Red Faction: Armageddon

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.

If you prefer the direct approach there's the Singularity Cannon, which creates a miniature black hole that sucks up everything around it, breaks it down into nanites and spits it out in colourful chunks and particles. That'll teach you for being an alien, alien. As with Guerrilla, it's easy to combine the effects of multiple weapons - like freezing a quill-firing Ravager alien with stasis and then black-holing it to death.

This is just as well, because there are lots of aliens and they have different tactics. Creepers are early contenders for most annoying - they scuttle along, overwhelm you with speed and numbers, and whenever they're not scratching at your shins they're spitting acid on you. You can at least stamp on their heads.

Despite being underground rather than on the surface, then, there are still plenty of ways to wreak massive damage on the infested environment, and damage is often wrought at greater speed because of your increased firepower.

At one stage Darius jumps in a Red Faction exoskeleton - an agile, fast-moving mech with rapid-fire railgun, lock-on heat-seeking missiles and fierce melee skills, and he busts through buildings and rock formations like he's wading through plastic ducks in a paddling pool. Explodey, disintegrating plastic ducks.

Volition says that there are lots of different environments underground - we see beautiful blue ice caverns and more familiar dark, brown versions, and we're promised a lava level - but that some of the game is set on the surface too, where it is survivable but very inhospitable, ravaged by fierce and unpredictable storms.

Otherwise a lot of details are still to be confirmed. There will be multiplayer but it won't be revealed until the autumn. There will be upgrades, probably based on salvage (a la Guerrilla), but no details today. There will be side missions, but nothing today. It's the same for vehicles, beyond what we've seen in the demonstration.

One thing we do get to see now though is Red Faction: Battlegrounds, the downloadable PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade game in development at THQ Digital. It's a twin-stick, top-down multiplayer vehicle combat game played out on a single screen by mechs, tanks and other armoured vehicles, and it's designed to offer a pick-up-and-play distraction in the run-up to Armageddon's release.

It looks fun. There are various pickups like proximity mines, remote charges (cf Guerrilla) and a singularity bomb with a huge blast radius, and there are nine arenas in the shipping version, which will support local co-op multiplayer and online games of deathmatch, team deathmatch, king of the hill, capture the flag and flag frenzy (pick up flags, drop them off at bases). It should tie in with Armageddon too, so if you unlock Trophies or Achievement you receive some sort of benefit in that.

Oh, and if you like DLC with your DLC, you will be interested in the two planned support packs for Battlegrounds - an Armageddon pack featuring some of the vehicles from that game and an Origins pack, which will build on the TV mini-series Red Faction: Origins due out next year, itself destined to fill storyline gaps between Guerrilla and Armageddon by focusing on the Mason who lived in the middle, Jake.

It's a comprehensive package, reflecting THQ's newfound love of multimedia and its determination for Red Faction to grow into a huge franchise rather than a popular, medium-sized one. Armageddon may be going from Guerrilla to the real underground, then, but make no mistake - Red Faction still aims to tear it up.