This isn't the Mars I remember.

I think it's been pretty well known that Red Faction: Armageddon had ditched the open world sandbox style gameplay of Guerilla in favor of a standard single player campaign, but having played through that campaign twice now, I don't think that was the best direction to take the series. There are some positives here, but the campaign isn't one of them. It feels awfully generic, and if you've ever complained about bald space marines, be prepared for more of that. Your main character, Darius Mason, is an ex-military soldier with a family history that has deep ties to Mars, who accidentally triggers subterranean creatures emerging from below Mars that begin to wipe out the settlers/citizens of the red planet. The premise itself almost sounds a little too similar to another popular third-person shooter for its own good, and the bland creature design doesn't do Armageddon any favors.

The majority of the game takes place underground, as Darius first accidentally triggers the event that sets most of the action in motion, and then works with the Red Faction at times to try and contain it, without much luck. For the most part you'll be battling against the alien threats, all the while making your way through different sections of the underside of Mars. The problem here is that the underground section of Mars isn't a particularly interesting locale to explore. The cave-like sections you run through all look pretty similar to one another, so there are sections of the campaign that feel really repetitive in design. You will run into some structures from human settlements and towns, but the towns are designed to be run down, hole in the wall locations populated by settlers, and they also tend to look identical to one another. The few highlights, like an underground jail, and the above ground cultist camp, are too few and far between. Also, the game is ugly from a color perspective, and while I understand you're not going to have green fields and blue skies on Mars, it'd be nice if some of the structures weren't all gunmetal gray and brown. It's just not the most visually enticing environment, and it does little to keep my attention or interest in the world I'm running through.

Huge strides have been made in the combat here when compared to Guerilla, which was certainly the previous title's biggest weak point. Armageddon feels more on par with standard third person shooters, and thankfully the developers didn't bother shoehorning in a unnecessary cover system, focusing instead on run and gun style gameplay involving the ability to dodge roll from enemy fire, and allowing the player enough open room to run around that they don't get pinned down in tight corridors and need to methodically shoot enemies at a distance to kill them. There are a number of large encounters with enemies in the game that take place in wide open spaces with plenty of destructible stuff around to either collapse or hurl at enemies, so while you can easily opt to kill most of the creatures you encounter with a standard assault rifle, it's certainly feasible to have a little more fun and use some of the more inventive weapons available to Mason to get the job done. If you opt to just plow through the game using the Assault Rifle and Shotgun, you're essentially missing the point, and the game will feel even more hollow and lifeless than some of the bland design decisions have already made it out to be.

Really, the destructive weapons you gain are the best part of the game. Darius will gain access to some weapons that feel a little standard, like a Rocket Launcher and Grenade Launcher, both of which can cause a whole lot of damage but aren't unusual to see in a shooter. However, weapons like the Singularity Cannon, Magnet Gun, Nano Rifle, Plasma Beam and Plasma Cannon are a whole lot of fun to toy around with. The Singularity Cannon became a personal favorite of mine, which creates a mini-blackhole on the object you aim it at, sucking in everything around it and then releasing all that stored energy as a large blast, not only damaging enemies as it pulls them in, but damn near wiping out most of the basic aliens when it releases the blast. It's also a lot of fun to use on buildings or other structures, and can literally tear down large buildings with little more than two shots.

Overall, the destruction effects here are very similar to how Guerilla handled this aspect, so you'll take aim at load bearing sections of buildings to tear them down faster, and most of the structures you come across in the game can be torn down. Also, tearing down structures will uncover salvage, essentially this title's version of currency, which can then be used to purchase upgrades for Darius that improve his core abilities, like health, reload times, and the amount of ammo each weapon can carry. The physics for destroying buildings, walls, and platforms is spot on to how I remember it in Guerilla, so it's hard to not want to reduce everything to rubble, even when you're not in the middle of a firefight.

There are a couple new things that Armageddon offers with regards to the whole destroying of the environment, one of which is the Nano Forge that Mason carries around. Using the Nano Forge, you can recreate any structure you just destroyed, which will come into play at different sections of the game that will require you to construct a recently destroyed bridge or staircase in order to proceed ahead. The Nano Forge also gains the ability early on to fire a shot that can reconstruct objects at long range, and through your ability menu you can even gain additional powers for Mason to use. A few of the powers, like a temporary shield and berserk ability that supercharges Mason for a short amount of time, become very effective in the late game.

Outside of the campaign, there's little else to do with Red Faction: Armageddon. There are two additional modes, one of which, Infestation, is essentially a "horde" mode that's been in most shooters post Gears of War 2. There are a lot of maps to Infestation though, 8 unlocked at first and then 8 additional ones labeled as DARK variations. Each map will either have you surviving oncoming waves of aliens, or defending a point from invading aliens. You can opt to play offline or online, choose the difficulty, starting wave, and also unlock different upgrades as you progress through the waves. The upgrades are still the same as what you get in the single player mode, but at least you don't need to waste earned salvage to unlock them here.

The other mode is certainly the more interesting of the two for me, which is the Ruin mode. In Ruin you have five maps to choose from, and you're given one minute to create as much damage as possible, which is tallied up in a score and posted to the online leaderboards. Each stage has a par score to reach, and once you hit that you'll unlock the next map. Hitting the par score will also extend your total time 15 seconds, giving you just a little more time to knock down more stuff. At the beginning of each map you can choose your load-out from all the destructive weapons in the game, and finding the right weapon for each map seems key to creating a decent score. Competing for the top spot on the leaderboard is the main drive here, which might not be for everyone, but I've had fun constantly trying to improve my scores with Ruin mode. You can also opt to do free play on Ruin, so you're not timed or tracked, and can run through the map at your own leisure. However, the Ruin maps are pretty small, so free play doesn't end up being the throwback to Red Faction: Guerilla that I was hoping it would be.

Another thing worth mentioning, and because some people will care, the campaign section of Armageddon is pretty short. It can easily be tackled on the first run in six hours or less, I took about six hours and fifteen minutes and that was with finding all the audio logs (the collectible item of this title) and gathering up as much salvage as possible. This might be a negative for those that equate campaign time to game value, but with a campaign that ends up being as bland as the one here, it's really a gift more than anything. The best thing about finishing the game's campaign mode is that it will unlock the ability to do a New Game Plus on any difficulty setting, allowing you to gain access to all the weapons at the start of the game (as soon as you hit the first weapon load-out terminal), and allows you to carry over Mason's unlocked abilities as well.

You can plow through the game's campaign mode even quicker in New Game Plus, but gaining access to the better weapons early on does allow you to tackle the early encounters differently, and the game is certainly more fun when you can just blow stuff up more often. Also, while in the New Game Plus, you gain access to unlockable cheats, including unlimited ammo, a few special weapons, and a couple other abilities, all of which require more salvage to unlock but certainly make the dull campaign a bit more interesting. That is, of course, if you enjoy nearly breaking a game with a completely overpowered character, but having had a whole lot of fun with a similar set-up in Resident Evil 5, I definitely enjoyed doing the same here.

My ending thoughts on Red Faction: Armageddon is that while I appreciate the need to make the gunplay more enjoyable than what Guerilla had, taking out the open world aspect was a big mistake. The game, and series at this point, is at its best when you're blowing stuff up and seeing how much ridiculous destruction you can cause, but packing that into a pretty linear campaign mode instead of an open world populated with various structures spread across a large map that can be tackled in nearly any order you wish isn't the best idea. Granted, Guerilla's open world certainly had large stretches that consisted of nothing interesting, but I think reintroducing that sandbox gameplay with just more stuff to do and destroy would be a far better step than a by the book third person campaign. Once the appeal of blowing stuff up starts to wane, there's little else to keep you interested in the game.

One of the best things I enjoyed about Guerilla involved taking down this gigantic bridge in the game, which I ended up tackling a variety of ways to see what I could do. The bridge was so big that I literally ran out of ammo at one point and still didn't manage to make it collapse, even though I created some mighty big holes. I remember taking out the hammer, and just started wailing away at its support structures, because I was bound and determined to bring the beast down. I didn't do this because of any mission objective that I can remember, just because I thought it would be awesome to see this huge, and I mean HUGE, bridge collapse in on itself.

Armageddon never gave me a single moment that was anything like this, and if the rest of my rambling on this review doesn't convince you that Armageddon is the lesser game of the series this gen, hopefully you at least had an experience with Guerilla similar to my bridge encounter, a point where the whole ability to destroy nearly anything in the game just seemed amazing to you. If so, and if you end up checking out Armageddon down the road, I think you'll agree that Armageddon definitely lacks that wow factor that made Guerilla the surprise hit that it was, and taking away that sandbox gameplay was a serious step backwards.