|
You can’t help but appreciate a company who not only announces its planned DLC shortly after their game initially ships, but delivers it almost just as fast. Volition – the developers behind Red Faction: Guerrilla – did just that when it announced a trio of DLC all focusing on different areas of the game. The first of which, Demons of the Badlands, has just found itself on our 360 hard drives and brings with it a prologue to the game’s original story. While not as compelling and deep as we were expecting, fans of the game have plenty of reasons to consider this pack.
In Guerrilla, you played as Alec Mason. A giant hammer-wielding civilian who came to Mars just to look for work and inescapably finds himself as the Red Faction’s newest recruit and savior against the Earth Defense Force (EDF). In Badlands, though, you play as Samanya, Alec’s weapon upgrade specialist and guide of sorts from the original campaign who * SPOILER * turns out to be one of the Marauders (a seemingly group of savages wielding extraordinary and powerful weaponry). As Samanya, you will uncover the story behind the events that took place on Mars shortly before Alec’s arrival.
Where Badlands sort of under delivers is in its control scheme. While Samanya wields the more powerful Marauder technology (your starting gear here is essentially equal to Alec’s fully upgraded arsenal) she feels exactly the same as Alec. In other words, both characters feel and ultimately act the same. The only difference here really is visually in that Samanya is adorned in the extreme looking Marauder gear and the weapon skins are incredibly more outlandish. This can be both taken as a good or bad thing, though, depending on who you are. On the one hand the fact that the gameplay mechanics are identical means there’s no new learning curve for the game so fans or players of the main campaign will be able to quickly jump into this expansion. On the other hand it sort of undermines the fact that you’re playing as a different class in the game that feels 100% identical to everything else and in that sense you basically just feel like you’re playing as Alec in a costume.
While the control scheme may be identical, the new weaponry most certainly is a welcomed addition to the game. As aforementioned, the Marauders are extremely more advanced than the Guerrilla’s, as was very apparent in the game’s original campaign. As a Marauder yourself now you have access to their more extreme weapons right from the start and the difference is immeasurable. Essentially, your starting weapons here are equivalent to that of many of Alec’s fully upgraded ones. That is to say that as you upgrade your new Marauder technology (which is done via completing missions rather than collecting scrap metal) you’ll be significantly more powerful than Alec could ever hope to be. You’ll find that leveling buildings is even easier and more destructive, but this is somewhat hampered by the fact that you no longer need to level buildings to collect salvage to upgrade your weapons. Instead, here you will just blow stuff up just for the hell of it.
Demons of the Badlands will ultimately take a few hours to complete and features four story missions and 11 or so Marauder Actions (extra missions and mini games; same thing as Guerrilla Actions). The story could have been a bit more fleshed out and the low replay factor as a result of the short campaign and lack of salvage collecting for weapons upgrades keep this DLC from Volition from truly shining. At $9.99, though, it’s still a pretty good bargain for fans of the original looking to get their hands on the destructive power of the Marauders and see yet another finely detailed section of Mars.
| Share this: |
|  | | | |  |
Discuss this in the forums!
|
| No one has posted a comment yet. Be the first one by logging in if need be and submitting your comment to the right. Be aware that we do not tolerate those who post "First" comments. If done enough times, you could be banned from posting comments. |
|
|
|
