Saturday, January 28, 2012

RAGE [Game][PC]

Amount Completed: Main story completed and most of the races won. (enough to get all the vehicle upgrades)

Story: RAGE follows the story of a character waking up in a post-apocalyptic world. You soon learn that your character is supposed to be one of many people intended to restore the planet. The plot is very straightforward and without much depth or any twists whatsoever. The Authority represents the ultimate evil in the world throughout. They represent a powerful group bent on … I have no idea (seriously, I have no idea why the Authority exists). Unfortunately without any character representing the authority, beyond the random soldiers you fight against it, the enemy is faceless and actually presents little threat to your “acquaintances” throughout the game. Nothing bad happens to any character you could even remotely care for. At one point the Authority takes a punk of a city leader and it has no effect on the game at all. It is just another event in a mostly bland string of events. The plot moves along slowly and has no climax. There's a conclusion at the end but it is so quick and lacking in any substance that they obviously are planning some kind of sequel.

Art: The art of RAGE does a fine job of immersing the player. As expected the post apocalyptic world is really dirty and generally bland. A couple of minor things pop in the game but for the most part I did not ever find myself admiring the artwork. The characters look good and unfortunately are backed up with no depth worthy of the visual.

Gameplay: RAGE plays like a standard shooter with lots of inventory items to play with to make your experience a bit less than just an outright shooter. Unfortunately the combat just did not feel very good. Many of the enemies seemed to take way too many shots to take down. How many head-shots should it really take? I saw this less as a sign of difficulty and more as a sign of making the player spend in-game currency on ammo in huge quantities. Also the enemies feedback to being shot felt strange. In some cases they seemed delayed taking the shot as though the game was waiting to finish a previous animation before acknowledging the hit. The car combat was simple and worked reasonably well fortunately.

Gut: If you just love high resolution neat graphics, and not much else, than maybe RAGE is for you. If you play the game with any expectations beyond a fairly generic shooter with a bit of car combat you will be disappointed.

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