Doomed gameplay that will make you quake with rage!
The opening sequence of Rage felt a little vague and short perhaps I blinked and missed something but I wasn’t sure what was going on but as soon as i’d inverted the controls and stepped outside I was impressed. The visuals were striking and straight away I was reminded of borderlands albeit a lot more beautiful and interesting post apocalyptic world than that one. After a few moments of enjoying the view I got attacked by something that again reminded me of the enemies in borderlands then got rescued and taken to a local encampment of friendly people. I was extremely impressed with the design of the characters with everyone dressed in unique clothes and accessories.
I was enjoying the game going to bandit hideouts and clearing them out of baddies and noticed how well the enemies were animated as I took shots at them they would hide behind cover or more suicidal ones would come running straight for you, although these would run on walls and sidestep quickly from left to right making it difficult to take them down unless you had a shotgun in which case you could just wait til they got next to you and blow them away with the sawn-off.
After a few more missions you end up in wellsprings, a small settlement and the main hub of the game and yet more well designed characters at least graphically well designed for at this point I came to realise that for the most part all these beautifully rendered characters had little to no real personality and were all a bit boring. As well as this the missions and structure of the game started to bore me with you getting a mission, driving somewhere, usually some sort of gang hideout and completing a task as well as killing everything in your path. I started the game on hard and was expecting the difficulty to ramp up but it just seemed to get easier and easier as I had more equipment and upgraded weaponry at my disposal.
The vehicular sections were even easier and I felt I could win every race and destroy every car with no problem whatsoever as long as I had gone in prepared and stocked full off ammo which isn’t difficult to do since making money to buy all these things is as easy as everything else in the game.
Whilst the graphics are fantastic and perhaps some of the best seen yet there was a lot of low res texture’s when you start looking closely and a worrying amount of texture pop in and whilst this doesn’t affect actual gameplay it does take the feeling of being immersed in a world away. Weapon’s sound great and the voice acting is okay as is the soundtrack but nothing special.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer is fun and there’s plenty to unlock as is standard in any multiplayer these days. With a good range of modes there’s plenty of stuff to do however i was surprised to find the multiplayer is limited to veihcles considering it’s made by ID Software who brought us the likes of Doom and Quake. This is a great disappointment considering how well the shooting mechanics work I can’t help but feel this is a wasted opportunity.
There’s also co-op although this is limited to stand-alone missions and not possible to play throughout the whole game and whilst this is also fun there’s already games that do it bigger and better.
Closing comments
Rage is a fun shooter but II expected much more from ID Software and unfortunately they didn’t deliver. It’s far too easy even on the hardest difficulty’s and it starts to disappoint with a storyline and character I didn’t care for. Definitely worth a go for fans of shooters just don’t expect anything special apart from pretty graphics and solid gun play.