While wandering the perimeter of THQ’s lavishly decorated kiosk, I turned to my fellow GameXplain contributor, Jimmy Thang, and casually said,  “Hey, we need to go check out Red Faction: Armageddon.” Apparently, a THQ exhibitor had heard me and quickly ushered us into the Red Faction viewing room. The demonstration lasted no more than 15 minutes, but the early impressions wet my appetite for more and left me with optimism for the polished product.

Red Faction: Armageddon is the fourth installment of THQ’s highly-acclaimed shooter series. Here’s the basic gist of the plot:

The Mars surface has been ravaged by war, forcing the surviving colonists underground to rebuild their civilization. Just when everyone barely begins to settle down again, an alien entity is unleashed to rock the face of humanity. Armageddon’s protagonist, Darius Mason, and the Red Faction are mankind’s only hope to eradicating this alien threat.

And there you have it, a quick summary of the plot to every sci-fi shooting game ever made. However, Armageddon does seem to offer much more than what initially meets the eye.

THQ presented a closed-door viewing of a functional build, which was played by one of Armageddon’s main developers. The visuals in the game are understandably different from the previous installments, taking on a more dark and ominous tone. During the demonstration, the audience witnessed first-hand the power of the Geo-Mod 2.0 graphics engine, which enabled the environment to be torn asunder or pieced together at will. That’s right, most of the environment was at your disposal to be ripped apart and be reconstructed.

Mason was equipped with a weapon called a magnet gun, which primarily was a tool of destruction. Functioning exactly how it sounded, the magnet gun allowed the player to magnetize two physical objects—be it part of the surrounding environment or an incoming enemy. As soon as the second object was targeted, the first was immediately launched toward the second, sending the two objects into a collision that ended in utter destruction. Chunks of war-torn landscape were easily uprooted as if they were unsightly weeds being pulled out of the ground. It came as no surprise that the enemies were just as easily dispatched using this weapon and this exact method.

To shake things up, the player also gets to rebuild demolished environmental objects. In one segment, the aliens began to outnumber and swarm the hero, but Mason took refuge in a dilapidated shelter and, in one quick sweeping motion, was able to reconstruct the walls for protection from the incoming horde. Just as quickly, Mason blasted through his recently constructed fortress to engage the ferocious alien species head-on. These two weapons provide a certain degree of tactical flexibility, of which I am particularly excited about, and bode well for the sundry of other exciting weapons that have yet to be introduced.

Oh, did I mentioned that there will be a mech suit? Viewers were introduced to a new bipedal mech suit that was outfitted with much more hard-hitting weaponry and seemed to easily tear through the opposing threat.

Another thing of note is that the camera’s perspective mimics the style of Gears of War in that the camera  sits much closer behind the character than in the previous installment. Based on the gameplay footage, the change in perspective didn’t detract at all from the overall fast-paced action of the game.

There’s no doubt that Armageddon is already visually appealing and shows much promise. If this trailer and demonstration were any indication for the things Red Faction: Armageddon will have in store, I can say with assurance that I will be eagerly anticipating this game. As of now, the game is slated to be released in March of 2011.