Red Faction: Armageddon

The magnet gun isn't the only new toy in the sandbox, either. Apart from the plasma beam – a sort of long-distance laser sword useful for cutting the foundations out from under heavy lumps of masonry – there's the singularity cannon.

This creates a miniature black hole that blows impressive chunks out of the environment and anything foolish enough to be wandering around it. It makes an impressive low whoomph noise as it goes off, before leaving a ghostly sigh hanging in the air as its impact is made apparent.

The Nano Forge from Guerrilla returns too, but its upgraded form is a repair tool that can be used to reassemble broken sections of the environment. It's in constant use in single-player as the collateral damage to gantries, turbines and stairwells takes its toll on your options for progression.

Because it's positioned on the left bumper you can use it independently of weapons, repairing crates and walls to provide ammunition for the magnet gun you're wielding with the other trigger finger.

Alternatively, the Nano Forge emits a short-range wave of destruction, which is helpful for hacking through walls and doors that don't deserve a magnet or remote charge, or even the time it takes to pull out your trusty sledgehammer.

Combat, whether against aliens or Hale's cultists, benefits from a Call of Duty-style left-trigger snap-to-target option – optional, but now so firmly part of the language of first- and third-person shooters that its absence would be peculiar.

That's probably just as well because the greater degree of vertical gameplay afforded by the deep caves of the Mars underground, along with the aliens' tendency to sprout from the walls and dart around the ceiling, means that the mid-screen radar gadget can only do a reasonable job helping you to triangulate the whereabouts of the things you're trying to shoot.

You still collect 'salvage' – the shiny metal byproduct of all your vandalism – and continue to invest it in upgrades, for things like recoil reduction, damage reduction while evading, faster reloading, health upgrades and on-screen readouts of enemy vitals (you know, health bars).

Guerrilla's hulking mech suits also return, their superior firepower and armament allowing Volition to pad your surroundings with a greater number of enemies to change the pace. You're not invincible in a suit though, so in these situations it's best to prioritise the alien spawn pods for zapping, not least because their children are stronger when they're nearby.

The boldest change, of course, is the decision to relocate the game away from the sprawling, open-world surface of Mars into the linear caves and mines of the underground. The developers make a good case for their choice. Critics of the last game pinpointed the long, fairly dull drives over desolate terrain between entertaining battles as weak links. The linearity of the underground affords the developer greater control over pacing and spectacle, while the cavernous surrounds are still able hosts for mountains of destructible scenery.

One definite casualty is the side missions that gave you things to do in between advancing Guerrilla's plot, but speaking to the developers you get the impression they plan to feature timed destruction challenges and other diversions as a separate entity. We'll see.

Whether Armageddon enhances Volition's reputation as a storyteller as well as an unpretentious action game developer is hard to tell at this stage. The game is still pretty cheesy from what we could make of it – "Here comes the cavalry!" etc. - and the missions we get to play are enjoyable, but lack the scale and composure of a Halo or the visual inventiveness of a Half-Life.

Nevertheless, Armageddon seems unlikely to undo the series' reputation for breaking things and having a lot of fun in the process, and for many – us included – a more compelling narrative core sheathed in destructible playthings would be enough to tempt us back another go-round. We don't call it the red planet for nothing.