To Rave or Rage Over RAGE

I finally had a chance to play id software's latest game, RAGE.  Id software is the developer who originated the first-person shooter genre with classics such as the Doom series, Quake, and of course Wolfenstein 3d.  Going into this game, I had high expectations.  Coming out of it, I've learned that as long as you remember this is a FPS and nothing more, than it's a great game.  Once you start thinking this is an open world game, or even a light RPG does it begin to go down hill.

First off, this game is huge.  It was an 18 gig download and the patch was another gig.  The patch fixed numerous technical issues as well as allowing for more video options such as vsync control.  The game apparently had a lot of issues at launch which I won't be talking about because I did not play the pre-patched game.  I will only address the issues I've found since the patch was released.

Who knew post-apocalypse could look so good.

RAGE begins with a meteor crash that would destroy all life as we know it on the planet earth.  You play as a super soldier who was cryogenically preserved in order to continue human life on earth after this catastrophic incident.  The game is absolutely gorgeous.  Anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves.  The visuals are the best I have ever seen in a video game.  Albeit, I have only been gaming on the PC for a short time so I don't have a lot to compare to except Xbox 360 graphics.  I understand on the 360 the graphics are beautiful as well, but I do not know how they compare to PC.

RAGE does have a few technical issues but they are not as bad as the naysayers would have you believe.  At worse RAGE is guilty of being a bad console port.  First yes, the texture quality deteriorates on many objects up close.  For a game of this size, it's surprising at how blocky most things are when you get right up on them, but it's no worse than most other 360 games.  Secondly, the game experiences texture pop, especially when entering a new zone.  Again, nothing I haven't seen a gazillion times before from other games.  There can be texture pop-in when spinning the camera quickly as well, but for me, it was hardly noticeable.  Unless you expect perfection in video game graphics, none of RAGE's graphic errors should surprise you.  However, if you have ultra-high performance hardware and are playing at extremely high resolutions (2560x1440) then you may have more errors.  I played at 1920x1080 with 8x AA, large texture cache, and low AF, just for comparison, and didn't have excessive pop-in.

RAGE's gameplay combines racing elements and RPG elements into a FPS.  It is very convincing and in some ways too convincing.  I constantly found myself wishing RAGE was a different game.  During the racing events, I could imagine a combat racing game just like what is found in RAGE but more fleshed out with more vehicle types, terrain types and a wider variety of weapons and customizations.  While exploring, I found myself wanting more.  I hoped for more random dungeons to explore and all the great loot possibilities.  Alas, there are actually very few non story related locations to explore.  In fact, by halfway through the game I quit exploring because there is very little reward in doing so.  Eventually the "open-world" just became a means to get from one mission to the next.  Driving in the open-world was very fun though.  It had me wishing id software would do a remake of Autoduel.  I loved that game in the '80s and RAGE's over world reminded me so much of that game.

The combat in RAGE was nothing short of amazing.  The gunplay was perfect.  The enemies were varied and intelligent.  Mutants would run and crawl at you.  The would move swiftly and often times would jump or climb over objects in their way as opposed to going around through a bottleneck, which made them very difficult to target.  Bandit enemies would peek out from cover in different directions, they would reach around and shoot blindly, and they would also use shielded enemies as cover.  When injured, enemies would crawl, limp, or drag themselves to cover.  Desperately, they would even sit on the rear end and take shots at you if you got in their dying face.

The story wasn't bad for a FPS, but from the beginning it never hooked me.  The entire game involves you doing errands and favors for the various townsfolk in the different settlements.  Unfortunately, the game never sells you on why you should help these people.  Early on you are told to stay away from the Authority, you don't want them finding you, but you never see why.  The Authority is suppose to be the enemy but it is only the enemy because the game tells you.  The Authority never bothers you until you get sent off to screw with them.  Even when you see them in town, they aren't harassing anyone or doing anything unruly to convince you these are the enemy.  At no point did I feel compelled to do any of the missions because telling me that someone is an enemy without proving it doesn't sit well with me.  Since this game isn't really open world, saying no and walking away to find something else to do or to take another side isn't an option, so you have no choice but to fight this face-less enemy that you know nothing about except they supposedly will kill you if they find you.  I would love to see a sequel to RAGE where the resistance comes out and says, "Hahaha, we are really the bad ones and are going to take over the world thanks to your help since you were so stupid as to believe what some random strangers told you without finding out for yourself!!"

Driving in the over world.

All in all, RAGE is a great racing game that lacks content, a great driving game that lacks content, a great RPG that lacks content and story, a great sandbox that lacks content, and one hell of a FPS.  I think it tries to do too much, while doing everything great, it is all filler with little content.  Overall, the game has plenty to do and plenty of side quests but it feels like too many games rolled into one.  I would love for id to come back and focus on one of these play types and expand immensely on it and drop the extra stuff.  As expected from id software, the FPS elements were spot on and perhaps this game should have stuck with just that but I think they wanted to raise the bar on what a FPS could be.  Again, everything in this game is extremely fun, but there is little depth to all the added genre elements.  RAGE gets an 8.0/10.