Review by: Michael Barnes

My first impression of Red Faction: Battleground was of a cross between a twin-stick shooter and old fashioned, isometric car combat games ranging from Racing Destruction Set, Rock n’ Roll Racing, and on through the newly re-released Death Rally on IOS. Sounds pretty good on paper, right? But after the dull game modes and the so-called single player “Training” campaign began to wear out their welcome, I realized that I wasn’t reaching far enough back into the well of antediluvian video game references. This game, really more accurately described as a marketing piece for the upcoming Red Faction: Armageddon, has more in common with Combat for the Atari 2600 than any of those titles.

Like Combat, Red Faction: Battlegrounds is a vehicle-versus-vehicle contest set in a fixed arena. There are several different (-ish) single-screen tracks across a couple of bland industrial environments. Players have a couple of vehicles at their disposal fresh from the Red Faction showroom floor, including a couple of varieties of tanks, trucks, and walkers. Each has a 360 arc of fire, hence the comparison to twin-stick shooters such as Geometry Wars or Robotron 2084. All have weak armor on their backsides, so the big (and only) strategy is to try to flank around to the back and blast away. Guns overheat after prolonged firing, so there is some fleeting tactical consideration to take into account.

The vehicles are really the best thing about the game. They’re fun to drive in Red Faction: Guerilla and the same holds true here. Control is extremely simple- point the stick, and the car goes. It feels almost like the old Nintendo chestnut RC Pro Am, along with that light, skate-y feeling. Despite the fact that the game is really something of a clunker, there’s definitely some minor delight in careening around and causing lots of explosions.

But the boom-boom is also a major issue in the game. Track walls are lined with all kinds of explosive objects. In keeping with RF:G’s tradition of extremely destructible environments, a match is typically filled with tons of explosions—many of which are caused by barely clipping an obstacle with your vehicle and causing accidental deaths. It is kind of neat that you can shoot at another vehicle, miss, and wind up blowing them up because you’ve pinged a fuel tank or something behind them, but the constant suicides get really, really old after a while.

Objects appear from time to time on the track, imparting the player with advantages such as a speed boost, extra armor, and mines. Nothing terribly exciting. Even the “Singularity Bomb”, sort of a black hole generator, isn’t very interesting. Especially when using it typically results in- you guessed it- an accidental suicide.

There are lots of ways to play this simplistic, gratingly boring demolition derby, but none of them are particularly worthwhile. The single player mode is called “Training”, and it consists of several missions that fit into four types (a checkpoint race, survival mode, a “beat the clock” enemy elimination round, and target shooting). Stars- and points toward a supremely basic progression scale- are earned based on performance. It’s not fun and it wears out quickly, even though you can complete the whole sequence in under an hour. If you’re looking into this title as a single-player game, run away and don’t look back. There’s nothing here for you.