RAGE Review

Am I the only one who is reminded of the end titles of the Fallout games?

Rating: 6/10
Developer: id Software
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Release date (Aus): 6/10/2011
Version Played: PS3
In the future, there is only war… Well that, and a fair bit of racing. See Rage is another of those game set in the post-apocalyptic future (no points for originality here) and like all such games features mutants, bandits, and a technologically advanced (and invariably evil) faction which they must come up against. The story is simple, and seems like it was quickly jotted down on the back of a napkin; you play as a nameless, near faceless white guy who’s woken up in the future after an asteroid has hit the earth. This faceless white guy wakes up as the sole survivor of an ARK, a large container designed to preserve humanities best and brightest. Unfortunately the thing was clearly made with no OH&S compliance because all the other passengers are deader than dead.

Pictured: A large container. Not pictured: The ARK.

As soon as our hero steps out he is immediately attacked by some bandits, only to be saved by a sniper rifle wielding Dan Hagar (voiced by John Goodman). Hagar explains that ARK survivors are sought after by a mysterious force known as the authority. After giving you a pistol, access to his ATV and nothing else, Hagar expects you to go off and kill the bandits of the ghost clan. Sure Dan, after all you killed them right, I’ll just slaughter the rest out of gratitude. And so the adventure begins with great gusto. Players can obtain an extra weapon before leaving if they complete an optional mini-game: the Wingstick. Wingsticks are basically boomerangs made out of big machete blades. Very deadly, incredibly useful, and all round badass weapons.

Despite the game’s shortcomings in terms of its story I immediately found myself enjoying the gameplay, whether it was the shooting of mutants and bandits, or driving around and shooting mutants and bandits. Alas, this was not to last the whole of the gameplay. At first I began with the pistol, a very cool weapon which was quickly supplemented with a monocular. This monocular was held by my character. Go ahead and imagine a monocular wielding pistol toting madman in a jumpsuit, I dare you. Anyway, monocular/pistol aside, I could also punch enemies in the face, which I enjoyed despite the scary stupidity of doing this on the ‘Nightmare’ difficulty. After grabbing a few more weapons the game got some much needed variety however I quickly noticed that a) the Steel AR rifle* is as accurate as a spider monkey on meth and weaker than a soggy bowl of oats, b) the shotgun’s primary fire only works within three or so body-lengths and c) despite the weapons in the game built for stealth; this ain't no MGS,this is an FPS where your enemies seem to have hearing and vision on par with Legolas himself.

Rage features several mechanics which can aid a player in combat: players can switch between ammo with most of their guns,for example the shotgun alternates between Buckshot, Pulse-shot (electrified slugs), and pop-rockets (grenades). Players can also construct ammo and items, some of which can be extremely useful, for example  sentry turrets can lay down withering cover fire,and sentry bots can provide some excellent backup.

Gameplay itself revolves around more than just shooting and killing; players can explore towns filled with static characters who quickly run out of lines and quips while partaking in minigames such as five-finger-fillet, Strum (bet money to try play along with a character), Tombstones (roll dice and see if the ‘explorer’ hologram is killed by mutants, loose if he dies, earn money depending upon which round he killed them), and Rage Frenzy, Rage’s take on Yu-Ghi-O/Pokemon types of card games. Players also have the opportunities in town to take up missions on the bounty boards (which always involve killing something, and sometimes finding something), getting missions off of NPC’s, or going for races.

Racing is a simple affair, alternating between either time trials, non-combat races, minigun races, rocket races, and rocket rallies; free for all affairs where the goal is to score points by driving through alternating check points and destroying enemies. The racing aspect breaths life into the game however it soon becomes dead air; sure, racing is a good way to earn racing certificates, but eventually the possibility to earn these certificates becomes the only reason I was racing in the later stages of the game as racing is the only reliable way to be able to quickly modify the vehicles.

Speaking of vehicles, players can alternate from an ATV, a Buggy, an off road car known as a Cuprino, and it’s bigger brother, the Monarch. The vehicles are earned in this order and this is the best way of sorting their effectiveness; the later the car, the better armour it has, weapons and so on. At first this makes earning the later cars a reward, but it is clear that the mandatory earning of these vehicles was simply an arbitrary way to impose some unneeded gameplay changes. Like the weapons, the vehicles can be easily sorted on an algorithm of usefulness, with the older cars and gears being the most useless. By endgame you won’t be driving in anything but a Monarch,or using anything but two or three different weapons as all others are redundant by this point.

The Monarch and Cuprino allow for players to switch between weapons, not that you’ll really need to.

Online multiplayer offers the opportunity to shake things up but frankly, aside from the fact that games are so difficult to find, it has such minor variation from what is offered in the single player that I wasn't much interested in it.

The irony of this game is that it was hyped as the next big RPG, however there is very little to explore, few NPC related interactions, and little to see. The graphics are nice and crisp, sure, hey I might have been able to ignore the visible last-generation-retro-as-all-hell visible loading of detail, or even the static and weird facial animations if the game had more style and soul. To me, rage was like fallout, if fallout had a paper thin plot, Mario-Kart style races and exploration, and poor weapon balancing. Or rather, nothing like fallout. In short, a game that started off well, but quickly ran out of steam. Try before you buy.

*The steel AR rifle is an AK-Type clone. Inaccurate, weak, and ugly as sin. You’ll quickly replace it and never look back

Disclaimer: First published on Comikkazee, blah blah blah, you know the drill by now, right ;)