Halo: Reach

Before the discovery and destruction of an ancient alien ringworld, before a teeming parasitic enemy threatened Earth, before a soldier called John-117 made a new name for himself, humanity fought to defend the planet Reach. And though Halo: Reach is a prequel to all the Halo games that have come before, it represents the evolutionary pinnacle of the series. From the expertly tuned combat to the expansive level design and from the innovative online integration to the robust creation tools, all the pillars of Halo's success are in top form here, tied together seamlessly by an elegant and intuitive menu system. While the core mechanics remain very familiar, invigorating new elements and extensive customization options make it so there are more ways to enjoy yourself than ever. Halo: Reach is one of the most fully featured games on consoles today, and it's also one of the best.
One of the first things you notice about Halo: Reach is the refined menu system. In addition to presenting the main gameplay modes, the main menu displays the status of your friends who are playing Reach and allows you to peruse their service records and invite them to your party with ease. Entering a mode, tweaking options, and starting up a match is an effortless process, and your party members can come with you almost everywhere you go. The interface allows you to easily explore game types, customization tools, and user-created content without getting swamped or overwhelmed. It's remarkable that everything is this easily accessible, because Halo: Reach is absolutely packed with great content.
Halo campaigns have traditionally had epic aspirations, and Halo: Reach is no different. Whether you play solo or cooperatively with up to four players, you play as the newest member of Noble team. Your first mission is to investigate a distress signal in a rural mountainous area, and it's no surprise when the source of the distress turns out to be the Covenant. Small skirmishes and reconnaissance missions soon escalate to all-out war as humanity tries to repel the alien invaders. Anyone familiar with the Halo canon knows how that one ends, but it's thrilling to be a part of Noble team's efforts. You undertake missions of increasingly crucial strategic importance, and this urgency is conveyed without any reliance on previous Halo knowledge. Instead, the characters you interact with help set the tone, and your squadmates have unique personalities that go a long way toward keeping you emotionally invested in the action. There are some cliches and a few cheap moments, but the story successfully channels the forthright heroism of soldiers who are committed to their cause. This earnest appeal makes Halo: Reach's campaign one of the most satisfying in the series.
The campaign also benefits from great pacing and a cohesive sense of place. The slow burn of the early levels explodes into frenetic large-scale conflict, and some good dramatic turns and an engrossing musical score keep the pace from fizzling out as the game builds toward a climactic ending. Your missions take you through a rich array of environments, from rural farming communities to high-country military outposts and from dry, rocky steppes to battered city streets. Throughout these diverse locations, the mountainous geography of Reach remains a constant presence that helps you connect with the land you are fighting to defend. Levels are often expansive, offering stunning views and allowing for some nice gameplay diversity. In addition to a number of classic vehicles that still handle marvelously, there are a few new rides that provide some kicks of their own. There's also a space-faring first for the series, and though this sequence is a bit shallow, it doesn't overstay its welcome and features some gorgeous orbital vistas.
The campaign provides excitement aplenty, and adding some friends to the mix makes it even more enjoyable. Picking your own routes through the battlefield is more exciting when you know your buddies are doing it too, and it leads to some great moments of teamwork, both planned and unexpected. Though the friendly AI is generally harmless, it has trouble when it comes to driving, so you're better off driving yourself or trusting a friend behind the wheel. If you want to spice things up a bit, you can keep score individually or as a team, using skulls (now found in an options screen rather than hidden in levels) to modify battlefield conditions and boost your scoring potential. And if you don't have any friends available to join you, the online campaign matchmaking can easily set you up with squadmates. These options, along with the stellar core action, the excellent level design, and the well-balanced difficulty levels, make this great campaign supremely replayable.
Back after a very successful debut in Halo 3: ODST, the Firefight mode once again offers up to four players an arena to take on increasingly difficult waves of Covenant enemies. This is largely the same addictively entertaining experience, though it now boasts full online matchmaking support. Frantically fighting off hordes of enemies is as exciting and satisfying as ever, and the new maps and gameplay variants offer many different ways to enjoy this mode. You can take on a tougher challenge by choosing to defend generators in addition to killing Covenant or add a bit of levity by fighting hordes of grunts that fling confetti into the air when you shoot them in the head. You can even have some players play as Elites and try to thwart the remaining Spartans. If you want to tweak one of the built-in variants or create something entirely different, the extensive game options let you customize the makeup and toughness of each enemy wave, the weapons and shields available to you, the strength of gravity, and a lot more. It's a lot of fun to mess around with these options and see what you can come up with, and if you're not the tailoring type, you can easily download user-created variants by browsing popular variants or searching for keywords.

Extensive customization options are also available in competitive multiplayer. In the Custom Game mode, you can tweak the conditions of any game type beyond recognition or use subtle changes to spice things up. As in previous Halo games, the possibilities here are vast, and the intuitive interface makes them all easily accessible. Competitive matchmaking is once again a standout in Halo: Reach. Before you jump in, you can tweak a few variables in your psych profile to indicate that you prefer team players to lone wolves or want to avoid chatty teammates. It was hard to gauge the effectiveness of this system at the time of review, but just having such a system in a prominent location bodes well for being able to find an agreeable crowd with which to play.
Though there are just six competitive multiplayer lobbies, a revamped voting system lets you choose from a few different maps or variants, potentially turning your Team Slayer game into Team SWAT. This built-in variation may irk some purists who don't want their Slayer game to turn into a Mongoose race, but it's a great way to build in some variety without spreading the player base between too many lobbies. There's also a ranked arena that functions as a competitive league, assigning players a ranking based on their performance while cycling through discrete blocks of time called seasons. And, there's a new objective-based mode called Invasion that pits Spartans against Elites, challenging one team to capture a series of positions and abscond with a valuable item. The progressive structure is a nice change of pace, though ultimately, it's just another way to enjoy the best part of the game: combat.
Halo: Reach continues the series' tradition of superlative combat and movement mechanics. This consistency isn't likely to excite those who have disliked Halo in the past, but those who have enjoyed it before have a new twist to contend with in the form of armor abilities. These special abilities operate on a cooldown timer and grant players a specific power that can give them an edge in combat. Whether it's a quick burst of speed to close the distance between you and an enemy or a jetpack that grants you the power of limited flight, these abilities add an intriguing new tactical element. Active camouflage aids in stealthy maneuvers, while armor lock can help you survive a grenade explosion that is too close to evade. And while the advantages of being able to create a running decoy of yourself may seem obvious, deploying the decoy effectively is another matter.
When these abilities are in play, they change the every-soldier-is-equal dynamic that has long defined Halo multiplayer, but they do it in a very specific and knowable way. Once you see your opponent tumble laterally in an evade maneuver, you know exactly what kind of ability you are dealing with (at least, you do until he respawns). Rather than creating an imbalance in the battlefield, these armor abilities enrich combat and offer even seasoned Halo veterans new ways to flex their strategic muscle. They also go hand in hand with the concept of loadouts. Rather than always spawning every player with identical equipment, Halo: Reach often lets players choose which guns and armor ability they want to equip, sometimes offering new loadouts as the match progresses. The ability to change loadouts can cause strategic shifts in the battlefield, forcing players to reevaluate their combat options, and figuring out the many tactical possibilities of each armor ability is an engaging challenge. These invigorating new elements inject a new energy into one of the traditional strengths of the series, making Halo: Reach's competitive multiplayer better than ever.
Doing well in online multiplayer, the offline campaign, and most other gameplay modes earns you credits that can be used to buy new, strictly cosmetic armor pieces for your Spartan. It can also earn you progress toward commendations and daily or weekly challenges, which in turn earn you more credits, a higher ranking, and of course bragging rights. Your service record displays your Halo stats and accomplishments to anyone who cares to look, and the Theater lets you capture a screenshot or video clip of any moment that you care to show off. Halo: Reach automatically saves your recent matches regardless of what mode you play, and watching replays is a lot of fun even if you don't care to preserve them for posterity. Recording clips, taking screens, recommending them to your friends, and uploading them to your file share is as easy as ever, and the only real drawback to the Theater is that you can't bring any party members along with you.
You can, however, bring friends with you into Forge, the amazing editing sandbox that gives you astonishing creation powers. There are nine Forge-able maps, including the massive Forge World, and they are all at your mercy. From building a brand new level structure to tailoring an existing one to fit your unique game variants and from stacking absurd quantities of objects on top of each other to engaging in all-out vehicular mayhem, Forge ranks among the most impressive and versatile creation studios available on consoles today. And even if your interest in Forge is limited to spelling your name in the sky with traffic cones, you can't help but be excited by the possibilities. Since its introduction in Halo 3, the Forge community has generated a lot of clever, exciting, and downright fun content, and Halo: Reach promises to continue this trend into the foreseeable future.
Halo: Reach is not only brimming with excellent content, but it's also bursting with possibilities. The exciting campaign, addictive Firefight mode, and dynamic competitive multiplayer make it one of the best shooters around. The extensive customization options, powerful Theater tools, and staggering Forge capabilities make it one of the most malleable and socially engaging games on consoles. And the slick menu system brings it all together with remarkable simplicity. Though its deep roots may not win over those who haven't enjoyed previous games in the series, Halo: Reach is a towering achievement that delivers an enormous amount of engaging content that players will no doubt be enjoying for years to come.

E3 2011: Ace Combat: Assault Horizon

If you are an Ace Combat fan, Assault Horizon may not be what you were looking for--but that doesn't mean it isn't a lot of fun. We got our hands on two separate levels on the E3 2011 show floor. One of them featured the F-22 fighter aircraft; the other, a helicopter. In both cases, Ace Combat has taken a cue from cinematic shooters like Modern Warfare, in which scripted sequences and dramatic camera views highlight every explosion and shake the entire screen. If that information makes your heart drop into your stomach, you can assuage your fears somewhat: the demo we played was good fun and was wonderful to look at. This is a game worth keeping an eye on, even if it isn't a direction you expected from the vaunted aerial combat series.

The fighter mission took place in the skies over Miami. Here is the setup: a terrorist is wielding a superweapon called Trinity. Namco Bandai was tight-lipped about the specifics, but this story marks a departure for the franchise by being set in the real world, rather than an alternate-reality version of it. What happens in the skies is also a departure. The F-22 controlled as we expected it to, so we easily yawed, pitched, and rolled amid the clouds. You can approach furballs in a traditional manner, selecting targets and then firing missiles and bullets at enemy aircraft. If you prefer a more dramatic battle, however, you can enter dogfighting mode. When an enemy plane approaches and your reticle flashes, you can press two shoulder buttons to center the camera on your target and let the autopilot take over. This initiates a chase sequence in which you must hover your aiming reticle over the enemy and fire away. You might zoom past looming skyscrapers and above familiar Miami locations, all while filling your foes with bullets.
You can also put the screws to fighters on your tail. By slowing up and forcing an enemy aircraft to pass you, you can switch roles by pressing the shoulder buttons at the right time, with the camera zooming back dramatically to highlight your success. When you make a kill in dogfighting mode, you get a close-up view of the resulting explosion. Ace Combat: Assault Horizon loves its explosions, hammering you with melodramatic close-ups every chance it gets. The action didn't change much during this mission, but it gave us a taste of standard combat and ended with a cutscene in which our pilot floated to the ground in a parachute after being shot down--complete with quick-time events.
The helicopter mission played less like an aerial combat game than it did a first-person shooter in the air. This level took place over an East African city's streets. The left stick controls direction, while the right stick moves the camera, and shoulder buttons fire weapons. Altitude is controlled by face buttons, but altitude didn't seem all that important in the demo, since we were absolutely unable to crash, whether it be into the ground, buildings, or other aircraft. As a rule, we triumphed by holding a shoulder button to lock on to enemies and moving around them while firing machine guns and rockets. While there were some airborne foes, most of our targets were on the ground: infantry, antiaircraft vehicles, and tanks. You can't just rely on spamming fire, however, since buildings get in the way. We had to reposition ourselves frequently in order to take down the constant waves of enemies. In addition, you must sometimes avoid incoming rockets by performing--you guessed it--a quick-time event. Like the fighter mission, this one ended in a cutscene involving another quick button press or two.

In spite of the focus on cinematic splendor, Assault Horizon still managed to be good fun. It certainly looked gorgeous as we sped through the air, rushing past tall towers while directly on the tail of another fighter. We're curious to see how the final game turns out, not just because the demo was fun, but because it's such a dramatic departure for a beloved series that isn't likely to please its fans. But if you have an open mind, there seems to be an entertaining game here. We'll find out for sure when the game is released on October 11, 2011.

Red Faction: Guerrilla

Of all the weapons you'll find in Red Faction: Guerrilla, the simple sledgehammer is one of the best. This powerful object has the ability to bring down entire buildings, giving you an almost tactile feeling of gleeful abandon as you watch your character leave nothing but rubble and havoc in his trail. The brutish, direct sledgehammer exemplifies what the excellent Red Faction: Guerrilla is all about. Destruction is this game's currency, and it puts its considerable wealth to good use. Mars is yours to annihilate, and while the main story is uninvolving and the action can get repetitive, you'll find plenty to like in the game's mayhem-filled single-player campaign and impressive multiplayer offerings.

Mayhem is built into Guerrilla's DNA, and its impressive physics engine realistically showcases destruction on a massive scale. The game ditches the deformable landscapes that were a staple of its predecessors, instead offering the ability to blow apart anything in the game. Any man-made object can be reduced to rubble, and every structure or vehicle--and every one of its composite parts--features its own unique physical properties. Everything from smokestacks to bridges appears to have been built with real-world engineering principles in mind, and you can see the various supports and reinforcements in their design. So to demolish a small building, you needn't take out all its walls--simply identify its support columns, take those out with charges, and watch the whole thing implode. All of this destruction is performed in real time, which means no structure collapses in the same way.
The realistic nature of this rampant destructibility is the standout feature of Guerrilla, and it will affect many of your gameplay decisions. Cover, for example, is at best a temporary haven for you and your enemies, since all walls can be demolished. Height is also of little concern--if an enemy sniper is perched on a building, you can easily destroy the floor underneath him. You can stop pursuers by blowing up a bridge as you pass it, or even level an entire building to kill all of the troops inside. It's hard not to get swept up in all the damage you can cause, and you'll find yourself wanting to lay waste to an object just to see how it crumbles simply because it's so much fun.
If it sounds like the game is frenetic and chaotic, that's because it can. Despite the fact that your character, Alec Mason, is a guerrilla--a member of the underground group Red Faction, which is trying to take out the all-powerful Earth Defense Force (EDF)--there's little scope for anything other than full volume action, even if you are trying to approach a mission with subtlety. Mason is initially an unwilling recruit to Red Faction, joining only after his brother is killed by EDF soldiers. What follows is a lengthy main storyline which is fairly cliched for the most part. Mason's motivation for revenge doesn't ring that strongly throughout the campaign, and there are very few twists and turns to keep the plot engaging.
Story, for the most part, takes a backseat to Mason's continuing mission to free Mars. The EDF have total control of the six sectors of the planet, oppressing its population of miners with a heavy security presence and upfront brutality. To free the planet, you'll have to do it sector by sector. Each will have its own level of EDF control that you'll have to lower while at the same time raising the population's morale. The game's eight different mission types will do one or the other, and in many cases they'll do both. Lowering EDF control opens up new story missions which will move forward Guerrilla's main narrative, while improving morale means more of the population will randomly jump in and support you when you get into a fight with the EDF. On the surface, the mission types are varied--for example, protect a settlement, join a group of rebels in storming an EDF stronghold, intercept an enemy shipment, destroy EDF property--but the game's aggressive AI means most missions will end up in large explosions and a hail of gunfire. You may want to take a more circumspect approach, such as finding an unguarded path into a group of structures that need to be taken down, but as soon as the first explosion hits, EDF troopers will swarm to your position to try to take you down with force. While this doesn't make the action one-dimensional, it does make it one note. Sure, you can blow stuff up in a variety of interesting and creative ways, but in the end, it's still the same thing--blowing stuff up.
It's to the game's credit (and to the credit of its remarkably robust physics engine) that despite repetitiveness, Guerrilla's destruction manages to be engaging and entertaining for the 15 or so hours it will take you to get through the single-player campaign. Even after you finish the game, you can go back into the world to complete any missions you may have skipped, as well as try your hand at the "insane" difficulty level you'll unlock after your first run through. The game is quite challenging even at lower difficulty levels, and you'll find yourself pushed to survive most large-scale fights at medium difficulty. Guerrilla has a cover function which will let you stick to walls, but it's not something you can rely on--you'll sometimes fail to stick to objects properly (particularly low bits of cover), and trying to pop out to shoot can cause you to leave cover completely.
Thankfully, the rest of Red Faction: Guerrilla's controls are solid, particularly its shooting mechanic, which feels just right. You'll be able to equip only four weapons at a time, but you can quickly switch between them by holding down the right shoulder button. Most are typical weapon archetypes--there are pistols, machine guns, shotguns, rocket launchers, and sniper variants--but Guerrilla does feature some unique weapons, such as the killer disc-spewing grinder and the electricity pulsing arc welder. By far the most interesting is the nano rifle, a weapon which sends out a bolt of microscopic nanites that corrode anything they hit--and this includes people as well as buildings.
Driving is similarly strong, the only caveat being that most vehicles are floaty and too easy to flip.p (although any science geek can probably justify this by pointing to Mars' lower gravity compared to Earth). You won't find the variety of vehicles as in other open-world games, but what are here seem functional to a mining colony and fit within the gameworld. There are large earth-moving vehicles, smaller two-person transports, and plenty of trucks, with a surprising number of them packing onboard weapons. You'll also run across beefy mech-like walkers which are great to pilot against hordes of EDF soldiers--these are pretty rare, however, but they're so much fun you'll be left wishing there were more instances when you could use them.
You won't get to drive any vehicles in Guerrilla's multiplayer, but it does offer plenty of unique experiences you won't find in the single-player game. The game supports up to 16 players online and features the stock standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture-the-flag variants. All of the single-player game's destructibility adds another level of strategy to matches, as you're only ever one sledgehammer blow away from instant death, no matter how thick your cover. This makes all matches tense affairs, and camping is a definite no-no. Added to this are new items exclusive to multiplayer which can radically affect how you play. The main additions are 10 different backpacks which act as either offensive, defensive, or support aids during combat. The rhino backpack, for example, will allow you to charge straight through walls at a hiding player, while the thrust backpack can propel you quickly up a few levels to take out snipers. The stealth pack, on the other hand, will make you invisible for short periods of time, while the heal pack will quickly regenerate lost health.
Multiplayer also gives you the power to rebuild--an ability which features heavily in two of Guerrilla's three unique online modes. The reconstructor gun can repair damaged or destroyed structures and is used in the Siege and Damage Control modes. Siege has two teams taking turns to see how much damage they can do to a map, while Damage Control sees two teams fighting for control of three structures. To gain control of a structure, you'll need to destroy it first before rebuilding it for your team. The third unique online mode is Demolition, where one player on a team is randomly chosen as a destroyer. To gain points, the destroyer must wreak as much havoc as possible. These new modes are fun, and Damage Control in particular is a hectic affair as your team continually scrambles to destroy and repair the various checkpoints. Guerrilla's online component, in fact, is a definite winner--games ran almost completely lag-free during testing, with the most noticeable issue being an occasional lapse between hitting an object with the sledgehammer and seeing it crumble. There's also an offline multiplayer mode called Wrecking Crew, where up to four players can take turns in doing as much damage as they can to a certain area. Wrecking Crew is a fun little distraction at best, and it probably won't hold your interest compared to the large scope of the game's online multiplayer offerings.
The area of Mars you'll traverse in Red Faction: Guerrilla is big even by open-world game standards, but there's not an awful lot to see. There are plenty of red hills, open plains, and dust, and what few populated areas there are seem sparse in comparison to other games in this genre. It's hard to fault the game for this--after all, this is what a human colony on Mars would conceivably look like--but it doesn't change the fact that you'll be looking at dirt a lot of time in Guerrilla. That said, the game does look quite impressive. The textures on Mars and its architecture look realistic, as do many of the lighting effects with the various explosions and pyrotechnics on show. There's occasionally some pop-up, particularly in the open badlands section, but for the most part the game's problem with draw distance is obscured by small hills and other geographical landmarks that are conveniently placed in between you and the gameworld's horizon. Sound also fares well--the game's voice actors do well with their limited scripts, and the various explosions, gunfire, building collapses, and other sound effects are uniformly impressive. The solid "thunk" you'll hear every time you use your sledgehammer is especially satisfying.
You'll end up hearing that "thunk" a lot in Red Faction: Guerrilla, but you'll never get tired of it because its deep, crunchy sound is tied so intrinsically to the satisfying visual destruction you see. Guerrilla's gameplay is similar--many of the missions may feel like they're at the same, loud, all-out pace, but when devastation is this well presented, it's difficult not to get swept along by its primal energy. Red Faction: Guerrilla mixes a long and involving single-player campaign with a fun and satisfying online segment, with both adding up to a game that proves that a little chaos (or in this case, a lot) can be a positive thing.

Red Faction: Armageddon

If you're familiar with the Red Faction series, then you know Mars as a dangerous place where the regimes are oppressive and the building codes are lax. In Red Faction: Armageddon, alien infestation replaces armed uprising as the series takes on a new tone. This third-person shooter may tell an unremarkable tale and lack the freedom of its open-world predecessor, Red Faction: Guerrilla, but Armageddon serves up a fresh new batch of creative mayhem with extensive destructibility and a devastating array of weapons and powers. Blasting your way through hordes of aliens and wreaking merry havoc on the overrun human infrastructure is an entertaining endeavor, but it's the ingenious and versatile magnet gun that takes the thrills of destruction to new heights. Whether you're soldiering solo in the single-player campaign or staving off an enemy onslaught with friends online, Red Faction: Armageddon provides a lot of great ways to indulge your destructive desires

The events of Red Faction: Armageddon take place two generations after those of Red Faction: Guerrilla, so while fans can spot connections between the two games, they are little more than historical references. The most pertinent fact is that you play as Darius Mason, grandson of Guerrilla's protagonist, Alec Mason, and like his ancestor, Darius is a man of action, not words. After a brief prologue, he gets caught up in a deadly alien outbreak that threatens every human on Mars, and his quest to save the day drives the rest of the campaign. The cutscenes that chronicle the alien outbreak may look nice, but they tell an uninspired story full of action-movie cliches. The profanity-laden dialogue might make you smirk from time to time, but don't expect to get much out of the boilerplate plot.
Instead, expect to get caught up in the thrill of destruction. Right out of the gate you get a taste of the power at your fingertips with a plasma cannon that blows a three-story hole in a building and topples a guard tower in a single blast. The familiar sledgehammer from Red Faction: Guerrilla returns, but the combination of your powerful melee attack and expansive arsenal makes it likely that this implement will take a backseat to more potent weaponry. A charge launcher that lets you fire and then remote-detonate explosives, a laser that dissolves walls and enemies with equal vigor, and a gun that shoots miniature black holes are just some of the enticing weapons you pick up along the way. Almost every man-made structure in Red Faction: Armageddon can be destroyed, and it's very satisfying to take out a sniper by detonating the walkway under his feet, or to splatter a group of advancing aliens with a few well-placed charges.
The robust weapons make you feel like a powerful warrior, and Darius' mobility lets you move confidently and quickly around the battlefield. The sense that you are a force to be reckoned with is further augmented by your suite of nano forge abilities. Powered by a gadget on your wrist, these unlockable, upgradable abilities operate on a cooldown timer and can significantly boost your destructive potential. The forceful push can topple walls and send enemies careening off into the distance, while the protective shell can block enemy projectiles and slowly kill any foes unlucky enough to be caught inside it. Shockwave launches any nearby enemies in a floating stasis field where you can blast them like clay pigeons, and berserk supercharges your weapons for a short period of time. These abilities are fun to wield in concert with your weaponry, including the seemingly out-of-place reconstruction ability. The idea of actually building something in a Red Faction game may seem strange, but being able to magically reconstruct any structure that has been destroyed is immensely helpful. Repairing the building you currently occupy can offer crucial protection from enemy projectiles, and being able to reconstruct walkways and bridges means you don't have to think twice about blowing them up in combat.
Being able to destroy things with impunity is important, because Red Faction: Armageddon is a linear game that takes place mostly underground. While the cave systems and human structures are varied, there is a finite number of things to destroy in any given area, and you may find yourself itching for more opportunities to wreak havoc. Fortunately, there is the magnet gun. This little beauty fires two sticky magnets: one anchor and one attractor. As soon as the second shot lands, the magnetic pull kicks in, and things collide in dynamic and deadly ways. You can tag an enemy and then send him flying up towards ceiling, rocketing into the floor, or even on a collision course with another enemy. If you tag a building and then an enemy, you'll watch with eager anticipation as a wall of debris descends upon your unsuspecting foe like a flock of murderous birds. These are just some of the myriad ways that this simple gun turns fighting aliens into a creative exercise. Unlimited ammo means you can always put it to use, and the area-of-effect magnetic pull means your plan may take an unexpected destructive turn. Momentum also factors in, so attracting a far-off enemy to the floor makes him splatter, while doing the same to a nearby enemy might just make him fall over, ripe for a pummeling. Wielding the magnet gun turns what could be another predictable enemy encounter into a physics-fueled playground, and bringing a pillar down on an unsuspecting enemy's head will make you cackle with glee even if you've done it a dozen times before.
The campaign offers about eight hours' worth of opportunities for destructive experimentation, with a few vehicle sequences thrown in that offer a nice change of pace. You can collect salvage to upgrade your skills throughout, and completing the campaign unlocks a ludicrous new weapon and the ability to replay the whole thing without sacrificing your upgrades. There are some decent cheats to unlock, and two other modes offer good opportunities for continued mayhem. Infestation is a four-player online cooperative mode in which you try to survive against waves of alien attackers. Depending on your settings and your companions, Infestation can be a reasonably challenging romp or a brutal test of skill. Ruin mode provides a few arenas for unfettered single-player destruction. You can strive to earn a spot on the online leaderboards or simply cut loose in free play, but be advised that those who buy a used copy of Red Faction: Armageddon will have to purchase an unlock code for Ruin mode in order to get more than a short demo.
Red Faction: Armageddon returns to the linear roots of the series with great success. Thanks to an enjoyably powerful arsenal and remarkably thorough destructibility, tearing your way through this alien-annihilating adventure is a blast. The campaign and Infestation mode offer a good amount of content, and the arrival of the magnet gun should be celebrated by anyone with a hankering for havoc. It's one of the most powerful, inspiring, and downright hilarious gameplay mechanics to come along in a while, and it makes Red Faction: Armageddon immensely appealing.