When the makers of the iconic Doom and Quake series set their sights on a modern day shooter they may have set them a little too high because while Rage has its good elements the main problem is it looks too good ..or at least it’s supposed to, the truth is a little more colourful. It’s extremely rare a game will slant my opinion on it in such a short time and I never in million years thought Rage would be the one to do it but my initial response to the game was that of surprise and not in a good way. Rage starts like many shooters in a post-apocalyptic world where you as a survivor must do what you can to make the world a better place, by that I mean shoot and blast your way through the hordes of scavengers and bandits that rule the wastelands with mad max like brutality.
The reason this time for the earth being such a mess is an asteroid has impacted and changed life as we know it, the remaining people who are left over are either organized gangs of bandits and mutants or regular people trying to make a life for themselves, you on the other hand have been secretly stashed away in an underground bunker as a sort of failsafe or last chance for the earth but the life support system has malfunctioned and the rest of your comrades have all died. The world of Rage is brutal and just as you emerge from the bunker you are immediately set upon by wastelander bandits, saved by a stranger you then have to repay him by doing little odd jobs around the area and that to me is the whole game a series of odd jobs that don’t really pertain to the furthering of any cause or even story because while Rage doesn’t lack much on the shooter side it seriously lacks a proper story or sense of progression.
Before Rage was released I keenly followed many stories and articles about how it would play and above all how it would look, many sites and magazines talked about the super textures it would feature making it one of the most advanced and realistic looking games on the market. I’d heard a lot about the textures and did expect a very lush looking and vibrant game, while the character animations do look fantastic and very life like the game itself suffers from the worst popin I have ever seen and probably ever will. The popin I’m referring to is a constant shift of focus and clarity when your character moves or looks from one direction to the next, while most games have a certain amount of popin Rage goes above and beyond the call of duty. The first thing I saw in the game and it looks stunning was the sky ..it would since it unlike the textures is just painted in but once I looked from one corner of the screen to the next it took about five seconds for the graphics to load up properly so all I saw was a blurry patch of ground or wall. While you would expect it’s a temporary thing it really isn’t and lasts the whole way through the game never even letting up for a second, the reason is simple current game consoles can’t handle super textures because the internal readers are not fast enough so naturally Rage suffers – I’d not call it a game breaker but at the same time the popin was so bad I felt the need to quit many times. Soldiering on through the game it took about three hours of playing until I felt immersed enough to making a difference. Given the game had such a huge install file with mind numbingly bad popin it did have some redeeming features so I do think it deserves a review and if like me you do give it a chance you might just like what you find.
So what makes Rage different than other similarly styled shooters, it’s a mixed bag really while it does have the usual fire and forget simplicity there are some interesting things that Rage does better than its rivals. Rage plays like a mix of Borderlands and Fallout, the gaming map is not huge and sadly even if you do find something to explore you really won’t find anything off of the beaten track which is a shame because the game comes across as an open world shooter when really it’s not. You can jump into vehicles made from beat up scrap metal and that will get you around faster but if anything it hammers home the fact that the world is restricted in its size, there are of course some plus sides to being able to use vehicles. Available in the game are a series of races which can be done once you have the appropriate vehicles and mods, that’s right you can modify your vehicles to make them more resistant to damage/faster/and even kit them out with guns and missiles and while all that sounds like fun it can be until you realize the actual races are a piece of cake to complete.
Perhaps the developers were trying to make the racing segments accessible to everyone but what they did was make it much too simple to pose an actual challenge and I would have completed them all if not for the game doing something really annoying which I’m about to address. I can name a few games which close certain aspects or mini games once you reach a certain part of the story but the scale Rage does it is unacceptable. Near the end of the game and without warning games like racing get closed down so you can’t compete in them anymore and if you were after 100% game completion you will have no choice but to replay the whole game again, while that might not sound like a big deal I found plenty of trophies/achievements were unattainable for that very reason. The mini games when playable can actually be a lot of fun, featured is Tombstone (a sort of digital chess with lashings of violence) 5 finger filet (think bishop in Aliens with the knife on the table and you got it) Strum (a miniature version of Guitar Hero) and one of my favourites a card game which relies not only on skill but on you to find and collect the many game cards hidden all over the game. While these mini games can serve as a distraction from the main game the missions themselves are so repetitive and uninspiring that there really isn’t a lot to be distracted from in the first place.
From start to finish the only mission that really stood out for me involved being a contestant in a game show where your very life was at stake, you win cash by staying alive and getting kills but with hordes of mutants trying to stop you it’s not easy. There are of course other missions that show a glimmer of hope but I found the more I tried to enjoy the action the more something else would crop up making me feel like I was accomplishing nothing and if I was no one cared. While there are some interesting characters expertly voiced the story seems to go nowhere and when I did feel a change of pace it turned out the game was over with one of the shortest and most abrupt endings I have ever seen. Even with the extra missions offered from random characters and from notice boards the lifespan of the game is far too short to make a serious ripple compared to other games that offer a similar campaign but more diverse multiplayer, Rage does have a multiplayer but again it’s limited because its mainly all about driving around shooting the competition so don’t expect the usual run and gun deathmatch fiasco because it’s not there.
Like many shooters you will find to progress you need better guns and ammunition and Rage doesn’t let you down here because not only can you acquire all manner of guns you can also build and modify gadgets that can be used to exploit the enemies weakness or simply kill them. By doing jobs you earn money but you also find money on downed enemies or hidden across the game map, the money can then be used to purchase guns/etc but better than guns were some of the various gadgets you can build such as explosive radio controlled cars/gun turrets and little robots that follow you around blasting everything in your way. It’s these little gadgets that make the game different than other shooters but for the traditional shooter fan there are plenty of rifles and machine guns to keep even the most frag happy busy throughout the game – budding robin hoods will also find the crossbow very useful. The bandits and thugs you face do make up a big part of the game and there has been a lot of thought and work put into keeping them rather unique and interesting, the ones that stood out for me were a group of Russians who were obsessed with technology so they had all kinds of traps and weapons at the ready. Something Rage implements well is the reaction of an enemy when wounded or shot, some are very fast and will dodge or jump out of the way when you attack but when you do hit them they stumble or grasp the wound in the way you would expect if it were real life.
Other than the human element you also come across mutants throughout various areas of the map and while most of them only take a few shots there are some that merit the extra special attention that only a whole bag of ammo and a rocket launcher can deliver. I expected the game would have a nice healthy amount of bosses and super enemies that would really bring the game into its own but I counted a very small few and even the ones I did meet were easily defeated in no time at all, I could have sworn I’d seen clips of bosses that were never put into the finished game and given how bad the popin was I’m not surprised. Rage at its core tries to be an excellent game offering a unique experience but the closer I looked the more I saw that held it back from greatness, there is a certain degree of unfinished product that radiates from Rage that probably wouldn’t have been so obvious if the game hadn’t been so hyped up in the first place.
Painfully numbing popin aside Rage does look visually near perfect to anything else on the market, the physics engine works brilliantly and given how demanding the visuals actually are it’s the little things like water and dust that really make your jaw drop. Racing along through the wasteland in a beat up wreak of a car with dust and debris flying is an enjoyable experience, the terrain when properly visible does look astounding and even the cut scenes are beautifully rendered to the point where you forget you are playing a game until of course you step out of the car and start going through the game on foot again and notice the sharpness and clarity popping in and out. The world of Rage is less laid back than it feels, the people who you think you are helping or are helping you have a real knack of lulling you into a false sense of security but once you leave the safe zones you are back in bandit country and they will make your stay there very short if they spot you. The game environments both inside and out are highly detailed and give you a lot to look at, there is a real sense of thoughtful construction in many of the buildings and complexes I just wish I could have viewed them without graphical errors. The main things I liked about the game were the complex character movements/model animation and the ability to upgrade all of your weapons and gadgets. As a traditional shooter Rage works perfectly but it’s not and the developers made no secret of trying to embed a story with added desperation so once you did get into it you expect a lot more especially from the ending, it’s a lot of fun shooting down whatever tries to kill you but garnishing it all with a story that goes nowhere ruins the flow and leaves the player feeling cheated.
I tried very hard to like Rage and as a shooter alone it did satisfy, my biggest advice would be to play the game and ignore what little story is there that way when nothing gets resolved you will feel less cheated. I did however like how the weapons handled and loved how powerful and solid they felt, every impact is reacted to and you can sense the carnage you are dishing out. There is a nice escalation of difficulty between the different enemies and you will find you have to adapt and become creative with combat manoeuvres in order to not get overwhelmed by the attacking forces ahead and around you. Having gadgets and creating gadgets is something that I felt made a big part of the game especially when I got to the last few missions, deploying sentry turrets and bots definitely saved my skin more than once. The rate at which enemies will adapt and avoid your bullets is truly frightening, not only will they duck or leap out of the way they will dart up and across the ceiling scaling their way either to safety or right up next to you ready to pounce with the deadly precision of a king cobra. Car mode in the multiplayer can have its fun moments but I really would have preferred some maps on foot with the possibility of death match or capture the flag, given the developers history with games like Doom and Quake you would not expect that to be too much of a tall order. What they did do however was include a co-op mode which although doesn’t pertain to the actual campaign mode itself it does let two players stand together in a battle to get the most kills, it’s a diversion but not much of one because it gets old quick.
Rage tells me a lot about the developers of the game, they avoid a strong story element and instead opt for a heavy handed shooting experience that while a lot of fun is too brief. The game controls well and the mechanics are solid and feel like they do what you want them to do but I seriously doubt they tested the game and if they did its unacceptable to ship it knowing the popin was so bad , some people suggested it would work if the popin was patched but as part of the games core it can’t be patched without gutting the engine and rebuilding it from scratch. The characters and people you meet along the way are realistic and help give the game a heightened sense of reality but at the end of the day none of them do or say anything too memorable meaning you will forget it all very quickly. It may have won a whole host of awards at shows like E3 but I feel it was unfinished and lacking depth in the story department, you may argue that shooters don’t need stories but you can tell they were trying to implement one at the start and when they reached the middle they just gave up leaving the player unsatisfied and wanting. Rage could have been one of my favourite games of the year but it has too many problems that can’t be fixed with a simple patch so I’m giving Rage a 6 out of 10. I’d not recommend it for retail but it’s definitely worth a rental, think Mad Max mixed with Borderlands ..a side helping of Fallout all served up on a bed of Doomsday and you have Rage.
