RAGE Review - PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 - 7.9

Set in a post-apocalyptic landscape, RAGE immediately draws comparisons to the Fallout and Borderlands franchises. With an art style somewhere in between the two, RAGE has you exploring and trying to survive in the Wasteland after emerging from one of the remaining Arks. With no weapons in hand, you are saved from attack by mutants by a particularly helpful individual who guides you in the game\'s opening quests and provides some useful weapons and equipment.

 

RAGE is structured into several large environments that contain multiple settlements and other places to explore. Early on, you are given several vehicles that allow you to traverse between locations. Driving these vehicles is a large part of the game, as you go from location to location quite often. As the game progresses, this becomes one of the main points of tediousness inherent in RAGE\'s design.

 

Approaching different characters, you are often given the option to accept or decline quests. However, unlike some RPGs, there really is no benefit to declining any of these. Some of them are integral to continuing the main story, so you\'ll end up accepting them anyway if you want to make any progress. The characters that you talk to are varied and sometimes colorful personalities, so there is some incentive to try to talk to as many people as possible.

 

The bulk of the game\'s gunplay takes place on these various adventures. Early on, you\'ll be fighting poorly armed mutants and bandits. Their behavior is reminiscent of enemies from id\'s past games, but blasting them away is just as satisfying as it was in those games as well. You get the standard id arsenal of weapons (pistol, shotgun, etc), but there are a few welcome additions. Each weapon can take alternate ammunition types that help in taking down specific types of enemies. This becomes more helpful later in the game when you\'re fighting more tactically advanced and varied foes, introducing some welcomed variety to the enemy types. Besides that, you won\'t find many of the features you\'ve come to expect in modern shooters. This is basically classic id gunplay, and its appeal will depend on the player, though it does somewhat disappoint given the game\'s protracted development. Also, there are some occassional missteps. For example, why does it take multiple headshots to take out even the weakest foes with some of the game\'s weapons?

 

The most intriguing part of RAGE is its vehicular combat. Early on, you\'re given the ability to participate in races to win parts to upgrade your vehicles. This can be very helpful out in the Wasteland, as you\'ll soon be able to take out bandit ambushes with volleys of minigun and rocket fire. Driving is simple and forgiving, but it is easy to forfeit first place if you make a few mistakes. It does provide a balance to simply walking around and shooting. However, it feels that the game relies too much on it as a crutch, especially with the multiplayer modes, which are essentially competitive versions of the races found ingame. There are interesting components, such as the picking up of powerups reminiscent of old-school multiplayer shooters, but its still a mode that doesn\'t feel like it has much staying power. The same can be said for the co-op, which is a set of 2 player missions that are fun, but don\'t provide the variety we\'ve come to expect of AAA blockbusters.

 

id has always been known for its graphical prowess, but has been increasingly overshadowed by other shooter developers like Crytek, DICE, and Epic Games. RAGE is powered by id Tech 5, the engine\'s debut appearance. Promising uniquely designed environments with its MegaTexture technology, the engine makes the game capable of presenting vast and varied landscapes. Things aren\'t quite as rosy when players look closer, however. On consoles, the game is designed to run at 60 Hz, neccesitating some cuts and a lack of effects that we\'ve seen in many other console games, namely the first-party exclusives. It runs smoothly, however, and it looks above average when compared to other multiplatform releases. It\'s good-looking, but its disappointing that id only got as far as they did with that hardware given the amount of time they spent developing the game. The PC version is another story. id wanted, for various reasons that I will probably discuss in a future article, to create an equal experience across all platforms. Many developers say this, but id took it a step further than is expected of a company with the reputation they have of pushing hardware. When the game launched, there were two or three options to customize the visuals, namely resolution and antialiasing. This is not what PC gamers expect of modern game releases. id rightfully fixed this soon after, but that doesn\'t change how the game ultimately looks.

 

To be blunt, it looks average. A new game from id sporting a new engine and it\'s just average. Character models are stiff, their faces animating cartoonishly. Shadows are hard to notice and jagged and the lighting isn\'t even dynamic (remember, this is the company who brought us Doom 3). The textures are by far the worst offenders. Despite a variety of fixes since release, you can still sometimes see textures streaming in when you turn around too quickly. Close up, the textures are just horrid. Text that you think you might be able to read as you approach it ends up just as blurry as when you were standing a moderate distance away. Desks and other furniture are covered in an ugly mess of similar colors. This reviewer hasn\'t seen textures this glaringly inconsistent in years. The textures are very unique, but if to achieve that meant sacrificing so much of their quality, then I\'m not that sure that it was ultimately a good decision to take the graphical design in that direction. For any other game, such visual problems would be annoying but largely overlooked. This, however, is an id game.

 

And that\'s the story of RAGE. When you combine the hype and anticipation for the game itself with that of the new graphics engine and add in the pedigree of the developer, you get the potential for a product to fall a lot harder than its fellow releases. RAGE\'s elements are all decent, and many of them are good. However, that just isn\'t enough. When you\'ve been working on a game for the better part of the decade and teasing your fans for at least half of that, then you\'d better be creating either a product of ultimate fan service or a radically new game that turns heads and the industry on its side. RAGE accomplishes neither. The substance of RAGE could have been developed into a remarkably similar (if relatively large-scale) game last generation, and that\'s the largest problem I have with the game. It is fun. It is solid id shooter action with some added elements that work, most of the time. If that\'s specifically what you\'re looking for and all you want out of a $60 game, then go ahead and buy RAGE because you\'ll have a blast with it, most of the time. For the rest of you, it is extremely difficult to recommend this title, especially given the holiday season that it\'s finally been released into and the glut of highly-hyped titles on the horizon. Perhaps id can do a better job of polishing its franchises for modern standards now that it\'s returning to some of its old properties armed both with the experience of making RAGE and a still-powerful engine, but that doesn\'t change RAGE\'s failure to redefine id as a developer that can keep up with modern standards and add its own special twist to make the game something special.

 

Score Breakdown:

Gameplay: 7.5 – It\'s old-school id. If you like that, you might not appreciate the repetitive fetch quest structure and drawn-out driving sequences.

Presentation: 8.5 – There is some good voice work and slick design to the game\'s UI.

Graphics: 7.5 – The visuals are too inconsistent. There are good looking parts to RAGE, such as the varied rock formations and well-designed towns, but the textures are so ugly that they\'re distracting.

Sound: 8.0 – Nothing spectacular, nothing disappointing.

Value: 8.0 – The single player campaign is of sizable length, but that\'s partly a result of mediocre side quests and protracted travelling times. The co-op and multiplayer components are servicable but short-lived.

Final Score: 7.9 – RAGE is almost as unremarkable as many games that take a mere year or two to develop. That just doesn\'t cut it this holiday season.

Marcin Skok
Editor-in-Chief
"The Gaming Corner"