Game review: Red Faction: Armageddon -- 7.5 out of 10

I really really liked Red Faction Guerrilla, so when I saw they were making a sequel to it, I was very excited.

Armageddon is also a fun game. The gameplay was arguably more fun than it’s predecessor, considering it had more weapons and more gameplay mechanics to assist with the fun factor. The game also had a lot of polish on it. Everything was really well crafted and you could tell a lot of people really put a lot of work into it. The writing was actually pretty good and definitely better than I expected. The voice acting was also much better than I would have predicted.

My one main criticism is this: the environments. The story takes place almost exclusively in underground tunnels of Mars, so the environment is fitting — but by the end of the game it gets sort of old. I would realistically estimate that 80% of the game looks very close to the above screenshot. Just a dark cave with either shanty-like broken down buildings or hyper-technological buildings.

The subsequent enemies you fight are of an alien race that live underground. You also fight humanoid enemies as well, but this is probably 10% or less than the entire game. Again, it fits the story of the game well, but it’s a little tiring. I also find it more enjoyable to fight humanoid enemies, but this is merely personal preference.

So here’s my advice to people interested in this game: play Guerrilla first. If you like that, then play this one after you finish that. I doubt anyone that hadn’t played Guerrilla first would have liked this as much as I did.

This is going to be a rare statement from me, but I hope there’s DLC for this game… except on the surface of Mars instead of underground. I enjoyed the environments and world of Guerrilla better, and bringing the new engine and weapons to those environments would be really awesome.

Posted by Thane on 19/06/11 10:44 PM
in gaming, game reviews