Find Me - Get Swag @ PAX

Where's V-Singular (@PAX)

Starting Thursday, September 2nd, I'll be walking around downtown Seattle and joining thousands of others at the Penny Aracde Expo, better known as PAX.  Along with me on the trip will be a messenger bag full of Red Faction swag including t-shirts, mini-flashlights, key chains, comic books, and alien plasma samples.

If you want one, all you need to do is perform a real-world "Where's Waldo" and find me either on the show floor or somewhere around downtown Seattle before I leave on the 6th.  Just walk up to me, say "Hello" or some combination of words that hopefully does not contain an expletive, and we'll find something in my bag-o-swag for you (as long as supplies last).

As many on the Saints Row Community know, the best way to find me is to look for my sideburns.  Here's my employee photo on the Volition website.  I'll also be wearing either a Red Faction or Saints Row shirt each day of PAX (probably with a Volition logo on the front), so that should make me easier to find.  Hopefully I'll get to meet a few of our awesome community members on the show floor, and you'll even get some awesome Red Faction swag!

You can also follow me on Twitter as I'll probably toss out my location on the show floor from time to time - @One_Letter

Side contest: First person to find Waldo in the header image and post his location in the comments will get a mini prize pack mailed to them!

Comment

RFA Previews from GamesCom

If you had an early look at an unreleased game, wouldn't you want to write about it?  While our community members can't go hands on yet, certain other gaming websites can, and they decided to take some time to write about Red Faction: Armageddon, and how it's been coming along on our lead up to release in March of 2011.

To read any of the full previews below, click on the link above the quote.

CVG:

"What is it you're doing in any other game?" [RFA's Design Director, David Abzug] asks. "You're maybe taking explosive barrels and launching them at the bad guy? You might grab a sign or something? In Armageddon, you can throw a convenience store at them. You can take out an army in one swipe by throwing a tank at them. You can take the entire side of a four-story building and turn it into a bullet."


Eurogamer
:

"It's not the only new technology developed by the people of Mars since the end of Guerrilla, either. Another new nanoforge ability produces a shockwave that traps enemies in stasis in midair, allowing you to do what you want with them. You could melee them, shoot them with a rifle, simply leg it to get away, or perhaps use the magnet gun to throw something at them. Like a barrel. Or a house. "
 

GameReactor:

"If anything, the indoor setting has allowed Volition to surround you with destructible scenery more than was previously possible. Settlers have built structures everywhere, up the walls, across the ceilings, spanning caverns, at times they almost seem to be avoiding placing things on the floor. And the spaces here are vast, with rocky ceilings hundreds of metres about your head, pillars of rock stretching hither and thither and dynamic lighting (Volition are especially proud of their dynamic lighting) creating a far more visually interesting landscape than anything Guerrilla could belt out."
 


Comment

Biggest Changes Between RFG and RFA

When we first announced Red Faction: Armageddon, many thought that it was just going to be Red Faction: Guerrilla 2.  While Armageddon is still on Mars and continuing to follow the Mason family bloodline, there are some major game play changes that Lead Level Designer, Jameson Durall, sat down and discussed with Joystiq.  In particular, they asked Jameson to come up with the 5 biggest changes seen in the shift from Guerrilla to Armageddon.  Here's one:

More of the Fun Stuff -- "In building a fully open world for Guerrilla we found that there was a lot of downtime in between the really exciting action segments. As we began Armageddon we wanted to minimize the downtime and give the player more action and excitement. So instead of an open world, we went with a collection of "mini-sandboxes," areas with 360 degrees of destruction that a player can approach however they see fit. Players who prefer to equip the magnet gun and launch pieces of the world at enemies need to have just as many options as the player who wants to place remote charges and detonate them as enemies approach. It takes a lot of planning and testing to anticipate the infinite possibilities of how players will tackle a given area and ensure that they don't feel their play-style suffers, especially the players that like to charge in and blast everything that moves."

To read the other four major changes, head over to Joystiq and read the article.

Comment

RFA Screenshots from GamesCom

In the three screenshots below, take a look at some of the newest toys revealed for Red Faction: Armageddon.  There may only be three, but there's quite a lot to view within each one.  Underground caverns filled with magma, Darius shoving the plague around with a new Nano Forge ability, and the brand new Singularity Cannon sucking up enemies into the newly appearing black hole.

Comment

Community Weekend Entertainment!

We're back again with another episode of Weekend Entertainment, this time brought to you exclusively from our awesome community members.  If you weren't aware, we have a specific "Fan Submissions" section of our forums just for this kind of thing, and we welcome all community members to join in and show off their RF-related projects.

First up, we've got AlexM18 with some "Red Faction Shenanigans."  It's pretty obvious how much time was put into this, since we all know how hard some of these can be to capture when dealing with physics.  

Comment

Next up is BlindSpot1993 who decided that he needed to put Red Faction into other games, in this case, Far Cry 2.  Watch the video below to watch the creation process of our MP map "Sand Pit", recreated within the Far Cry engine.  BlindSpot1993 makes some really creative choices towards the specific buildings and textures to make a map that works within the constraints of another game engine.

Comment

That's all for this week! If you have your own custom RF-related projects, post them up in the Fan Submissions section and maybe you'll appear on the front page as well!

GameSpot Interviews Chad Greene @ GamesCom

All of the Volitionites showing off Red Faction: Armageddon in Germany this past week are landing back in the US within the next few hours.  It may be a long flight, but it was well worth it.  GamesCom Germany came and went this year, climbing to a new record attendance numbering over 250,000 people!  You can view a few photos of the even over on our Facebook page.

Two of those people in attendance were Product Art Director, Chad Greene, and Giancarlo Varanini, Editor for GameSpot.  They set side a few minutes during the convention to speak about not only the newest additions to Darius' arsenal, but also Red Faction: Battlegrounds (Our upcoming XBL/PSN title) and Red Faction: Origins (The upcoming 2-hour SyFy movie).  Take a look below to find out more on the entire Red Faction universe set to debut next year.

(If the video doesn't load, click here)

Comment