If you read our earlier preview of Red Faction: Armageddon, you can already see several of the improvements in the game. We had the opportunity at PAX this weekend spend some hands-on time with the game’s new Ruin Mode. The gameplay mode may be familiar to fans of the special destructive side missions in Red Faction: Guerrilla, as it is built along the same principles: destroy as much stuff as possible, and have a blast doing it.
And after playing the demo we can say that yes, we did. Both.
Ruin Mode is a sort of free-play destruction mode that takes place outside of the main game. There are no rules, just destruction. The portion we played was set in a cave just outside a section of buildings, so we were able to have our choice of what we wanted to take aim on. A stock of weapons was available to use, and while the Nanoforge and Nanorifle are carry-overs from the first game it was the new weapons that intrigued us most. There are lasers and rockets, but also a plasma cannon. The cannon feels kind of like a suped-up BFG in that it can go through several buildings per shot, taking down huge sections at a time. One word comes to mind: boom.
The real purpose of the demo was to showcase the new Magnet Gun. The weapon allows for the tagging of two points on objects, causing them to come together. So, for instance, tagging a window on one of the buildings and a section of a cave wall caused the window to shatter and fly towards the wall. I can imagine this leading to some unique puzzle-solving, such as clearing wreckage in the way. The gun also acted to collapse structures on top of themselves, so tagging the base of the silo in front of us and its highest point caused it to implode. It’s a neat visual trick.
The shooting felt solid, taking place over the shoulder of Mason in 3rd-person view. The controls were responsive and quick, and the aiming had a seemingly short learning curve. After firing the weapon a couple of times I was able to make accurate predictions of where my shots would land.
Volition informed us that there will also be leaderboards and rankings for Ruin Mode. Even though it’s simple, I can see it becoming as addicting as, if not more than, the similarly themed modes in Guerrilla. Anytime I can blow up stuff over and over again is worthy of coming back to.
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