Red Faction: Armageddon

Armageddon clearly aims to make good on the shortcomings of the 2009 Red Faction Guerilla by focusing more on story events and a more focused single player campaign. However, while a good sequel will also preserve the positive aspects of its prequel, Armageddon completely fails to do this. The free roaming sandbox nature of Guerilla is lost here, replaced by a linear corridor crawl that strongly prevents exploration and deviation from the path the developers want you to take. The story is more central, but is very bare bones and takes unjustified turns that are filled with plot holes. The protagonist is Darius Mason, the grandson of Alec Mason from Guerilla, though his only real link to that character is that he has the nano gun and hammer from that game. Darius is a character that is left completely under detailed. He is never fleshed out, and his motives are reduced to errand boy duty during the game. Other characters are forced upon us, and I never developed any like towards them. There is a love interest that is barely touched upon and has a completely unjustified turn. The villain is evil for the sake of being evil, and the whole alien enemy is poorly done. The story is overall extremely weak, despite the increased focus on it. The characters are all bland and generic stereotypes and the ending is abrupt and very poor.   
 

 
The music in the game is bad, with simple and forgettable tracks playing on the menu and cutscenes. The voice acting is serviceable, but won't be on anyone's thoughts come the years end. The sounds of weapons are good, but not exactly going to get anyone excited.
  
Visually the game is very mediocre. Textures are mucky and screen tearing is noticeable. The game is very grey and dark, devoid of vibrancy or colour. The majority of the game happens in dark underground and indoor areas dominated by corridors and caves. It would have been nice for Volition to at least make these areas interesting, but they all lack detail and are just boring to go through. The textures are often ugly and confound the universal lack of colour and detail. The outdoor environments look better but they still look poor compared to other recent releases this year. Character models are bad, especially with the janky animations, like the run animation for allies. The enemy design is laughable, and the game is an unattractive on to look at.  
 
The game still has the destruction that is the staple of the series, and it still looks and feels great to take down large constructs and towers. However, the entire idea of destruction and its role in the game takes a back seat. It has been replaced by going through industrial corridors and shooting enemies in a way much more similar to more bland 3rd person shooters. You now have the ability to repair the environment, and this is needed as the only way you can go to continue the game will often be destroyed during a fight and you will need to rebuild it. This is a neat trick, but is a shallow mechanic to base our game around. The game has a good selection of weapons, the most memorable of which is the magnet gun.   
 

 
The pacing in Armageddon is very poor. Some levels are fun battles against hordes of enemies and then the next could be a near empty crawl of a repair job. The objectives all feel so detached from what you should be doing, and this lack of connection makes the levels boring to play. There are vehicle sections, but they all happen one after another in the 2nd part of the game, adding to the poor pacing and general feeling that Volition don't know how to make a solid game. 
 
The frame rate severely drops when large numbers of enemies appear and the game is a bit too easy. Load times are very bad, and when you die expect to wait for more than 20 seconds to load the game again. The game is far from crippled, but it still has a few too many technical problems. The AI seems to be generally poor, and the whole thing is repetitive, drab and uninspired. Multiplayer matchmaking is completely gone, replaced by ruin mode which is just destroying the environment, and infestation mode which is basically horde mode. These options are ok, but lack depth. There is only so much time you can put into ruin, and infestation is destroyed by the poor enemy variety.   
 

 
Red Faction Armageddon is a game that discards all the good parts of its predecessor, thereby taking a step back for every step it takes forward, The game is short, taking me about 5 hours. Most of the gameplay was done on catwalks and in corridors fighting a poor variety of bug enemies. The last boss fight is poor, and the multiplayer is sub par. This is a bad sequel, completely failing to make ground on its predecessor. It is not aggressively bad and is worth a rental, but do not buy this game for full price.  
 

 
 
Pros: 

• Destruction is fun
• Mech suits are a nice thing, though no massive one like the last game
• More focused story
• Interesting weapons selection
• Repair mechanic is interesting

Cons: 

• Freedom and exploration is gone
• Very linear
• Bad graphics
• Corridor crawl 
• Repetitive environments
• Shallow multiplayer
• Poor story and characters
• Very bad pacing
• Ending is a joke

Wtf: 

• Why are all the men bald

Score: 

• 4/10

While it made a decent effort to improve the story elements, it completely forgot that destruction is the fun of the series.