Red Faction: Armageddon

First two games were FPSs, you able to bore through rock, create passages and destroy many structures, to this day still unique. The third game “guerilla” took away the destructible terrain only to double down on the destructible buildings and the physics of a toppling structure. The fourth and last true red faction game released is this game. RF: Armageddon takes place almost entirely underground, more-so than the first two games, yet the terrain cannot really be destroyed at all. The buildings that you can destroy are underground buildings and walkways. You are almost always alone. And by the second half of the game you are completely alone and the game gets more boring. The fact this game takes place on mars can be easily forgotten since you see the surface maybe twice the entire game. You get to control an awesome spider tank. There are some neat new weapons. But in every other way it is the weakest Red Faction game. I give it a 6.6/10 If you have an idea of what you’re getting into after playing the previous titles. You can have fun with this. But it is a very disappointing game and sadly the last Red Faction game released, perhaps the last one ever. Which makes it even more reviled by fans.

If you're expecting another Guerilla, this isn't that; you're back to plain old Shooter, and this one's very linear. That said, as a plain old Shooter, it works pretty well, with destructible environments and tons of crazy weapons. The star of the show here is the magnet gun, which shoots magnets that stick to things; once you've fired 2, they'll slam together. Stick one to the foundation of a building, and another to the top to THROW THE WALL THROUGH THE ROOF. It works great on enemies, too; you can brain them against a wall, or even just gib them, if the object is far enough away. Beyond that, you've got some staples, like the rail gun, but also weapons that disintegrate matter or just turn whatever they touch to ash. The intro mission even gives you what is basically the X Buster from the Mega Man X series, and one well-placed shot will take down a 3-story building. You've got a perk system that lets you upgrade your character with enough salvage, and while nothing there is too exciting, they're nice buffs to your character. Even the vehicle sections are fun, putting you in all kinds of different vehicles that do a great job wrecking everything in their path. The story is that of a big, dumb Action game, but that's because this is a big, dumb Action game; it does exactly what it needs to do. This one does come with a bit of a caveat that it's pretty unstable; it took almost a month for me to get it working, and even still, cutscenes have a nasty habit of kicking you back to the main menu. Luckily, the autosave triggers right before the cutscene, so you just hit Continue, and you're back in the action. Manually saving now and again wouldn't be a stupid idea, though.

This game is NOT compatible with Windows 10 at all and constantly crashes to the desktop after the first level with errors such as a plt_boot_warning. GOG should actually remove this game. Lots of other gamers have reported crashing issues with Windows 10. Running in compatibility mode does nothing either. The cutscenes in this game are also low-res grainy and heavily pixilated and the graphics are outdated as well. Stay away from this one if you are running Windows 10.

It's sad to see the franchise end on this note, since it wasn't exactly a strong entry. Suffering a lot from graphical enhancements bottle-necking design to fit a rather short, narrow game with linear levels, rather than returning to the formula that made Guerrilla such a stand-out classic. Basically, it looks prettier, but it feels much smaller. The story, which attempts to be dramatic in the phase of it's brevity, suffers from it, too. I suppose it's WAAYY too easy to compare it to Guerrilla, since expectations were fairly high riding on the open-world aspect of that game, but since the company behind it, Volition, has made a killing on such open worlds. The gameplay itself is solid enough, at least, and where they didn't exactly have a lot of room to make a large-expansive game, they honed the physics-focused gameplay to a high-quality of polish. The experimental weapons, including the Nano Forge tool, are all fun to mess around with, for sure! If anything, the gameplay shines through despite the shortcomings around the rest of the game. As far as narrative goes, it's laughable. At the time, the GoW games were still in full swing, so you get the feeling that, even if unintentional, the story suffers from taking from those games' story beats. It really does not give you a reason to care about characters, even if some come off as likable by accident. The ending is just ... so... face-palming-ly stupid. It doesn't take any real thought to recognize the problem just from the beginning. I'd say if you're someone who can ignore the story enough to enjoy the game, then you'll probably enjoy it. If you're like me and couldn't ignore it, then I'd probably either get it on the cheap at the very least.