Confession: We didn’t the chance to arrange for a meeting with THQ at E3, mostly because our time slots were completely booked. We still wanted to see what the company was showing, so I did the next best thing: name drop. Thankfully friend of the show J Goldberg, Community Manager for Volition/THQ, is a popular enough guy in the company where the mere mention of his name allowed for some unexpected access.
Yes, I got to drink lemon slushies and watch booth babes put on their costumes. Oh, and there was that whole Red Faction demo thing, too.
To say that SideQuesting liked Red Faction Guerrilla is an understatement. It did win our GOTY last year, of course. So, I was more than excited to see the next chapter of the game at the Big Show, and made a bee-line to “sneak” into the demo viewing.
While we knew that RFA wasn’t going to have the same open world flavor as its predecessor, it was interesting to find out why the more traditional “3rd person shooter” direction was chosen. The reason: it’s all about the plot. The first thing that was revealed to us in the demo was that this game’s protagonist, Darius Mason, is a direct descendant of Guerrilla‘s Alec Mason. The game revolves around his fall from grace and path to redemption, as the colony on Mars was forced underground (terraforming failed) and overrun by aliens in part due to Darius’ actions. The need for a slightly more linear game was apparent, as anyone who played the previous gem realized how secondary the story was to the game’s mechanics.
Oh, right, the game mechanics. Without completely removing the incredibly fun physics of tearing down buildings in RFG, Volition chose to upgrade them. The nanoforge gun now “rebuilds” fallen structures, even to the point of allowing Mason to build the walls of a container around him for a short breather while aliens are on the prowl.
More impressive still was the new “magnet gun”. The demo showed us that this weapon works much like a crazy rubber-band: Stick one “end” on an enemy, the other on a structure, and let the gun do its work in slamming the two together. Buildings were able to be destroyed, allowing for debris to be used as projectile weapons at any given moment. Couple that with the nano forge, and Mason has an endless supply of ammo.
The game reminded us a little of the sections of Dead Space set on Aegis VII, with more emphasis on glowing energy and cavernous structures. This is set underground, of course, so we were bound to see some stalactites. The devs on hand noted that the game, though shorter than Guerrilla, would be so only because of the lack of repetitive elements.
With more unique environments, enemies, and weapons, the game seems like a great evolution of the franchise without copying the previous iteration completely. Red Faction Armageddon is due in 2011.
[Images and video courtesy THQ/Volition]
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