In Demons of the Badlands, the first of three DLC packs announced for RFG, we get to play as Samanya (Alec’s helpful blonde “friend”) and find out what happened when the EDF tried to govern the Marauders and invade their territory, and why Sam left the Marauders to join the Red Faction.
Mariner valley is an isolated region approximately the same size as the bigger zones in RFG, and is made up of steep-sided rift valleys, so don’t go expecting wide-open areas like in the Badlands or pretty rolling hills as found in the terraformed Oasis. Apart from the story missions Sam also has a few more ‘Transporter’, ‘House Arrest’, ‘Heavy Metal’ and ‘Demolitions Master’ missions to complete, but fun as they were, they seemed rather easy compared to some of the more devilish RFG ones.
You get awarded most of the weapons and their upgrades from the original game, with the rest being opened up via the story missions (except the Nano Rifle of course, because this is a prequel and Samanya hasn’t built it yet!) Ironically, some of the weapons are more powerful than in RFG, particularly the gauss rifle which’ll now take out an EDF armoured car in one shot, so it replaced the Nano rifle as my primary weapon of choice. The rather odd, front-heavy design of the Marauder vehicles has been replaced with two much more conventional-looking dune buggies too, but the EDF vehicles are the same. Vehicularly speaking, the star of the show is a new walker called the Punisher; I found a couple of them on the map, and when you find one you’ll be in no doubt as to its purpose as it has a huge demolition ball mace on each arm! EDF vehicles (even tanks) or even hardened buildings stand little chance against this monster, which is all painted up in Marauder colours. Despite being a rather stark and primitive region, Mariner valley has been lavished with just as much detail as all of the others and exploration is a joy, although you’ll really miss Alec’s jet pack when trying to scale some of the steep slopes.
The problem with DotB is that, if you’re of a mind to, the whole thing, story missions and Marauder actions can polished off in a few hours. Yes it’ll take you a good while longer to find all 75 power cells and 4 Marauder war totems—if, like me, you’re one of those who loves to hunt for (semi) hidden stuff. Compared to some DLC packs this might seem rather lightweight to some, even for the price of 800 points (currently £6.80/$10.00), but the news that two more DLC packs are coming for RFG (one multiplayer and another solo episode) is great news. The fact is that if you’re a fan of RFG you have to buy this, because it fills in the cracks on why Sam left the Marauders and joined the Red Faction, and you want to see what happened and blow up some more stuff, you know you do…
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