Red Faction Armageddon Diaries Part Five

This is my ongoing exploration of the Red Faction Universe. Whether you’re a newcomer or an old-goer, I hope to make this something you can read along with and enjoy. I continue Red Faction Armageddon.

Not only were monsters attacking, but the populace had turned on Mason for his part in dooming Martian-kind, forcing him to the surface where the Red Faction had captured him...

After running a mission for them, Mason returned to the Red Faction camp in the ruins of Dust. While he slept, a big spider-shaped mech came stomping into town. Thankfully, it was being piloted by his mate Kara, who I hadn’t realised disappeared some time before. On a less good note, the Marauder cultists that I had attacked the night before had found us…

Mason jumped into the spider-mech with Kara and we went a-murderin’. Dozens of cultists had managed to entrench themselves nearby, but were pretty easily wiped out along with the few mech suits and vehicles they had brought along. I took out some buildings they were hiding in, and then the excavator they had used to get so close.

Mason contacted Winters and told him that we were going to the temple where Hale was hiding, and thus left the mech to sneak in. Not what I would have done, but I’m the one familiar with videogames, not him…

In the temple (which Kara noted had some old Ultor tech in places), Hale had captured one of the monsters and had it chained up. He was parading it in front of his followers, saying how this proved his power. Mason bumbled his way into getting noticed and losing his weapon, leaving him running from the cultists and, more importantly, Hale who was in a spider-mech that was even bigger than the one I had piloted earlier. Oh, and he jumped into a minecart, seeming to think he should make his escape like he was Indiana Jones…

As the cart made it slowly away from the psycho inside a shielded giant killer mech, I had to destroy things around it to slow it down and kill cultists who had chased after us. A couple of blast doors stopped Hale in his tracks, and an elevator took me up past a bunch of cultists. The power was cut and it dropped down, meaning I had to go through murdering cultists again.

Of course, Hale found his way around the doors in time to catch me at the top, though due to a glitch I was stuck in place and when told to destroy something I wound up inadvertently killing myself. So I had to do the elevator thing again…

As the mine cart was escaping Hale, I destroyed a generator which blew him down into a crevice. Finally safe, the cart continued -- and Hale popped back up! The mech was damaged, but not badly enough to keep Hale from smashing me out of the cart. The final showdown was upon us -- me with an arsenal of four weapons, and Hale in his heavily armed and armoured (though no longer shielded) spider-mech.

I backed away, using the magnet gun to smash some generators hung from the roof of the cave into his mech, taking his health down slowly but surely. Each one I brought down gave me more room to escape by removing a force field, until the mech could take no more and conked out. The cutscene showed Hale still alive, no doubt ready to jump out to attack Mason.

Except his head fell out of the mech instead, somehow removed from his body… Cultists attacked, but having an ounce of sense, Kara had gone back to her spider-mech and came smashing through the nearby doors to save Mason. She suggested we head to the Marauder archives to see how the bugs were banished in the times of Ultor. Only one thing stood in our way -- tons of cultists. Okay, several things…

I rampaged through the cultists until we found a forcefield in place. Once the generator was taken out: monsters attacked. Because of course the way I had to go was full of freaking bugs… Thankfully the spider-mech was much more resilient than the Titan mechs I had used, so it was barely phased by the attacking beasts. Eventually I reached a jet, and we got in it to head for the Marauder archives.

Upon reaching them, the building appeared deserted, though Kara wasn’t convinced that it was. Indeed, we found her friend’s body in a closet moments later. Mason recovered a device from the body and got S.A.M. to begin work on decoding it. The bugs decided that was the perfect time to attack.

Kara sent me to fend them off alongside the Marauders (who weren’t there to answer the door minutes earlier), while she restored power to the shields. I waded through bugs and had to destroy their ways in -- one bridge, and then collapse some cave supports. It was pretty easy, all things considered, especially as my choice in weapons tended to be of the explosive variety.

I then had to defend the power generators for about a minute, before I was allowed to rest. S.A.M. played the portion of the message that it had decoded so far, revealing that Ultor knew about the bugs, and hinting that they had a way to stop them… Unfortunately, the AI needed an upgraded processor to process the rest of the message sooner than 236 hours -- luckily there was such an item on the fifth level of the facility.

I spent ten minutes walking through droves of alien monsters before finally reaching the right place. Dozens of monsters attacked, and I simply took apart the building with my magnet gun to murder them all. It was time consuming, but my penchant for explosives didn’t lend itself to plentiful ammunition… The chip installed, S.A.M. played the message, where we found out that Capek had discovered the so-called Central Mind -- the queen -- which had driven him mad, probably explaining his desire to stick his nanites in miners… He’d also drawn a map.

Mason jumped in a jet so that we could reach Winters, who was en route to help locate the Central Mind. I flew through many tunnels, shooting creatures and attempting to save Red Faction soldiers from death. Before long I was meeting up with Winters, who suggested we take a barge along the river of lava. Once a specific portion had been drained, we could go straight to the Central Mind.

Winters piloted the barge, leaving me to man the gun, and risk my neck operating any switches we came across. There were a couple, which was kind of a hassle, but we reached the machine keeping the area filled and destroyed it. Once off of the barge, some monsters tried to attack, but were stopped by Kara in one of the huge spider-mechs like the one Hale had earlier. Mason climbed aboard, stating that he was going to drive, and we left Winters to fend for himself.

With the mech I stomped, blasted and exploded hundreds of creatures, nests and spires as I carved my way through the caves. We had to find the Ultor facility, presumably because that was where the Central Mind was. The recording hadn’t said there was a facility, just tunnels…

Part of the cave floor suddenly gave way, sending the mech crashing down a couple of hundred meters. It refused to move, so Kara and Mason got out to fix it. Presumably the Nano-Forge on Mason’s wrist couldn’t do anything, as he let Kara do all the work. S.A.M. reported once the repairs had been made, that they were being watched. So of course Mason and Kara shared a kiss, the creatures attacking on cue.

In the struggle, Kara was stabbed through the torso and dragged off into a hole. As if the monsters hadn’t done enough to make Mason want to kill them all... He got back in the mech and demanded that S.A.M. find the way to the Central Mind, despite her protests. Unfortunately the route she found took the mech across a fragile rocky bridge -- although she did express concerns over using it in the mech.

The mech fell down another couple of hundred meters, conveniently close enough to the Central Mind for S.A.M. to scan it. Or, at least, the closest part of it. It was measuring over 100 meters in size, and rather than shoot it in the stomach (or whatever it was), Mason decided we should go up to shoot it in the face.

I had to damage some tentacles to get rid of them, and up I went, attacked by dozens more monsters of varying sizes. There were more tentacles to get rid of, which surely wasn’t angering the Central Mind at all. I eventually reached the top, where a beast that could swallow an APC was waiting.

Luckily it only had a couple of attacks -- an energy beam and some fiery breath stuff. Its weak points were only available to be hit while it was attacking, so that added to the peril -- and it kept summoning more of its smaller creatures to take pot-shots at me. Less than ten minutes later, it was ready to die -- so it began to thrash around and started smashing through the ground above.

S.A.M. told Mason that the easiest way to end this would be to bring the Terraformer back online, which would make the atmosphere more difficult for the bugs to survive in. Mason declared that the Nano-Forge could probably repair it -- how long was it since the thing got blown up, again…?

He hitched a lift on the Queen, which luckily burst him through the ground a short jog away from the Terraformer. Of course, more monsters descended upon me as I legged it for the main building, but I didn’t bother killing many of them. I had to get in through a service hatch, and activate the environment controls in a few sections. I’ll be honest, for a building that was exploded it was in pretty good nick…

All that was left was to repair the power cores -- after dealing with tentacles and monsters galore. I withstood a sustained assault, wishing I had re-equipped my magnet gun. The bugs dealt with, I moved on to the tentacles. They were the easy part, leaving me to repair the power cores, and boot up the Terraformer.

Yes, it was a little more difficult than that with yet another huge assault on me and the power cores. Luckily the booting up didn’t return to zero when the various cores were damaged, but it still took a lot longer than I thought it would. As soon as it booted up, the aliens began dying.

The Terraformer worked quickly, and by the time Mason had gotten out of the facility, S.A.M. was picking up comm reports of the bugs disoriented and dying. The Red Faction arrived shortly afterwards for the clean up. Mars was safe once again.