First Look - Red Faction: Armageddon

THQ takes you to Armageddon on PS3 as the latest in the Red Faction series goes deeper underground.

Mars. A hostile place where chaos and order are in constant conflict. The year is 2170, and 50 years after the events of Red Faction: Guerrilla, things have only become worse. The surface of Mars has become uninhabitable, with a network of underground caves the only safe haven left.

You play as Darius Mason, grandson of Red Faction: Guerrilla's hero, Alec Mason. Darius runs a lucrative business of mining, scavenging and mercenary work - until he's tricked into unleashing a long dormant evil set on destroying the red planet.

Thrown into a deadly romp around hostile terrain, it's down to you to save the Martian population. Red Faction: Armageddon is shaping up to be the perfect excuse for some third-person shooting action, with an enticing new twist the Red Faction series has become well known for - you not only have the ability to destroy, but also to create.

Set 'em up, knock 'em down

Fans of Red Faction: Guerrilla may remember the Nano-Forge, a weapon which disintegrated virtually anything in the path of its deadly rays. Armageddon brings it back, with the ability to reform objects and structures. So you not only have a powerful tool of destruction, you can also use it to repair machinery or create cover and for other constructive functions. When combined with any of the other weapons in Red Faction: Armageddon you have a recipe for what the game's associate producer, Roje Smith, calls "creative destruction".

"I love using the Shockwave, which puts enemies in a stasis field, with other weapons," says Smith. "I love shockwaving an enemy, then grabbing a piece of a building with the Magnet Gun and smashing them with it. You can use the Singularity Cannon to send them into a black hole, or you can stick an explosive on to them then use the Magnet Gun to send them flying towards a pack of aliens - it's like firing a floating bomb!"

Complementing this open-ended action is a strong element of exploration in the environments. The complex structures you'll encounter are designed for you to tear down with glee, as well as explore. This caused some headaches for the developers to balance out the variety of fun ways you can destroy things without breaking the physics-based gameplay.

"We have structures that are multiple storeys high," explains art director Chad Greene. "That's important because we have physics in everything. If we start stacking heavy objects on top of each other, they literally start collapsing under their own weight, so we have to think about how we build support structures, like a real architect would. There's a lot of give and take on things like that and we're very proud of the result."

A story among the stars

The development team didn't get too carried away with all this smashing fun - there's also a strong narrative keeping it all together. "Red Faction: Armageddon has a massive destruction playground, which is nice, but we're getting a really focused story too," says Smith. "It's going to give people a nice, immersive experience and we have the ability to tell a great story along with the great technology we're using."

It's appropriate that in a story which examines freedoms within constraints, Red Faction: Armageddon offers you choice aplenty thanks to its gameplay dynamics. "We don't want the game to be just a typical run-and-gun action shooter," smiles Greene. "We want the player to have choices and think about how they want to do things."

"It's a creative action shooter," agrees Smith. "You can look at your world and think 'how can I use this to my advantage?' and I think that's what helps to separate us from everyone else."

Choose your own adventure

Will you choose to fight in the underground caverns of Mars or on its hostile surface? Use conventional weaponry or powerful robotic Exo suits? Build or destroy? Or will you just indulge in a combination of all the above? Red Faction: Armageddon on PlayStation 3 gives you a refreshing blast of gameplay freedom that's sure to scratch your creative and destructive itches. There's even a mysterious multiplayer mode currently under wraps which you'll be able to explore when the game launches in May 2011. No matter how you decide to play, the people behind the game hope you enjoy it as much as they've enjoyed creating it.

"We've had an awesome time working on the game and I think we've brought a lot of creative things to the table," says Smith. "It's really a thinking man's shooter, and I'm pretty excited about that prospect."

Make sure you don't miss the Armageddon - keep coming back to au.playstation.com and PlayStation.Blog at blog.au.playstation.com for more on the Red Faction series.

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