I was at a LAN party last weekend and one of my friends walked in wearing a shirt that bore a striking resemblance to the original Red Faction logo. After seeing his shirt, I was immediately jonesing for some nostalgic Red Faction blow-up-everything-in-sight first person shooter action. So naturally I got my hands on Red Faction: Armageddon and played for sixteen hours straight until I beat it.

Visual Effects: 8/10

My first thought was “Great. This is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, but on Mars with guns.” And that’s basically what it is in a nutshell. Since most of the world can be destroyed, the game can be slightly graphic intensive during some fights or when you blow up a structure with a lot of surfaces. One of the more noticeable moments is right before the last boss when you have to fight literally hundreds of enemies and everything around you is being blown to smithereens. Overall, the game looked great and ran very smooth. I’m sure this game would run even better on higher-end systems.

Story Line: 7/10

At first I didn’t have a clue what was going on and I didn’t like it. I was thrown into a firefight with no idea who I was, what my objectives were, who I was chasing, or even why I was chasing them in the first place; hoping that the entire game wasn’t going to be like this. I was relieved during the second mission when I was enlightened with at least a miniscule amount of back-story, but also perturbed to find out that all my guns were taken away except a magnet gun. (Which by the way was freaking awesome and quickly became my go-to gun for 90% of the game.)

Controls: 9/10

I’m not one for third-person shooters and I’m not sure why THQ decided to switch from first-person to third-person, but this one didn’t bother me too much. The controls were pretty standard with a few twists thrown in based on the “upgrades” you select. For example, Q blasts energy in front of you to help demolish structures and kill enemies; Z releases a burst of energy that suspends all enemies within so many yards into the air for easy shooting; X creates a protective shield around you that can be further upgraded to reflect bullets at attackers; and C does… something. It’s probably not important. The controls were a bit confusing at first, for example I would use my shield instead of suspending the enemies in the air – wasting a lengthy cooldown. However, after a while I got used to it and proceeded to rape face with minimal effort.

Artificial Intelligence: 7/10

The enemies weren’t terribly bright but they weren’t completely stupid either. If you positioned yourself in a hallway, they would literally just keep pouring through with no regard to their own defenses. One of the strategies that became fairly obvious early in the game is to rush in, destroy any enemy-spawning hives and then run back into the hallway to finish off the remaining enemies. Luckily the levels were designed in such a way that this didn’t feel monotonous to do over and over. Some of the enemies simply wouldn’t learn though, leaving me to amuse myself by slamming the more difficult enemies through buildings or into ceilings with the magnet gun. (I told you the magnet gun was awesome.)

Gameplay: 10/10

I beat this game in 16 hours and it literally felt like 5. Legit. I know, I know… You’re asking yourself “How can anyone sit there for SIXTEEN hours?!” Well I’m a fat disgusting slob, so there you have it! But seriously: This game had 100% of my focus from beginning to end and not very many games have ever done that. Perhaps it’s my love for the Red Faction series, perhaps it was just a really fun game.

Achievements: 6/10

This game has achievements. I just… don’t have any idea how to find them. Every time I killed X number of enemies a certain way the achievement tooltip would pop up to let me know that I was making progress. Once I met the criteria for the achievement, the tooltip stopped showing up. And that’s about where that left off. This was a PC game and I didn’t quite expect achievements, but a better way to view them would’ve been nice. If this is a built-in Steam feature and I misunderstood how to access it, then I apologize.

What’s the score?

I give Red Faction: Armageddon for PC a 7.8/10. The visual effects were great, the story line was pretty standard, the controls were great, the AI wasn’t the best, the gameplay was phenomenal, and I didn’t really understand the achievement system.

If you’re already a fan of the Red Faction series then I would definitely recommend this game. Even if you’re not already a fan… I still recommend this game. It might make you love the series as much as I do!

Tags: Awesome, Game, Red Faction, Review