Red Faction: Guerrilla - Demons of the Badlands

THQ will start taking bids for its remaining IP from 1st April at a court-supervised auction.

Volition appears to be getting the hang of this DLC lark. After enduring something of a critical backlash for its rather apologetic Saints Row 2 DLC, the first portion of downloadable Red Faction Guerrilla takes an altogether more appealing approach.

Set eight years before Red Faction Guerrilla in 2117, Demons of the Badlands focuses on an entirely different part of the war with the Earth Defence Force. Built around female lead character Samanya - you remember Sam - the game's action also takes place in an entirely new environment, known as Mariner Valley. As it's entirely unconnected to the parent game this is more akin to a mini-expansion, rather than an extension of what went before.

You're fighting alongside the ragtag band of resistance fighters called the Marauders. The gameplay otherwise treads familiar ground in terms of mission structure and the type of objectives you face. There are three excitingly explosive new story missions in a discrete mini-campaign and your first task is to help save your sister, Vasha, from a public execution at the hands of the ever-charming EDF.

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Volition has released a big old patch for Red Faction: Guerrilla on PS3 and Xbox 360 and announced its first double-XP weekend to celebrate.

The patch comes ahead of the 13th August release of the Demons of the Badlands DLC, but Volition has packed in a good few additions despite the upcoming premium reinforcement.

As well as a new Wrecking Crew mode and leaderboards, the patch unlocks four additional Wrecking Crew maps that were used as pre-order bonuses so that everyone may now play them.

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Open-world games typically needn't expand physically to accommodate downloadable content, but with an air of cynicism still lingering over the very concept of premium add-ons, it's a nice thing to see all the same. Fallout 3, for example, has alternated between changes within the Capital Wasteland and sections that take away from it - and, in the upcoming Mothership Zeta, out of its orbit completely. Red Faction: Guerrilla's Demons of the Badlands DLC sticks to the surface of Mars, but despite the vast playgrounds of Dust, the Badlands and beyond, happily transports you to a new area - and a different period in the planet's history.

THQ has announced plans to release three premium DLC packs for Red Faction: Guerrilla, the first of which is due out on 13th August.