Red Faction: Armageddon

If you like to blow stuff up, RF:A is certainly worth your while. It simply knows what it's good at and delivers that without any aggravating flaws. Just don't expect it to be anything more than a "MichaelBay-esce" action-orgy. Because despite its quite interesting story, at its heart, it still nothing more, then an action-packaged homage to everything destructive... which is a good thing.

RFA is basically one great moment--destroying buildings with a powerful weapon--repeated for a whole game. [July 2011, p.58]

It may not look as nice as Crysis 2, but at least there's a hero to identify with with an interesting story. If you like action without the usual war scenarios, get to Mars.

Abandoning the open, yet often empty-feeling world of its predecessor, Armageddon delivers a much more streamlined experience. Though its story fails to excite, the use of the innovative magnet gun and the ensuing chaos of destruction is enough to inspire awe. The engaging combat mechanics compensate for some minor flaws in the level design.

That inherent, unapologetic, child-like fun is still present in Armageddon.

I really did enjoy the game, but I can't help but wonder what it would have been like if Volition didn't have to make sacrifices for the sake of the console versions.

Red Faction: Armageddon to me is a good B movie.

It was worth sacrificing free-form play for a linear story driven shooter. Armageddon is different than other pieces of the Red Faction series but it still brings all the fun of "mass" destruction. [July 2011]

You can still blow up pretty much everything, but there's little sense in it. Red Faction: Armageddon is not about destruction anymore. It's simply the most exciting third-person shooter this summer has to offer. [August 2011, p.91]

Red Faction: Armageddon offers a new destruction-engine, cool weapons and some entertaining missions.

These faults aside, Armageddon takes the core elements that attracted all of us to the series in the first place and combines them to create a solid game that series fans can't afford to miss.

I like Red Faction: Armageddon as much, as I like Guerilla. Both of them love to destroy everything in sight, even though they are really different games. I think that people who like previous installments of the series will definitely feel at home and should have lots of fun. Lack of an open world is compensated by a well compacted and explosive gameplay. Destruction is really absorbing and a well balanced introduction of novelties keeps the game fresh. It's a pity there is no real multiplayer but it's still a good deal for your money.

You can tell a lot of effort has been put into the GeoMod technology, and making sure everything is as polished as it can be. This has to be one of the most technically sound releases we've played in a long while, and it's draw backs mainly come from the content itself, and not the design.

Although too linear and unrelated with the previous Red Faction: Guerrilla Games, it is a fun, intense and frantic game which is sometimes espectacular, with a great physics engine that allows dynamical destruction of the environments, although the game not always makes the most of it.

The design ideas are great, but the implementation resulted into a lackluster story and boring missions in limited levels, coupled with intense, but ultimately boring fights. There's loads of adrenaline, but no consistency to maintain the motivation level up, an aspect partially visible in the multiplayer too. But even so, for a serious chunk of mayhem and destruction, the end of the world has really come to Mars.

Red Faction: Armageddon kills freedom in the name of action and brings back the serie into the dark and menacing caves of Mars. The result is an action title full of potential but punished by a poor level design.

This is a well-polished ten-hour campaign, but it loses all of the things that made Guerrilla special in favor of a generic action experience. Also, there's no competitive multiplayer.

Offers great weapons, a great destruction model...and not enough ways to have fun with them. [July 2011, p.94]

If Red Faction: Armageddon isn't treated like it's going to revolutionize the gaming world, it won't disappoint. It's a solid third-person shooter, there are a bunch of cool weapons and nasty surprises down in those mines. At the same time, there is an immutable sense of repetition at play and things are pretty simplistic in the design department.

If it weren't for the endlessly brown, generically sci-fi and personality-deprived caves of Mars, Armageddon could be hugely enjoyable.

The[] 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.

Visually spectacular alien-blasting action; another fine port from Volition. [July 2011, p.60]

This could have been a seriously awesome game. Instead, we get a clone that blows its own legs off with a clichéd storyline that ignores the internal logic of it's own world.

Armageddon lacks ideas that could help vary the experience. It's hard to tell the missions apart, because in almost every room and every tunnel you have to do the exact same things. The developer made a mistake of betting everything on just one feature – total destruction. [July 2011, p.60]

Short of an outstanding visual appeal, and with a rather poor level design and uninspired story, Red Faction Armageddon won't be able to raise itself above the TPS usual crowd. But despite its shortcomings, the appeal of destructibility and of a very playable action remains efficient enough to see through the solo campaign. Multiplayer may be fun a couple of hours, but it's very forgettable.

Technically accomplished and mechanically sound. But unfortunately that's not enough in a world of Dead Spaces and Gears of Wars. Aside from marvelling at the odd collapsing building, there's little here to hold your attention for more than a few hours. It's not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination; it's just an entirely forgettable one.

Armageddon's visuals are borderline awful, but the primitive gameplay is what looks the worst.