Red Faction: Armageddon
Intentionally or not, Volition’s 2009 game Red Faction: Guerrilla commented on present-day America in startling, subversive ways. Volition placed players in a populist insurgency that used improvised explosives to beat back wealthy occupiers seeking control of Mars’ geological resources. The parallels to the Iraq War infused the game’s signature tech feature, a terrific building-destruction effect, with debate-provoking depth. Two years later, scared by Guerrilla’s shadow, Red Faction: Armageddon seeks to provoke nothing.
Armageddon’s problem isn’t that it’s different from Guerrilla, but that it’s so similar to everything else. In the opening minutes of this third-person shooter, the hero mistakenly unleashes a long-dormant race of lizard-y, insect-y aliens. From there, most of the game is miles of anonymous caves, broken up into a series of missions where the central objective is always the same: advance while blasting away endless waves of insectosaurs.