Red Faction: Armageddon

Volition did a great job creating a variety of missions -- Darius' battles between the Cultists and aliens intertwine extremely well, and don't overlap each other or feel too overwhelming.

Red Faction Armageddon is a step in the right direction – heavily focused on storyline, and easily cresting over a dozen hours of well-written gameplay to tackle is a far better experience than the open world of Guerrilla. Toss in the far-more-fun-than-it-should-be Ruin mode and the 4 player cooperative Infestation mode and you have a game with some legs. Look over my review of Guerrilla – there is a reason why Armageddon is scoring so much higher. All of those reasons add up to a solid product worthy of your cash.

Without the creative destruction elements that Volition's Geo Mod 2.5 engine allows, Red Faction: Armageddon would be an average shooter, but because it revels in twisting and snapping almost every object throughout and integrating it into the overall strategy of the game, Armageddon is not to be missed.

A worthwhile follow-up, a splendid sci-fi shooter with lots of destruction to go around and awesome supplementary modes, both solo and with friends.

As a whole, this is the best Red Faction title to date. I missed the 'sandbox' style of Guerrilla but I enjoyed the story focus (and not having to travel from one end of the map to the other) to complete objectives.

Armageddon is not quite as much fun as Guerilla, but its arsenal, particularly the magnet gun, and destructible environments make it an enjoyable game on its own.

Red Faction: Armageddon delivers on its promises, even with the uneven level design, soap-opera storyline and bizarre objective choices. The sheer fun to be had with the game's fascinating weaponry and visually stunning scenes of destruction is what makes the series so popular to begin with, and in this respect it is worth every penny.

Technical marvel with truly unique appeal - a Dead Space without the borders or boundaries.

Overall, Red Faction: Armageddon is a game that grows on you. The more you play the more you really start to become immersed in this alien rich world where everything is destructible.

I enjoyed my time with Red Faction Armageddon. There will be some people disappointed with some of the changes that were made, however, in my opinion, it made for a really fun experience.

Leaving the open-world and adopting a more confined, linear environment, Volition's newest entry in the popular franchise promises a far more engaging story and less distractions without compromising what the Illinois-based developer has been building upon. The result is quite different...but pleasantly interesting.

The action does start to drag in the last couple of hours...If you're excited by even the slightest hint of carnage, though, the rubblelicious Armageddon delivers. We absolutely got what we came for: an exciting sci-fi shooter with carnage galore and some of the most crazy-powerful guns we've seen in ages. [June 2011, p.50]

It might not be as big as Red Faction: Guerrilla or offering the same open-world, but Armageddon is nonetheless a worthy sequel with enough new ideas of its own to set it apart. Play around with the magnet gun and the plasma weapons, and you'll be hard-pushed to find something as mindlessly fun.

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

It is an enjoyable 6 – 8 hour romp that, while imperfect, has shining moments. The Geo-Mod 2.0 engine provides the tools for destruction, but the level design elevates beyond being a gimmick.

In conclusion Red Faction: Armageddon gives fans of this series what they want... destruction plus mayhem and it works on so many levels. The beauty of the destruction is that it is not put in as an afterthought but rather, part of the gameplay which must be used in conjunction with your strategies.

Catapulting aliens by force of gravity through the air is one of the most entertaining things absout this action-packed shooter. The other is watching buildings topple and crash to the ground, destroyed by powerful and original weapons. The level design may be partially flawed, the story may seem bland, but what Red Faction: Armageddon excels in is it's fun and rewarding combat.

This shows why Volition is a great studio capable of making great games. Armageddon will not make history, but it will keep you entertained for many hours.

It's well paced, offers cool vehicle sections to break the routine and still has you wanting more at the end.

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.

Red Faction: Armageddon both satisfies and disappoints, depending on your camp. The single-player campaign may feel too restrictive for some because of the lack of open-world areas to play with, but the weaponry and mass destruction you can inflict still make the somewhat-lengthy experience fun. While co-op multiplayer is great, the lack of competitive modes will turn off those who have come to expect a more refined multiplayer experience. Still, the game is enjoyable enough that fans will not be terribly disappointed in the final product, especially those who prefer single-player over multiplayer games.

Though Red Faction: Armageddon isn't the most creative game on the market, it's one of the most entertaining action games to hit the market in a while. Fans of previous virtual mining expeditions (scratch that; uprisings) on the red planet will feel at home with the game's easy to grasp control scheme and incredibly exciting mechanics.

In conclusion, Red Faction: Armageddon succeeds at being an enjoyable and entertaining sequel despite itself. Compared to its predecessor, it lacks the freedom of exploration, mission variety and more regrettably, the competitive online player that helped put Guerrilla on the map in this console generation, but on the positive side, Volition's narrower focus on the single-player campaign and online co-op has resulted in a significant trimming of fat, leaving a lean, mean and undeniably fun game that continues to revel in destruction, which is the calling card of the franchise.

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 versatile magnet gun marries beautifully with the series' signature destructibility to make Red Faction: Armageddon an exciting and explosive shooter.

Red Faction: Armageddon is a nice successor to the mediocre Guerilla. The new gameplay elements are a plus, but in the end the hordes of alien enemies are just a tad too much.

Some brilliantly innovative weapons but we miss the freedom of Guerrilla. [Aug 2011, p.82]

Quotation forthcoming.

Draws up a completely new plan that spells out every last detail of the player's job with little room for deviation, but the crazy damage model that's always defines the series plays as well here as it did in an open world. The destruction certainly packs a punch, it's just not quite enough to blow us away.

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.

While I didn't enjoy it as much as the first game, Red Faction Armageddon is still worth picking up if only to play with the big box of explosive toys. There are a few great gaming moments in the game but they are held back by a few generic ones.

Armageddon is an unimaginative shooter, showing more creativity in Darius' tribal tattoos than in any of its combat scenarios. If you're looking for a memorable Red Faction experience, you're better off playing Guerrilla again.

Red Faction Armageddon delivers the usual - and even enhanced - amount of spectacular destruction and physics play, but we found the experience to be more limited than the previous game due to the linear gameplay and the removal of the great competitive multiplayer Guerrilla had. If you're a fan of the previous game, Armageddon will probably disappoint you; otherwise it's a solid third person shooter with a very satisfying destructive soul.

Red Faction: Armageddon is "digital playground" with some amazing toys, like the Magnet Gun and the Nano Forge abilities. There is no "open world" gameplay this time around, but the new, linear environments make this 10-hour long Campaign much more interesting. On the downside, there is no competitive Multiplayer and the survival-like mode, called "Infestation", won't provide enough online hours.

With a lot of help from the Magnet Gun, Red Faction: Armageddon has enough of that "summer blockbuster" feel to make you forget about Violations last outing.

Simply put, Armageddon doesn't deliver the same spectacular, over the top entertainment of its predecessor. The free roaming, completely stripped from this sequel, was clearly and important piece of the puzzle. As a simple third person shooter, the game doesn't work that well anymore, and you'll surely find much better products in the same genre.

Although Armageddon excels in the destruction stakes, combining it with some adrenaline-pumping action and cool special abilities, it leaves you feeling empty with its less-than-enthralling story – well less-than-interesting really – and level after level of tedious objectives.

Ultimately, Red Faction Armageddon isn't a bad game so much as it's a disappointment. While it achieves what it set out to do, providing a linear, set piece-based shooter reminiscent of early Red Faction games, it's a shame to see this kind of step back after the last game dared to take the series in an interesting new direction.

If Red Faction: Guerilla felt like a series approaching greatness, Armageddon has ceased that approach, and started apprehensively circling greatness. It's good, but it should have been better.

One of those middle of the road games which adheres to a familiar template closely enough to provide adequate entertainment in the short term but is unlikely to inspire any devotion. It falls over itself to make you feel like an unstoppable badass, but then rarely gives you the opportunity to show off.

In many basic ways, Armageddon is a superior game to Guerrilla. It makes strides in a number of key areas that are hard to ignore, including more polished visuals and a broader range of spectacular weapons and abilities. But ultimately, it manages to miss the mark when it comes to the core elements that made the open world game so great: freedom and ample opportunities to simply trash the game's world.

Armageddon's not bad, it's just plain. The game feels like Volition started from scratch, but accidentally threw out too much of what made the last game great.

The destruction is nice as expected, but the level design is simply a bit boring.

The open-world gameplay of Guerrilla is gone, and what's been put in its place is decidedly more of what you'd see in a more generic action game.

It still is, at its heart, a foundation of derivative shooter tropes dressed up with Red Faction's (fantastic) physics and weapons. It's a fun game and a worthwhile purchase if you're not hoping for more of Guerilla and you're not turned off by linearity.

Despite its forgettable story and pacing issues with the campaign, Red Faction: Armageddon is good fun for letting out your inner destructive child.

If it weren't for issues with pacing and repetitive environments during the first half of the campaign, Armageddon could really have become something memorable. Instead it's hard to think of it as anything but a forgettable third-person shooter where it's fun to explode everything to smithereens.

Armageddon can't help but feel like a poor cousin to the top games in the genre. It shines brightest when it's doing its own thing, but when it tries to fall in line with genre tropes, it comes up short.

With Red Faction: Armageddon I got the sense that Volition was really excited about creating a few segments and merely obliged their responsibility to fill in the gaps. There was nobility to be found in breaking the core design away from the success of Guerrilla, but the shift in dynamic ultimately irrelevant in the final product. Armageddon can be fun, but its linearity casts it alongside other (and better) games rather than a bold new direction for the series.

There are moments when it's quite good, but it's also a bit too derivative, the enemies are as dumb as a box of hair, and it relies too much on the coolness of the magnet gun and the ability to knock down a tower with a hammer.

I can't and won't say Guerrilla was a perfect game, but it was far and beyond more ambitious and entertaining than Armageddon.

Nice action-packed shooter in which we won't find nothing new but lots of enemies, guns and interesting stuff to have some fun for a while. It's a shame Vilition's use of a story that lack any interesting feature at all.

Ultimately, Armageddon feels like an opportunity missed. It feels like the series has taken two steps backwards after the promise shown by Red Faction Guerrilla, the focus moving away from destructible environments and coming to rest on generic shoot 'em up action.

It isn't that Red Faction Armageddon isn't a fun game; it's just not a very deep or involved one.

Although Red Faction: Armageddon offers one of the coolest weapons of the year, a good weapon mechanic and destructible environments, the game falls flat with an uninspiring single-player campaign and a short-lived multiplayer segment.

It's a shame that these excellent physics and novel weapons haven't been given a better showcase. [Issue#112, p.112]

Does nothing for the franchise whatsoever. [Issue#74, p.84]

Once again, Volition delivers exceptional tech, but fails to shape it into a truly engaging and sustaining experience.

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.

Red Faction: Armageddon contains loads of potential: it has delightful weapons and allows for amazing amounts of destructibility. This potential hardly comes to fruition though, as the game degrades itself to a claustrophobic and cliché-filled hallway-shooter. A few fun vehicle-sections and extra game-modes save this title from getting an insufficient grade.

Although the game has its merits, like an impressive environmental destruction, Volition's choice to turn the title into a pure third person shooter doesn't seem to have paid off the way it should have. A poor narrative and an excessive linearity are in fact two flaws that can hardly be ignored.

Red Faction: Armageddon suffers from a linear and uninspiring level design that unfortunately drags down the fun a bit. But the destruction mechanics are as excellent as always.

Quotation forthcoming.

A polished and satisfying reflex shooter that removes meaningful decisions from the game and trivializes its own greatest technology.

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.

Red Faction: Armageddon Halfway House - too many boarders with a bit of heart.

Its mechanics are sound but its design uninspired, failing to do any one thing better than the standout entries in the genre. And the few unique tricks it does have, its predecessor did better. After Guerrilla made such a resounding impact, it's a shame that the best you can say about this latest Red Faction is that it's just OK.

A better journalist might make a little comment here, just to wrap things up, about how you were fighting for freedom in Red Faction: Guerrilla, yet as a gamer you had it all along. Despite liberating Mars at the end of that game, find yourself more restricted than ever in the follow-up. I'm not that guy.

Everything Armageddon does, it does well, in the same way that a lobotomy victim might walk and talk just fine.

The real issue here isn't so much that Armageddon is a mediocre game -- which it is -- rather that it's such a letdown after its excellent predecessor.

Red Faction: Armageddon manages to strip most of what was good about Guerrilla and fill the vacuum left behind with only mediocrity and a cool magnet gun.

Armageddon definitely lacks that wow factor that made Guerilla the surprise hit that it was, and taking away that sandbox gameplay was a serious step backwards.