Red Faction Armageddon: Game Thoughts

Red Faction Armageddon is the 4th Red Faction game and starts off with you failing to stop a terrorist attack which forces much of the population of Mars underground. The game continues some time later as a bunch of aliens are unleashed. Red Faction's stories have never really been better than a B-grade movie and this one is no better.

My thoughts
For me, this game is linear but more fun than guerilla. I don't know why people hate this game. Compared to Guerilla's barren sandbox, this is what I prefer. The smaller scale sets mean more time has been spent crafting interesting environments/set pieces, more destruction and the ability to rebuild the environment. This rebuilding means you always have stuff to destroy! The smaller scale also means you can approach things more tactically rather than the previous game which usually involved ramming things with vehicles or climbing into a mech and hoping for the best.

What I didn't like
Storyline- Once again, the story is pretty mediocre. At least it does an okay job of getting through the plot.

Magnet Gun- Personally I think the magnet gun should be part of your permenant arsenal rather than having to take up a weapon slot. The magnet gun is fun but is situational in many cases. I just ended using normal guns in the end ocassionally switching to the magnet gun only when there were lots of buildings and walls around.


Needs more semi-open areas- The best  parts of the game are when you were in semi open areas and you start tearing down enemy towers with your magnet gun and stuff. Why couldn't they have more of this? Clearly the engine could handle it. I'm not asking for the vast emptiness but a few more open areanas would have made the game so much more cool.

Jumping aliens- I think the aliens aren't really the right sort of creatures for this sort of game. It's kind of hard to stop them when they're jumping around all the time.

The Path of War DLC felt really pointless- Of the four levels you only control Mason in two of them. The rest were vehicle levels which were okay but not different to the vehicle levels in the first.

Conclusion
Unfortunately the game did not sell well so Volition are going to be focusing on Saints Row instead. I've always enjoyed the Red Faction series except for Guerilla but it's always been an average shooter game to me so I'm not sorry to see it go. Overall, it's a solid linear shooter with lots of potential to be tapped with this style of gameplay but never really goes anywhere with it.

Red Faction Guerilla: Game Design Review

Red Faction has always been an average series to me with solid graphics and environmental physics. Red Faction Guerilla is the third in the Red Faction series. Unlike the other games in the series, Red Faction: Guerilla is an open world sandbox like Saints Row 2. Initial impressions of the game are positive. The main feature of the game is the destructability of the buildings and the Geo Mod physics tech which allows you to slowly take out chunks of the building and watch it collapse.

However the games shortfalls soon become apparent:
Lack of side mission variety- There are only a handful of side missions which get stale after a while.


Barren landscape- The landscape is just really barren and boring. It's much hills and mountains of different colour with ocassional trucks and cars.

Missions difficulty all over the place- Some missions are fairly easy, others are way too difficult. Especially the stealth misions or ones where you don't have backup.

Lack of customisation options- Can't choose vehicles, can't change clothes, can't chose walkers.


No control of guerillas- There's no way to control the guerillas so if you accidentally hit something, your rebel friends might appear and start blowing things up.


Always having to run back to safehouse to shake off military- There's no way to lower this except to run back to your safe house. It quickly gets repetitive.

Interesting weapons and abilities like jetpacks are only available late in the game- These appear way too late in the game for any real fun to be had. At that point I'm ready to see the end of the game.

Conclusion
Having played Saints row 2 and 3, this game is step down from the awesome fun that was Saints Row 2. It is fun for the first few missions but then repetitiveness starts creeping in and unlocks are somewhat slow and lack customisation. It's really clear what the problem is. There are just too many compromises made for the Geo Mod engine set in a sandbox world. This means reducing everything to make the game playable. Some gamers swear this the best Red Faction out there but it's really hard to recommend when there are other game series out there like Bioshock, Crysis or Far Cry or Saints Row.