An amazing
FPS with solid vehicular gameplay and a slight and solid curve toward RPG.

After having just finished the game
and having spent 20 plus hours with the game overall , I
look back in retrospect at what RAGE is and I can’t say that that it is the
sci-fi/post apocalyptic epic game that I and so many others had so quickly put
up for GOTY (game of the year) contender, but what RAGE REALLY is, is a breath of fresh air into an otherwise “been there, done that” genre that is quickly becoming the norm in the FPS world.

Graphics

Let’s get started shall we? I’ll
start off with the first impression anyone who picks up RAGE will have upon
first playing the game, and that is it’s visuals, RAGE is a beautiful game,
from vast vistas, to greatly re-created corridor environments, the amount of
detail and effort put into the games visuals are extremely apparent from the
get-go.

And those amazing visuals are a
testament to the “ID Tech 5″ engine built from scratch in-house by ID
software, in an industry that is quickly becoming comfortable with developers
using game engines built by other developers, the fact that ID software spent
its time constructing a platform on its own on which to build RAGE from is a
very nice touch.

RAGE truly impresses with its
graphics, the lighting effects are like none I’ve ever seen before in a game,
the moments you spend going in and out of buildings, from being in a shadow to
going into the sunlight really shows off the ability the game has to change the
lighting on the spot as you move within the game in real time, coming in from
the wasteland into a town, noting the difference in the amount of sunlight
beaming in and then moving into an indoor environment with stained glass
windows and seeing the game change the lighting right there before you is
truly something I personally have never seen in a game before.

The lighting aside, the detail work
is even more impressive, all your weapons, the vehicles, the towns, the…rocks,
everything shows a level of individualism that is rarely seen in a game, yes
the stories are true, you would be hard-pressed to find two rocks that are
alike and that’s because the game details really allow for one rock to have
characteristics that the rocks around it and far from it do not.

There was a lot of serious time spent on making
the game look the way it does, and that is something that jumps from the screen
and makes itself pronounced to you during most of the game, of course the game
is not visually flawless, but it’s damn near close, you will encounter some
pop-in textures here and there and some shadows and areas that are played in
the dark have a green tint to them, but otherwise these are the kinds of
visuals you get from some high end PCs and that speaks even more positively of
the game considering how it looks on consoles.

(Note: The version played for this review was for the Xbox 360)

Gameplay

If there is one aspect of RAGE that
shines even brighter than the visuals, is its gameplay. RAGE has some of the
best first-person-shooter mechanics I have played with in the last two-three
years of gaming. With shooters like Halo and Call of Duty being such massive
successes, it’s easy to understand why nearly every other FPS that is released
uses in large part the same gunplay these games do, this is seen with Call of
Duty far more  because it’s the more successful of the two, but what we have here in RAGE is a rethinking of the feel of moving and shooting in a FPS.

Not to say that RAGE revolutionizes
the genre, but the reworking of how a weapon is brought into your hands,
or how to load the weapon in your hand with the different ammo types by just
the press of the right or left bumper and a flick of the joystick feels…natural,
and the fact that you can change the weapons assigned to these positions is
nothing new, but it feels like a unique way of letting the player control what
he’s/she’s using in the middle of a fight.

          Because of this unique system, you are no longer
held down to only two weapons at a time and some grenades with your off-hand,
now you are able to assign four weapons and four off-hand items, all to be used
in fluent, uninterrupted combat. Switching from your scoped assault rifle, to your shotgun, to
your crossbow and  to your rockets all
the while using a boomerang of death
with your other hand is highly satisfying, and don’t you think for a
second that you won’t need everything at your disposal to handle the enemies of
RAGE, enemies come in many different varieties, while what you face the most
are different kinds of bandit groups, each bandit group has a different
approach to combat. They range from enemies who cower behind crates and
different kinds of cover trying to bring you down with blind-fire, to some that
use amazing acrobatics to avoid your direct line of sight and clobber you with
maces and carve you up with knives.

And that quite literally is the tip
of the enemy iceberg in RAGE, Ghost bandits, Gearheads, The Shrouded and the oh
so vicious Jackels, they are all different in not only appearances but in their
unique ways of bringing you down.

The animations also make the gameplay
so much more interesting, shoot a bandit in the arm and he’ll hold on to it
with one hand and try and shoot with the good arm he has left, blast a helmet
off an Authority soldier with a sniper round and watch him get laid out on the
ground only to try and pick himself up and shake it off, shoot a mutant in the
legs and watch him drag himself to you, these little nuances really help get
you invested into each encounter.

      The way your character slightly leans into the
direction your moving in, the weapon variety, the enemy variety and the way it
all works together in almost perfect unity is what sets this game apart from a lot of the other FPS games out there.

Gameplay continued

On the vehicle combat and RPG
(Read:Role-playing game) side, the game has 19 “blueprints” of
off-hand items and tools you use throughout the game, there also many different
options to customize your vehicle with but nothing in the sense of true
individualism, not any significant individualism seeing as by the end of the
game, the same car I had is the kind you’ll most likely end up with, there are
different kinds of themes to decorate your car with but nothing on the level of
customization that impresses. As far as the character customization it’s more
of the same as the vehicle customization if not less so, the only real choice
you have comes early in the game and it comes in the form of what kind of
“class” you will be, to be clear, I use the term “class”
loosely because there are only three “classes” to choose from, while
the three “classes” are different, they are so in only the most
subtle ways, which is where the problems for RAGE begin.

While the gameplay in any game is
truly its most important component, RAGE struggles with keeping its RPG
elements relevant, yes there are things to build by collecting the pieces
scattered across the game world, yes there are improvements to be made to some
weapons through add-ons, and yes there are side-missions(Quests), but nothing
to the degree that you find in games that have their RPG elements as the main
attractions.

RAGE truly struggles with this
because the world seems like something it isn’t, for example, throughout the
world of RAGE there are hundreds of doors, most marked with an exclamation
point when approached, during my time with RAGE all the way to the very end I
was wondering “When am I going to be able to go through these
things”, the time never came, so while exploration does exists, it only
does so on a small level, which makes RAGE primarily a FPS with some RPG
patches along the way, in turn making the game struggle in its own identity.

So with fair warning I say, this game
is a FPS game through and through, but aside from those issues, it plays like a
dream, I couldn’t tell you how many times I just smiled throughout my playthrough
after witnessing my own awesome engagements and watching enemy reactions, or
how often I stopped everything I was doing to play in one of the many mini-games
RAGE has, it’s a world you can get lost in.

Story

 That
said, the story starts interesting enough, a meteor is heading toward earth and
in a final ditch effort to save humanity, the worlds powers decided to seal
away people away in these things called “ARKS”, think Fallout 3s
vaults but much smaller, while vaults in Fallout 3 were meant for people to
live in while the radiation of nuclear fallout died down, the “ARKS”
were meant to have their inhabitants sleep in a cryogenic state for a preset amount
of time to be awoken later to rebuild society, in this case somewhere around
100 or so years.

You are one of those ARK dwellers,
and that makes you valuable, there are things called “nanotrites”
within your bloodstream that heal you and offer you benefits that are not found
naturally in a human being (kicking a lot of ass), the Authority wants you
because of this, don’t worry though, as all this info is told to you within the
first half-hour of the game, the good stuff is revealed to you as you move
along with the games main story missions, the problem with this story is its
execution.

A lot has been said of the games
finale which I must say could have been so much better, it wasn’t so much the
level itself so much as it was its length, I don’t want to spoil anything but
when you head into an epic fight, you expect it to be so much more of an
encounter than what was offered in the closing moments of the story in RAGE,
while there isn’t a shortage of awesome moments in the story along the way, the
finale should have had more thought put into it.

Whether you can blame a lack of extra
time or just short-sightedness, the finale really deals a hurtful blow at a
moment when RAGE could have potentially come into its own when it comes to
important tales to tell in gaming, but even had the ending been a lot better,
the story isn’t deep enough to be compared to the games it was drawing
comparisons to before launching, but a solid, hell, even a great story is there
for those who delve deep enough.

Multiplayer

Then there’s the multiplayer side of
RAGE, which to my surprise was actually entertaining considering it’s a car
combat multiplayer,  and as strange as it
sounds for the fathers of the FPS to make their first title in 10 years not have a FPS competitive multiplayer,
that’s exactly what they did. While the multiplayer does work well, it’s hardly
anything to get seriously invested in, considering there’re games with a much
better competitive offering, that’s not to say that the multiplayer feels
tacked on or an afterthought, there are items to unlock by leveling up online
as well as different vehicles to choose from and buy, it’s simply a matter of
taste though, if you’ve been missing twisted metal style car violence, then
this is right up your alley, but if your more into the FPS or RTS(read:
Real-time strategy) competitive scene, then the RAGE online multiplayer isn’t
for you.

Thankfully there is a co-op specific mode
entitled “Legends of the Wasteland”, which is entertaining but once
finished is not really worth repeating.

       The tally  

 Graphics: 9.0

 Gameplay: 9.5

 Story: 8.0            

 Overall Content: 8.5  

Score 8.75/10

There is no doubt in my mind that
RAGE will impress once played, but so long as the player realizes this is a FPS
at heart, and any RPG elements being sought after here should be looked for
elsewhere, with amazing gameplay, beautiful graphics and an extremely immersive
world, it’s definitely a game to include in the “must play” list. While
the world of RAGE is not perfect, it’s a game and IP(read: Intellectual
property) we will surely not see the last of.

Review
by Andrew E. Cantillo