Red Faction: Armageddon

Last month, I had an opportunity to check out Red Faction: Armageddon at a preview event in San Francisco.  At the time, I was impressed with what the game had to offer.  The single player campaign was engaging, the Ruin mode offered up some mindless carnage, and the Infestation mode was a hoot.  Needless to say, Red Faction Armageddon was shaping into a significant upgrade over the previous Red Faction game (Red Faction: Guerilla) which was release in 2009.  After playing through the retail version of the game I have to say that I am happy with the final product.

Despite its forgettable story and pacing issues with the campaign, Red Faction: Armageddon is good fun for letting out your inner destructive child. They ability to tear apart and repair the environments at will is a hook that keeps working, and when the campaign gives you plenty of stuff to tear apart it’s easy to lose yourself to a primal need to destroy. Combine this with the other modes, including the especially fun take on cooperative survival, and you have a flawed game that definitely deserves a try.

If you're a fan of Red Faction: Guerrilla you're probably going to be disappointed in the drastic changes made for Armageddon.

What you really want to know though is - is it worth buying? We’d say yes. The campaign is a decent length, and there’s stuff in place to encourage re-plays. Ruin needs some work done to it, but Infestation has plenty to offer as well. In terms of value, this is actually pretty good, which is not something you can say for all games. How much you feel the content of the game is a bit lack-lustre really depends on your point of view but there is a solid, entertaining game here for newcomers...

You should never underestimate the ever-enduring appeal of destruction. Especially wanton destruction. That's the best kind, and something that Red Faction: Guerrilla excelled in. Red Faction: Armageddon is ostensibly more of the same, but takes the action beneath the surface of Mars for a more linear story-driven experience, which on paper seems like a step back for the franchise after creating a rather appealing open-world in the previous game. But does being confined to the subterranean Ma...