Up to its release RAGE bewildered me, I couldn’t understand the hype behind it, when reading and watching previews I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Was it the fact ID were finally releasing a game after seven years? Maybe because of the new ID tech five software? Or simply because people just like to shoot stuff. Never the less RAGE annoyed me up until its release; I even did a piece on my confusion towards the games. Well it’s out now and I’ve played it and I’m still a bit confused.
Before we get into that let’s talk about the story. The game takes place a hundred or so years in the future, after an asteroid has hit the earth and wiped out most of human civilisation. Except for the world’s best and brightest who were stored in cryo sleep deep underground in bunkers called arks. You play a nameless emotionless character that has a natural affinity for shooting stuff really well. After being rescued by a character called Dan Hagar (voiced by John Goodman) from one of the wasteland clans you are told that the world has all gone to hell and a big evil authority is in charge and are very bad, standard stuff. Without so much as a word your character is off shooting people left right and centre, the character in RAGE is mute but should be a speaking one, we should know who he is and what he did before the asteroid hit earth. It makes for a lot of awkward moments in the game, you get most of your missions from characters who will describe their mission but will pause for you then to click “X” to allow them to continue, there should be dialogue options. The story itself isn’t much better, it’s weird how the game had prequel comic book series and a book up to its release but yet when it comes to game time it does absolutely nothing with the world it has set up. We are told the main villains, the Authority are vicious and have done wicked things to people, yet we don’t see this, occasionally the authority might come into one of the towns you are in but even then they just seem like normal people trying to do their bit. Show us don’t tell us. There is no leader of the authority to make them feel personal or anything. The story just comes off as a reason to shoot people, which is annoying especially since the characters you meet are all interesting and all very well animated and voice acted.
When watching a preview for the game, the director of the game Tim Willits claimed the game to be “open but directive” and gave the impression that it wouldn’t be the truest form of open world sandbox gameplay. After playing the game I almost feel like ID have cheated a bit, While building up to the release the developers were saying how good it is to leave the linear corridor shooters and move into new ground and were (I felt) rather smug, as if they were the first to try this and seemed rather ignorant of other games, this game isn’t open really at all. How did they cheat? I hear you ask, well here’s how a mission works: You told to go get something from an area, you then drive to said area and maybe take part in some car combat racing on the way, get out the car and walkthrough a door and you are then entered into a linear FPS level. This doesn’t change throughout the game at all, why not use some of that car combat you guys were all on about in the missions and not simply have it as a bit of fun on the way to the linear level. You’re main HUB area which you are free to walk around safely and stock up on supplies and the like are; at the start, Wellsprings or later on the game, Subway town. In these areas you can pick up side missions at mission boards which are basically running through areas you have already done or occasionally doing some sniper stuff to protect a VIP. You can also take part in races which give you tokens to spend on upgrading your car. I didn’t realise you could do this to way late into the game, so I quickly put all the tokens into my car, later on however I was annoyed when I was given a better car than the one I had. Basically the upgrades to your car are pointless, as long as you have a good supply of machine gun rounds and rockets your more than cope. So the structure of the game isn’t done well at all and the missions lack variety when compared to other open world games. Speaking of the world, there really isn’t one, the mission areas and towns are connected by highways, there is no travelling merchants or normal people to talk to. The world isn’t even used for missions, there is no main mission that involves the car, and it’s simply a way to get about. The world feels dead. This is and the structure of the game is a problem and would be an either bigger one if it wasn’t for the shooting and the main FPS gameplay being so damn fun.
The gameplay is nothing revolutionary but is still very good. The game always runs at a smooth sixty frame per second which is very rare for consoles, all guns shoot great with fitting sound effects. While the guns are the standard affair with the AK-47 and shotgun they all have various ammo types such as electro bullets and can be upgraded to some extent. You even get bladed boomerangs called wing sticks which are cool. The game has some RPG elements with the ability to build things like turrets and walking turrets which help you with flanking the enemies. The enemies have good Ai, they read the environment, try to flank, retreat and regroup. Some enemies like the shadow clan run at you with melee attacks and use parkour type movements by running up walls and railings in order to catch you off your guard, though the game can feel repetitive as it shows no variety in missions. Also, I never felt truly challenged enough in the normal difficulty so never really felt the need to use turrets, when I did use them they basically did the work for me which is not fun. I was happily simply using my guns as ammo is plentiful and cheap at shops. Hard mode is the place to be for regular shooter players which makes the gameplay more satisfying. This is the first game when I had five hundred rounds left of machine gun ammo and thought “damn I’m running low!” Gameplay thanks to sixty frames per second is fun and fast.
Graphically this game is impressive, the textures are look outstanding in parts though there can be a bit of pop in on consoles. While it’s all well and good having a powerful graphics engine it’s a bit disappointing the developers decided to used it on a brown and grey post-apocalyptic world. As I said the enemies all animate really well and look great. But it’s graphics, the least important thing when making games.
If someone came up to me who only ever plays linear shooter like Call of Duty and wanted to play something like Fallout 3 but felt it was daunting task I’d offer them RAGE as a training course, it has missions selections, crafting and some light RPG elements sprinkled on top. An open world action game it is not, you drive to linear missions but then that might be helpful for a first timer. I think ID were a bit cheeky to say it was completely new ground for them, they have simply masked a linear shooter with some basic open world themes, but its damn good fun. They should have went straight into the deep end and not simply started with the doggy paddle. Never the less it’s fun in the most basic form.
6.5/10
P.S
I’m not reviewing multiplayer because it was pointless in this game and simply there as a back of the box bullet point statement. Also, the ending really annoyed me in this game, just as the game starts to pick up in story and even environments its stops with no climax or any awarding boss fight, obvious DLC or sequel bait, because of this I demoted the game in its score because it was that horrific.
