.

Also like every other recent game Red Faction Armageddon also has a horde/survival mode called infestation in which you and up to four players work together to either survive against wave after wave of alien attack or to defend a building against wave after wave of alien attack. Now as most other game modes of ths type focus more on the survival aspect the whole defend a buliding thing seemed quite intresting.

Unfortunatly this is flawed as every buliding in the Red Faction universe crumbles away so easily like there made from playing cards and toothpicks, so it seems to me that this game mode requires at least a full squad to fully complete as most of your time will be spent repairing the buliding, and not killing the aliens, so your going to need other people to assist you.

Also this game features a Ruin mode which from what i can tell is just a playground for you to endlessly destroy stuff to your hearts content....because i rented this game i'm unable to fully play this game mode as it requires a code to unlock which comes with brand new purchases of the game. Alternatively you can buy a code seperatly but i'm not going to spend my money on a game mode for a rented game.

Red Faction Armageddon is an extraordinary fun game with improved game play machanics that makes it feel like it's own game which was something that its predecessor Guerrilla failed to do. Combined with a mildly intresting story and over the top weaponry this makes this game definitely worth the £5 i paid to rent it.

Also heres a note to end on.....why does everyone in this game refer to the bug like aliens as aliens..... they were on Mars before the humans were so technically we are the aliens.