14 DAY TRIAL // THQ and Volition's Red Faction series has always stood out, largely because of its unique experience, which combines the setting of the planet Mars with the possibility of destroying pretty much any part of your environment through a variety of means.
2008's Red Faction: Guerrilla brought the series to the current-generation platforms and introduced a variety of new things, including an open world. Now, with Armageddon, Volition, the developer of the series, brings back a more linear story and gameplay, while refining some of the things we saw in the previous game.
Is Red Faction: Armageddon enough to make it smash its competition to bits or should it be forgotten among the caves of Mars? Let's have a quick look.
Red Faction: Armageddon isn't your regular third-person shooter, a fact that quickly becomes apparent after you start swinging your hammer and tearing down buildings single-handedly during the tutorial.
The game manages to quickly get the story exposition out of the way, highlighting only the most important things: you're Darius Mason, the descendant of Guerrilla hero Alec Mason, and your job is to go inside the Martian terraforming station and stop a group of crazy cultists that want to shut it down.
Through this tutorial you're quickly introduced to the array of things you can do in Armageddon and the weapons you will use. While the game paces this information in a good way, the action is pretty bombastic while loot, in the form of ammo, salvage and more, is plentiful and distinctly marked around the environment, two factors that may distract quite a lot of players.
Still, in terms of a shooter, the game is pretty decent, even if you need to focus on getting headshots, as the cultists, despite wearing some pretty colorful armor and looking like members of some sort of tribe, are surprisingly resistant to your bullets.
Luckily, you can always resort to the traditional hammer, a mainstay of the series, which quickly eliminates enemies that are unfortunate to stay between you and your goals.
Graphics-wise, the game is pretty sharp, even if it's a bit dark, but one shouldn't forget that Mars doesn't have that same clear blue sky as Earth.
Mason is sufficiently gruff in voice, and even manages to crack a few jokes in between destroying (and rebuilding, thanks to the special Nanoforge power) his environment.
Judging from first glance, Red Faction: Armageddon seems to be a pretty interesting game, which offers just the right amount of mindless fun and destruction that made the previous games popular with many people.
Check out the first portion of Red Faction: Armageddon's tutorial mission below.