Red Faction: Armageddon Review (Ω Yukich)
Blue Faction?
Its the year 2011 kids.Volition Inc decided that it would be a good time to do something else with their Red Faction franchise. And what would that be?Will we once again rebel aganist someone? Be a villain again? Or we get to wreck another Mars City?Nope, absolutely nothing of the above.You see, Halo happened again. And also Dead Space. And also Lost Planet.So they thought, it would be a good idea to implement their own "Flood" into the franchise. Granted, aliens were introduced back in the RF1 so yeah, there's basis.
Aliens are eating Mars! - the Plot
Our main protagonist - Darius "Generic" Mason - is a descendant of Space Arsehole from Guerilla "series". He's a complete idiot and also an arsehole - which I guess - runs in the family...anyway. He screwed up big time, accidentally turning OFF atmosphere of the planet and then he screwed up AGAIN - releasing a bunch of angry bugs "accidentally".You'd think he learned his lesson? No, he tried to convince his fellow colonists that he can fix everything up - basically saying: "I did it" and earning for himself some new enemies.Long story short - everyone dies either way, Mason saves the day by turning atmosphere ON again. The End.In the DLC - its even worse. Two missions where you play as random guys (one evil, the other is just some soldier) then two more missions as Mason again - that were lost in space and time, since I have no idea when did this all happened.
Purge The Alien - the gameplay
Its basic as it could be - 3rd Person Shooter. No more open world. No more vehicles, only mechs (thank god) and also Flyer (IT WAS 2 GAMES SINCE WE COULD FLY AGAIN). Most of the times you shoot bugs in tight caves/tunnels/abandomend mines with a ton of useless weapons that look the same. But not everything is bad. If you crank up the difficulty to Insane - the game suddenly becomes fun and challenging. Since bugs can take a shot or four.There's also a pretty boring Skill Tree, loot, log hunt - and that is all.
Half-Baked Visuals
You know, Guerilla looked great. Animations were cool and destruction worked great.In this game, they've re-used most of the assets. Got DX10 and DX11 working (poorly). Made some new anmations that defies physics (Some mechs break their spines when look up or your head and a gun noclips into walls when you are close). and lastly - the game looks...boring. At least not Brown-only. Here's its Blue-only game.
Why Blue Faction tho? And also the rest
The main hero and also Red Faction members...they...they are...uhm...they are wearing BLUE UNIFORMS. Yeap.And the main villains - cultists - are wearing red - I guess there's some deep meaning like...its Cultists who are rebels and you are just - dumb colonists...I dont care anymore.As for the characters. They exist for some time and then die. Even Mason's girlfriend...Im sorry SPOILERS.At least his friend lives, who is the coolest guy there was.Music plays some chill techno music the whole time, just to keep you relaxed..or sleepy - depends in what time do you play this game.Sounds can work weird sometimes. If there's too much explosions happening on the screen - the game will lose all its sounds for a while. Problem with channels I guess.There's also weird Loading Cutscenes problem between levels. See, levels needs to load but they play out cutscenes during this. Some levels though...are too tough to load fast so the cutscene...will FREEZE for a while....Oh and random crashes after or before cutscenes. Yeah...
Still...the game was fun. TL;DR:
In the end, despite the fact that this game feels REALLY rushed, it lacks in every way possible.Fighting hordes of bugs and various mechanics around the fight with the Infestation - is actually pretty damn great. At least if you playing on hardest difficulty level.If you can withstand extremely boring first 40 minutes of the game - you're in for some good Bug Hunt.Is it a dissapointment though? Yeah, completely. It was a waste of time and money, if you ask me. But at least I've had SOME fun while at it.There are also a couple of online modes, Destruction and Survival - which are totally not needed and are pretty boring.
So yeah, I guess its about 6.5/10 - not too bad, but its far from being Better Than Average