Is it a last hurrah for Red Faction?
It was quite a shock to learn that Armageddon would be an ironic name for the last Red Faction game; it wasn’t even that bad…it had its good points and the weapons were really impressive, the Ruin mode was fun although limited. I wonder why THQ has decided to end the series 2 games after reviving it from the dead, but I guess sales must have been poor…probably due to the change in gameplay from Guerrilla that gamers came to love.
Well, to say a final farewell to the franchise we get a piece of DLC called “Path to War” which is a single-player add-on of 4 missions set in between parts of the campaign, like before the Terrarformer is destroyed and you even get to play as Mallus, Adam Hale’s right-hand man as he flies a ship equipped with missiles. One mission puts you in a tank as Captain Winters as he reunites with the Red Faction and the other 2 missions put you back as Darius Mason on the hunt for Mallus.
The missions are unbalanced, short, forgettable and lack a climax. They feel like a collection of deleted scenes that should have been put in the campaign to begin with, which is a shame. It adds new weapons such as the Shard Cannon and Sharpshooter, although using them isn’t as fun as I imagined. The Shard Cannon gathers all objects in a beam that you can throw at enemies and buildings, but the force of the blast isn’t as strong as it should be.
If there’s one thing that’s bad, it’s the final confrontation against Mallus. I expected it to be a tough boss battle, but instead I just shot him dead with a few rounds from my Sharpshooter, it was embarrassingly easy and it was just a bad way to end the DLC and to round up the franchise.
Visually, the game is average to look at. The framerate is steady and the destruction physics are still impressive, but the character models lack polish and emotion. Voice-acting and the music is a mixed bag.
The Verdict
Path to War is a strange way to end the series, but I doubt the team knew that it would be the last piece of content they would make; otherwise they would have hopefully given it a much better send-off than 4 expensive deleted scenes that lack impact or originality. But on the plus side, it does have very easy achievements.
