Red Faction: Armageddon First Impressions

Things have changed for the worse for the citizens of Mars. After a relatively brief period of peace after Alec Mason and his band of rebels took control of the planet at the conclusion of Red Faction: Guerrilla, an as-yet-unnamed foe practically destroys the surface of Mars, forcing its inhabitants underground. Now, 10 years after the populace moved below ground, yet another threat has emerged--a mysterious, alien force that has begun butchering innocent inhabitants. The rest of the populace begins to suspect that Darius Mason (descendant of Alec) is somehow involved, and it now falls to Darius to clear his name, as well as save Mars from the dangers besetting it.

That's the world you'll be entering in the sequel to the 2009 hit Red Faction: Guerrilla, with Armageddon promising even more of the rampant destructibility that made the earlier game a hit. Developer Volition showed off one level of the game at E3 2010 today, and it's clear that while the open spaces may have been done away with, the opportunities for laying waste to any structure you see are still there in abundance.

The demo began with Mason, who was leading a convoy of human refugees on foot. Apparently these refugee's colonies were recently attacked by the mysterious aliens, and Mason was relocating the survivors to a safer place. Soon, some strange creatures with insectlike legs appeared and immediately started to attack Mason. He had to fire upon them using an automatic rifle, rolling occasionally to avoid the creatures' lunge attacks. After that first wave was dealt with, Mason moved forward, eventually coming across an abandoned settlement that had been infested. Weird, organic-like red growths overran most of the buildings, giving the settlement an eerie vibe.

Mason was then tasked with cleaning up the infestation, which simply meant destroying almost everything in sight. This gave the developers an opportunity to show off a brand new weapon making its debut in Red Faction: Armageddon--a powerful rifle called the magnagun. This weapon wreaks its particular brand of crazy in two stages--the first requires you to fire a bolt into one target before selecting another target and firing a second bolt at it. Once both bolts have been released, the two objects you've chosen will become irresistibly magnetised to each other and will come together with crushing force. For example, the developer in charge of our demo fired one bolt at an infested tower and fired the second at another nearby building, resulting in the quite sizeable tower to completely come off its supports and come crashing into the building (thereby destroying two targets in one swoop).

The magnagun's offensive capabilities against moving foes came to the fore shortly after this section, when a huge wave of alien enemies came swarming into the area. Our demo tester used the magnagun to great effect, firing the first bolt at enemies before launching the second against walls, sending the enemy flying at terminal speed into them. But destruction won't be the only way to solve your problems in Armageddon. Faced with an increasing number of aliens, our demo tester decided to use another weapon, the nanoforge. The nanoforge takes on the same abilities of the reconstructor gun found in Guerrilla's multiplayer and is able to repair broken structures. In our demo, the tester ripped open a hole in a nearby metal shipping container using the magnagun, stepped inside the container, and then repaired it with the nanoforge, locking himself in from the marauding aliens. After a brief respite, the tester again blew open the container and then raced to another impressive weapon--a large mech.

While the walker mechs in Guerrilla were huge, the mechs you'll find in Armageddon are slightly smaller and more humanoid looking. Despite the smaller size, these mechs still packed plenty of wallop and were able to make quick work of the remaining aliens. All that was left to do was finish the job of destroying the alien infestation in the settlement, and Mason was able to quickly do that by simply running through buildings whilst still in the mech, crashing down everything around him in a matter of seconds. With the threat neutralized, Mason got out and signaled to the refugee convoy that it was safe to proceed. But all wasn't well--a series of large, rocklike tentacles burst from the ground, surrounding the small convoy. And with that cliff-hanger, our E3 demo ended.

We're excited to see more on Red Faction: Armageddon, if only to get our hands on that magnagun and see what damage we could do with it. We're also keen to see how the game will play now that the open-world nature of Guerrilla has been scaled back, with the developers of Armageddon saying their world will be more mission focused as opposed to having large areas where nothing really happened. Expect more information on Red Faction: Armageddon in the coming weeks here on GameSpot.