Red Faction Armageddon

I bought red faction Armageddon because of the budget price and I played and enjoyed Red Faction: Guerilla.At first I was disappointed it wasn't a sandbox free roam like its predecessors' the developers adopted a more linear approach to levels design which makes the game seem significantly smaller than Guerilla all tho Soon it became apparent that these changes have improved the flow of the game and cut a vast amounts of going back and forth over sandy boring environment.Saying that I managed to finish the main story in two days and squeezed a few hrs out of Infestation mode and Ruin mode but for £6 that's just what I expected.A good all round game which might get another play-through once skyrims done.
PS......... all achievement junkies this is a easy 850 gs over 2 - 3 days work.

Many of my reviews champion the underdog. You know, when I feel that something has been sadly overlooked or under appreciated. Poor little Red Faction: Armageddon is the next in line. It's a shame it's free roaming predecessor Guerrilla in many ways killed this one before it even left the blocks. It wasn't sandbox. Well, neither was any Red Faction game before Guerrilla. Besides, why can't you enjoy both? I personally loved the change of pace.

To me Armageddon brought Red Faction back to it's roots. That being getting underground and causing absolute chaos. Armageddon delivers this in SPADES. I thought the campaign was fantastic. It does start a little slowly. However persevere and you'll be rewarded with an exhilarating ride. This is a campaign that gets more exciting the farther you go. It has excellent pacing making it lean, mean and fat free. Sure it's generic, replete with gun turrets and exoskeleton madness but when it's this much fun who cares?

Armageddon has tight controls, some lovely visuals and top notch cut scenes. The "snap to enemy" trigger mechanic is the best I've seen. When you're surrounded by enemies (which will be often) then it works fluently, sweeping from enemy to enemy with consummate ease. Over the course of the campaign your armoury increases, providing many different weapon types. You also purchase upgrades using salvage collected by destroying buildings. This all adds to your general ability to cause utter destruction. Yup, destruction. Don't listen to the naysayers. There's some seriously cathartic devastation to be found on Armageddon. If you feel short changed then surely only nuclear apocalypse could quell your thirst for chaos.

Then there's the co-op survival mode of Infestation. Yes, this is Armageddon's take on the now familiar Horde mode. Nothing new here I confess but it's still brilliant fun. Mainly due to the movement of the aliens. There's no hanging back and waiting for the enemies to plod their way to you. These arachnid style bad boys are above you. Below you. All over you. It's 360 degree fire fighting and there is no respite. Four players ploughing through waves of these necromorph like nasties is an absolute riot. Thousands of bullets will be spent keeping them at bay. It's total chaos and my mates and I love it.

For the price this game is going for these days then I say pick it up. You really have nothing to lose. Appreciate it for what it is rather than what it isn't and you surely won't be disappointed. Five stars for a sterling effort.

Red Faction Armageddon is the first of the Red Faction series that I've played and to be honest the game started on a downer for me, I read the back of the box to see the green words I love "Co-op 2-4 player", great, my girlfriend and I can play this together!
This, however, is no the case, the co-op isn't local co-op at all, it's over System link or Xbox Live, so why it states Co-op in green, I have no idea...

But on to the review...

As it boasts, it's full of mayhem and destruction of any (specifically) man made structure (However this isn't 100% true, but you have to draw the line somewhere...

I bought this game not expecting much (I only bought this game as Brink was £30 trade-in against it) but I have been pleasantly surprised.

The game starts off, easing you in, letting you get to grips with aiming, shooting and switching weapons before letting you loose on a couple of enemies. As the game goes on it lets you get your hands on a few more "fun" weapons.

To start the game, I wanted to use the Maul as much as possible, but this isn't particularly wise for 2 reasons, 1) On Insane difficulty, I don't think you're meant to and 2) After the first few "levels" the enemies like to jump around out of your reach, it's hard to hit an enemy with a Maul when they're on top of a pillar.

I spent most of my time (and killed most enemies) with the amazing Magnet gun, tag an object (like a Pillar) then tag the enemy and watch it fly into their face and squish them into mush, it's great fun!

The game handles really well, there are upgrades you can buy using Salvage that you find (Or once you have the upgrade, you can get this by killing the enemies), they upgrade a multitude of things, from health, damage done by your weapons and you can even get a "shell" that can reflect damage back at enemies.

To be honest, I'm not the best person at 3rd or even first person shooters, but playing this on Insane difficulty isn't really that challenging, sure I've died once or twice by being outnumbered and overwhelmed by the enemy, but their attacks are usually easy to dodge, and they are pretty simple to kill.

There are also two other game types to play, a (what seems to be standard these days) last stand type game, where you fight wave after wave of enemies, and also a game type called "Ruin", which gives you weapons and freedom to destroy as much as you can in the time limit given. There is a demo given with the game, but it's 400 MS points to unlock the full version (The download is 128kb, so the content is already on the disc, which I feel is a ripoff, but each to their own)

Overall, the game is good, better than most other releases at the moment (perhaps with the exception of LA Noire, but that's a whole different kettle of fish!)

Definitely worth a buy, should entertain you for a while (especially if your friends buy it, the last stand game is always fun to play)