Box Art
As the box art so clearly announces, from the creators of Doom and Quake, this was a no-brainer for me to play. Nevermind the similarities drawn to Borderlands, and Fallout (they took more than they should have), both games that I enjoyed.
First mistake, getting this game on PC, knowing iD’s track record, I figured getting this game on PC was the safest thing in the world to do. I guess not, It’s shaky PC launch has been well documented, me being the new owner of an AMD 6970 was definitely a victim. By the time I beat the game, there were patches, and new drivers that resolved most of the problems, and so the game is certainly playable at this point, but, how often that games launch in a broken state at this point is quite disheartening.
After the patches the “texture pop-in” and “screen tearing” issues have been minimized, and the game does look and sound quite good.
Anyway, onto the game, one of the unfortunate traits this game took from borderlands was the lack of story, but it is even more apparent here, unlike borderlands the characters lack any sort of charm and don’t even bother trying to convince or motivate you to help them, you just have to in order to progress. Story has not be a strength of iD’s anyway, so I wasn’t totally shocked by this, but it terribly disappointing nonetheless. They do provide a little back story to explain that you are the worlds last barrier to extinction but to call it hollow would be an understatement. This game has a worse ending than even borderlands did, not just because the story conclusion was incredibly abrupt, and completely anticlimactic. In fact I kept saving my ammo for the BFG for a big bad guy who never came, this game had no big villain to speak of at all, at least you knew you were fighting the boss in borderlands…
On the other hand, iD’s strength has always been creating a satisfying shooter, and boy is that obvious here. There is definitely a fast paced shooter with a bunch of weapons and good shooting mechanics that is incredibly fun to play. In fact I’m comfortable saying that the shooting in this game has been the most fun I’ve played in a while. Lots of weapons to choose from, and to bolster those numbers, most weapons have alternate ammo that give different effects. For example, your shotgun has “pulse” ammo, and “pop rock”(?). The pulse ammo provides an electric shock and is particularly helpful against enemies with shields, while the pop ammo explodes and is just straight up fun. They did a great job at limited the amount of ammo you find, which sort of creates an artificial challenge since you may not have the right bullets to handle a particular scenario cleanly.
The world constucts itself much like an RPG, there is an open world where you can drive around and explore though besides a few ‘jump challenges’ where you have to launch your vehicle into some floating thing for the reward of an item, there isn’t much reason to go off the beaten path here. And quest hubs where you can meet the locals (but there isn’t much reason too, they lack charm). You get some quests and you can shop for ammo, and upgrades, participate in races, and minigames that are mostly around winning extra money, and a quite fun ‘collectable card game’, where you use cards that you find out in the world to build a small deck and play. The quests always lead you to dungeons where you actually get to fight things. Most of the dungeons are reused in job board side quests, but it’s handled in a way that it doesn’t feel so much like recycled content. Though they are quite linear, often times ‘things happen’ while you’re in there to change the landscape, or you run through the backwards and the enemies are different when you return. It doesn’t necessarily feel recycled like it does in say Dragons Age 2.
There is looting in this game, but you rarely find anything other than money or ammo on enemies. There is a crafting system, but most of the elements you need to craft things is found in the environment so exploring is encouraged and I found myself doing a lot of it, and it is rewarding when you’re in a ‘dungeon’ and you run out of EMP grenades or ammo that you can make as you need it. But it does feel like you are limited in what you can make but they often provide you with the things you need in an given dungeon if you’re looking.
Getting around the world of RAGE is easy and sort of fun thanks to some rather clean driving mechanics, which is reflected in the racing side quests, which ultimately reward you with upgrades for your cars, or in some cases new cars for required races for progression. Thought I didn’t play through all of the race challenges, I didn’t find the ones I did challenging at all, which is a shame because the vehicles and racing mechanics aren’t bad, in fact they are good despite the WASD controls for driving which felt archaic to me. If they were more challenging I think I may have been motivated to complete them.
This game definitely falls into the more fun than good category, the mechanics are great and it’s fun to play. I just wish that they had taken more care in fleshing out the world, and the characters to give the game some depth. I’d say if you can get this at budget pricing via steam sale or used bin or something, definitely do it, there is enough fun to be had here, but it is missing motivation here to pay full price in my opinion.
