THQ is going to offer up a downloadable Red Faction game soon, and I’m almost certainly going to buy it. It’s a strategy THQ is looking to use across a few of its key franchises: getting their games on people’s minds before the full retail release.
While Red Faction: Armageddon doesn’t launch until March 2011, this downloadable episode (or whatever you want to call it) will launch “three to four months before Armageddon,” THQ VP of core games Danny Bilson said.
For Red Faction, it’s actually being positioned to bring hype for both Armageddon and the upcoming SyFy TV show.
As expected, it’ll hit XBLA and PSN and serve as a bridge between Guerrilla and Armageddon.
While THQ didn’t list off all of the games that would use this strategy, they did name drop Saints Row – no surprise there.
Totally (sort of) unrelated, THQ is wrecking shit these days. They’ve been releasing consistently solid titles over the past couple years and the good games don’t look to be slowing down. It wasn’t but maybe four years ago that I saw them as one of the more pathetic third party publishers.
Times have certainly changed as I now eagerly await a bevyof THQ titles.
Red Faction is getting the movie treatment, but don’t get your hopes up. It’s not coming to theaters (not exactly indicative of quality either); it’s coming straight to the Syfy channel.
If it does manage to find success, an actual Red Faction television series might air.
I’m mostly reporting this because Red Faction: Guerrilla is fucking awesome and this news gives me another excuse to say that.
Who knows, maybe this won’t be terrible (yes it will be).
Posted by Justin on February 11th, 2010 | 0 comments
Best Multiplatform Game
Red Faction: Guerrilla
Controversy! Controversy! I’ve got a feeling my multiplatform pick might not sit well with most. It’s not Modern Warfare 2, it’s not Borderlands, Arkham Asylum or Assassin’s Creed II – those are all perfectly fine games mind you, but I’m looking over at Volition for my winner.
Red Faction: Guerrilla is a phenomenal game that I fear most people only experience half of. The solo campaign is great fun to be sure, but if you never go online with it, you’re cheating yourself.
Red Faction separates itself from other shooters with a few key components. First off, it’s not in first person (shock and awe). However, the real the difference comes with the various backpacks and completely destructible environments.
Using the packs you can pummel through buildings and people, fly through the air, go invisible and all sorts of other completely awesome things. The destructible environments can be used for strategic planning, or to simply crush opponents.
Let me ask you this, can you slay opponents with an Ostrich Hammer in your favorite multiplatform game?
Posted by Justin on February 4th, 2010 | 1 comment
THQ had some big announcements yesterday in an earnings report with loads of new titles that should be of high quality – odd saying that about THQ, but they’ve upped their game in recent years.
I’m going to call ‘em out for frowning on those Darksiders numbers if they’re truly disappointed, apparently THQ has shipped around 1.2 million copies of the game already. That’s an impressive number for a new IP, and nothing to be ashamed of.
Judging from reviews, the success is well deserved, too. I’ll have to pick it up one day or another.
THQ announced numerous upcoming titles during the report, and while reports seem a little conflicting, I’ve tried to piece it together. Launching in fiscal year 2011, which actually starts this March, Homefront and a new Red Faction are scheduled for release. READ MORE
Posted by Justin on August 25th, 2009 | 0 comments
I’ve been Red Faction: Guerrilla free for about a week or so thanks to other distractions, but I might get sucked back in soon enough. I stress the word might because it hits Sept. 17, which is only a few days before Halo 3: ODST launches. For as cool as the pack will be, I’m not sure if I can justify dropping the 560 points for something I might play for less than a week.
Regardless, the pack looks great.
It comes with eight new maps and two new modes, one of which is called Bagman and is highlighted thoroughly in the trailer above.
Worth noting, though the video says Sept. 10, Joystiq has been informed that – as mentioned above – the pack won’t hit until Sept. 17.
THQ has been hurting for a while now, but with the release of UFC: Undisputed the company killed. In their June quarter results, the company shipped out 2.9 million units worldwide and I can assure you the game isn’t done yet.
More important to me, however, is that the company also cites Red Faction: Guerrilla as a hit. THQ has shipped one million units of Volition’s sandbox game, an impressive feat given the relatively small amount of hype the game had going into launch.
I’m sure the guys at Volition are extremely happy about the report, and honestly, I am, too. On Live, we’re still playing Guerrilla and with great sales I’m confident we won’t be waiting too long before seeing a sequel.
From all that I gather, I’ll soon have another valid reason to fill your ears with more Red Faction: Guerrilla talk. On August 13, the first of three DLC packs hits the market under the name Demons of the Badlands, and the trailer looks goddamn awesome.
The one element of the single player campaign that wasn’t fleshed out enough was the Marauders who dwell in the Badlands and this pack appears to be all about the them. In fact, you are a Marauder. At 800 points, it seems like a sure thing. As the trailer tells you, Demons of the Badlands has new environments, weapons and vehicles so it’s not just a few extra missions tossed into the already existing surface. My bet is that new portions of the map that were previously unreachable will be unlocked – for those who’ve beaten it, there’s still quite a bit of blurred out map to expand out into.
I generally don’t give a damn about Xbox Live weekly numbers, but there are two things worth noting this time around. One, where in the hell is Red Faction: Guerrilla? Despite the small readership here, it’s not just me that has been singing its praises. I’ve seen a lovely trend of practically unanimous love for the title across all the major sites. It’s good game guys, go pick it up.
I’ll refrain from jumping the gun and assuming the game didn’t sale as well as it damn well better. The Xbox Live activity list is a lot like NPD numbers in that there are certain shoo-in titles that appear every week. Like the multiple Wii Somethings that make the top 10 sales time and time again, Call of Duty always snags a couple of spots on Xbox Live activity rankings. READ MORE
