Red Faction Armageddon Diaries Part Four

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.

Trying to make up for the fact that monsters from the bowels of Mars were literally tearing the populous apart, Mason had been volunteering for suicide missions, his latest one having resulted in him destroying the water purification plant…

On the way back to Bastion, it wasn’t long before I came across a building covered in the monster’s biomass -- and I still had no idea what it did. Darius took it upon himself to destroy the building, and the four others that he encountered enroute to Bastion. Of course, each one had a nest or two and required extensive bug extermination…

I was quite annoyed that the quest marker told me to go to successive ones, only for me to have to backtrack to find the fifth building. Mainly because then one of the spawning spires burst out of the ground to kill me, as if I hadn’t gone through enough...

I entered Bastion and figured I could relax. Unfortunately the populace had other ideas, as news of my involvement in releasing the creatures from wherever they came from had been spread around. Instead of telling them that Adam Hale had tricked him into doing it, they began chasing and shooting, so Mason legged it, the cutscene finishing with a long fall.

Luckily he didn’t land on his head nor lose consciousness, as this was the sewer and he had to flee for his life. It wasn’t just the survivors who were after him, either. You guessed it, more monsters attacked as I made my way through the sewer, trying to get higher to reach Kara, who had just made contact. Yeah, it’s been a while since we saw her in Part One.

She told me to meet her at the market -- hopefully not the market at Bastion as I wasn’t exactly popular there. Mason wanted to get to the surface to find Hale, to put the genie back in the bottle. I got the feeling it would be more like putting toothpaste back in a tube that had been blown up…

Whilst on the run and amongst the creatures, people began finding Mason and trying to kill him in Looney Tunes-style ways, such as dropping a giant stalactite onto him. The leader of the rabble jumped Mason in a cutscene, quickly being eaten by a monster before I got the chance to send him flying with the gravity gun. A minute later, Kara contacted Mason saying, through heavy interference, to stay away from the market. Mason decided that she was just bitching at him and assured her that he was almost there. Red Faction protagonists are idiots…

Finding the market, it was pretty much completely on fire with monster portals and nests spawning a number of them. Luckily I found a mech suit and decimated my way through them, the buildings they were biomassing on and making my way towards the elevator which would take us to the surface.

I went through the Red Faction’s headquarters, discovering that Mason had quit shortly after the Terraformer had been destroyed. The route also took me through quite a large prison facility. Both were devoid of human life, but full to bursting with horrible creatures.

I eventually reached a ladder which needed repairing, as it was too high for the mech to go any further. So of course this was where I had to leave it, moments after hearing a terrible roar from some huge unseen creature. At the top of the ladder -- you guessed it. A behemoth of a bug.

I ran around throwing walls and ceilings from the surrounding buildings at it, thanks to the magnet gun. As that was doing little damage, I switched to my rocket launcher -- unfortunately its slow reload rate was too much of a hurdle. My electric gun came out, not stopping but certainly hurting the beast. It had only thrown me around a little before it finally died. I got on the elevator with Kara and we left.

Just then, the survivors showed up, wanting to prove just how badass they were by trailing in Mason’s wake of destruction so that they could kill him. He attempted to warn them to run as there were more creatures -- but the monsters attacked the survivors while they were shooting at the moving cargo elevator.

Safely at the top, the Red Faction arrested Kara and Mason, because of course they would… The commander didn’t believe that Hale set Mason up, so had him in chains in the APC. I never found out where they were taking him, not that it mattered as the monsters started to attack. Thankfully let Mason go and gave him a weapon to help defend the group.

After half a dozen big monsters attacked, Mason decided that we should take out the nests -- oh, and the huge tentacle which was grabbing stuff and throwing it at us. Multiple tentacles, many bullets and several nests later, I was attacked by a behemoth, as well as the survivors of my recent nest destructing. I legged it back to the Red Faction, where I was told to hop into the nearby mech armour, called a Titan. Nice to finally have a name for that thing.

We were attacked by a few waves of creatures, but thanks to the Titan’s rockets and minigun we were pretty safe. Soon enough I was able to talk to Frank Winters, Mason’s old commanding officer from the Terraformer. Right after decking his commanding officer, who was being a pain in the arse.

During the following cutscene, which saw Winters talking about cultists holed up somewhere interfering with signals. He couldn’t order Mason to take out the relay towers, not being in the militia. So of course Mason volunteered and went off to murder some Marauders.

When he reached the camp, there was a big storm in the area. It meant visibility was low, and there were freaking tornados. I waded in magnet gun-first, throwing cultists flying and smashing their homes into the relay towers. S.A.M. warned about a wind funnel and I ducked out of the way of one of the tornados as it tore through the buildings and people in the way.

The rest was basically rinse and repeat -- kill cultists, destroy tower, avoid weather. In no time at all, the mission was finished and the cultists were dead. Mason returned to the Red Faction camp, in the ruins of the region of Dust, and went to sleep.

That’s when a huge spider-shaped mech stomped into town...