I've been a fan of the Red Faction series from the get-go. I loved Red Faction I and Red Faction II...OK, it didn't crash a lot nor kill my PS2. Red Faction Guerilla was one of the sleeper hits of 2009. Red Faction Armageddon is a follow up to that earlier phenomenal title and, as long as you have the proper expectations from the get-go, will be a very fulfilling experience.
First off, Armageddon is NOT Guerilla. Do not expect it to be Guerilla. As long as you get that thought in your head early on, you will not be beating you head against the wall wondering why this game is what it is and not what you want it to be.
Let's start off with what it is not. It is not open world. At all. In fact, you're underground for the vast majority of the game. You are taken on a linear experience. This, however, is not necessarily a bad thing. Guerilla had the problem of there just not being all that much to do in most of the open world. An open world devoid of content is not a plus. It is a negative. They gave you SOME things to do, but there were plenty of times where it would've been lovely to not have to drive across the map to do a mission rather than simply fast travel. This time, you don't have the long waits between major set pieces, but for some people, the lack of exploration and the lack of control over where the story goes will irritate people who are expecting another Guerilla experience, so again, it is vital to adequately temper one's expectations.
This game is not really closely tied to the storyline of Guerilla. You are not an insurgent. You are descended from the protagonist of Guerilla, but it seems to be meaningless. You're not trying to remove a company from control of Mars. You are hoping to fight off an invasion. The storyline never really drew me in. The characters are some of the least memorable avatars spouting off sub-par dialogue in a long time. The environments have the usual problem of games set in caves...namely, that the areas all seem to look identical. Lots of metal catwalks and buildings that look well-built but can be knocked to the ground with a few shots to the right spots. The enemies are all really similar in both look and attacks.
So far, doesn't sound too hot, does it?
The game redeems itself with its awesome arsenal. Yes, you don't NEED to use most of the guns, but using them is so much fun it would insane to not do so. Yes, an assault rifle can kill enemies, but the magnet gun kills them far more amusingly. You can drag a building down onto your enemy. Who can ever get tired of that? You are able to fire off black holes. How friggin' cool is that? The maul returns to the equation and it is still fun to hammer a support beam to watch a building come down. In fact, without the moderately claustrophobic environments, you would be unable to actually hit some of the more enjoyable attacks on your enemies.
There are the occasionally rail shooter vehicle levels that are, well, about as good as such things are capable of being. It won't change your life, but they do serve a nice change of pace from your walking around and busting stuff up style of gameplay.
The MP is one that, personally, I am sick of. I have grown tired of the Horde mode style of a co-operative MP in games. I know some people truly adore it, but I am not one of those people, so the MP addition to the game was utterly lost on me.
Is this game better than Guerilla? Well, no. It is quite good, but no, it is not as good as the prior title. Too many annoyances abound to allow that. You will far too frequently accidentally break walkways you need to use --- and, yes, you can now fix them as well --- but it does not make this an improvement in gameplay. The repair feature seemed like an added-on piece of functionality that was used in a few puzzles (only one of them seemed to be actually designed around it --- and that was at the very end) and almost seems like an admission from the developers that they need to have a way for you to repair mistakes you will make...a lot.
