The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I beat Red Faction: Armageddon.

Red Faction: Armageddon is not a very good game.

I mean, it certainly is a game. You shoot dudes in it, for example. They are mostly the same like 3 dudes, over and over, but you can shoot them, and they will die. But it’s kind of dumb. There’s no depth to it at all. It’s just going through the motions.

Really, it’s frustrating to see this be the sequel to Guerrilla. That game was the fucking best. Seriously. This is such a by-the-numbers third person shooter with no life to it. It’s sad. Sure, there is destructible stuff, but it’s mostly just kind of window dressing and has very little to do with the actual gameplay.

The game is certainly TRYING to be interesting. There’s an upgrade system that, interestingly, carries over into multiplayer. But instead of the actually awesome team deathmatch with crazy power packs multiplayer from Guerrilla, which I actually played for a few days, this is just horde mode against the same enemies I’ve already killed a million times. So you’ll excuse me if I’m not excited about that. The game also is constantly throwing weird vehicles at you in order to keep the action switching up a bit. This is appreciated, and none of the vehicles were un-fun to use, but they also weren’t very exciting. I often just kind of wanted to get out and get back to using my regular weaponry. There are a lot of guns in the game, as well, but most of them seem a bit pointless. When I played the demo, for instance, I thought the Magnet Gun seemed really interesting, but it’s just so hard to actually use effectively that you just set it aside. You take the Assault Rifle, because it’s good in all situations. You take the Maul, because it’s good for taking down enemy structures. You take the Nanorifle, because it’s very versatile against bigger enemies, in the same way the Assault Rifle is. Then you pick one of the like 5 Heavy Weapons (I picked the Rocket Launcher for homing) and you call it a day. Ammo packs refill ammo for basically anything you have, and the weapons are so general use that there’s no need to have specific guns for specific situations. There’s no reason not to just pick four and stick with them forever. Some guns I didn’t even fire once. There seemed to be no point.

On top of all this, you have some of the most frustrating video game writing I have seen in a long time. Main Character has a computer AI on his wrist, who is an AI, and they have WACKY CONVERSATIONS which contains, seriously, the most CLICHE AND ANNOYING DIALOG I HAVE HEARD IN A LONG TIME. It got to the point that any time they were talking to each other I wanted to rip my ears off. They talk back and forth all the time. It’s supposed to lend the game some comic relief, but it is so bad. The other characters aren’t great either, though they’re around less, so they’re less annoying in that regard. They certainly aren’t anything bordering on interesting. There’s a dramatic death near one of the games like four endings (meaning that it keeps coming to a climax, but then just keeps going like four times, and that’s not a good thing like in, I dunno, Bayonetta) and the only reason I was sad to see that character go was that she was the only thing distracting the main character from talking to the fucking AI at that moment.

I mostly beat this game because it was there, and I was worried about the future and depressed, and I needed something mindless to do. I really wouldn’t suggest anyone else do that. Even if you are in my position, there has to be something better to play. Armageddon is a serious, serious disappointment.