Red Faction Armageddon was something I had been wanting to play for a long time. Volition did a fantastic job with Red Faction Guerrilla and I had very high hopes for the sequel. I went ahead and I used an Goozex Early Access token on it and the game finally arrived in October; 4 months after it released.

Red Faction Armageddon is fun. Compared to its predecessor, its pretty linear. Gamers play as Darius Mason, who is forced underground with the rest of the colonists due to violent surface storms. Mason must save the planet from not only a human antagonist named Adam Hall, but from the mysterious Martian creatures that inhabit the caverns below Mars. In Guerrilla, gamers could destroy everything at will, which was part of the game’s fun.  Armageddon has the same idea incorporated into the Nano Forge, a relic passed down through the Mason family. You can destroy almost any structures and then repair it. As you progress, gamers can unlock abilities that make you have more ammo, give the Nano forge better range and become more destructive.

Sounds like the making of a fun game right? The game play isn’t too bad and I never felt overwhelmed or frustrated. The objectives and levels were straightforward. It was a little on the short side, I finished it in 6 hours. There are some things to unlock and a new game plus mode, which includes all of your upgraded equipment. There is no competitive multi player this time around, which may have hurt the game sales. There is a co-op, 4-player mode that pits players against waves of aliens. Good luck finding someone to play with unless your friends have the game.

The best part of the game was the weapons. The maul, which played an essential role in Guerrilla, was not very useful in this game. The magnet gun was much more fun. Gamers fire at one object and then at a second object, this causes the objects, including enemies, rocket toward each other. I had the most fun with the gravity gun, which creates black holes, similar to Guerrilla's singularity bombs and sucks enemies into it. The exo suit is also a lot of fun as it gives players a sense of invincibility.

So, if you can find RFA for less then $20 I’d recommend picking it up. Both Amazon and Gamefly have had it for less then $20. RFA is a good enough game to fill a weekend afternoon. Too bad gamer's wont ever see another Red Faction game due to poor sales numbers of RFA. THQ killed off the franchise.

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