RAGE Review (PS3)

Great Game, But Might Cause Random Levels of Rage

I haven't played a good first person game for a while so I picked up RAGE, a game by id Software, makers of great FPS games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake so that means that this new game is great. What could possibly go wrong? I mean they haven't made a new title for a long time... uh oh!

STORY

The asteroid named 99942 Apophis (based on the real asteroid) will hit the Earth and will kill almost every living thing. The people prepared a lot of  arks to protect some humans from the apocalypse. You, the main protagonist is one of these lucky people that were assigned to an ark. After a century, you suddenly woke up from a long stasis sleep. Once again you're lucky because you're the only one survived in your ark. Now you need to step outside the ark and see the brave new post-apocalyptic world and its people (good and bad) and survive.

I will mention this because this game is quite old now. Here goes, the story is not great. It's predictable and it suddenly ends without a bang. In short it's incomplete and a sequel bait. I didn't even get the chance to meet the main villain, just its pre-recorded voice in the loud speakers.

GAMEPLAY

RAGE is a limited open-world game. Why limited? Well because while it's still made as an open-world game, it feels linear at the same time because of it's objective/mission/quest structure. Once you're done with one quest you are immediately directed to a new one. Sure you can explore the wasteland but you won't find anything that much except from some asteroid fragments, plants and some few stuff. There are few stuff to do on the open world wasteland like, picking up a set number of falling asteroid fragments, destroying a number of bandit cars and destroying drones hovering around the wasteland. BTW you can do some side quests as well, but they are also few.

As expected from id's FPS games, RAGE's combat is great. It makes me love and forgive the game for its lame story. But the combat might get repetitive depending on the player especially if the player played A LOT of FPS games.

The gun combat is awesome, it's fast, full of action and every weapon sounds and feels powerful. You can aim down the sights but hip firing is effective too. There are the standard FPS stuff like regenerating health and sprinting. What I like in this game is how the enemy reacts on where you hit them on their body parts. The enemy moves realistically, it's like the game have dynamic ragdoll physics.

The devs implemented a weak stealth system in RAGE that it's in-effective. You can stealth kill one or two bad guys (you're lucky if you stealth killed 3). But the enemies are super alert and will immediately notice you so it's better that you ignore the stealth and spray the enemies with bullets.

You can collect stuff in RAGE's wasteland, if you have the right amount of items and recipe you can craft items like, bandages, wingsticks, RC car bombs, special ammo, etc. You can also collect junk which you can sell for money so that you can buy items and ammo from the shops.

The boss fights in RAGE are great from the start but it gets lamer in the later parts of the game. There's one boss that I just killed using Wingsticks and without dodging it's gunfire.

One thing that separates RAGE from other first person shooters... vehicle combat. In the game you can have up to 4 kinds of vehicles. You get the ATV in earlier parts, then the Buggy, then the other two better ones. The vehicles, except for the ATV can be customized and equipped with weapons. Once you get these weapon-equipped rides, you can enjoy the vehicle combat in the wasteland and participate in the races.

The vehicle combat feels great and exhilarating. It feels like I'm playing Carmageddon, Necrodome and Twisted Metal. You can see your car's parts get blown off as it takes damage and blowing up an enemy vehicle is awesome. Vehicle controls are sharp and responsive.

The races have few race tracks and modes, the most rage-inducing mode is the rally race, they're annoying. Overall the race mechanic is great and a great pass-time in RAGE but I wish there could have been more tracks and modes, like standard vehicle combat deathmatch or a mode that plays like car crash derby or car exhibition games that includes car jumping, flipping, wheelies, etc.

There are other pass-times in RAGE, mini (gambling) games! They are fun and also rage-inducing sometimes like the Five Finger Fillet, Strum and Tombstone. My favorite mini game is the Card Game, because I'm a fan and played Trading Card Games like Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon TCG. You can collect cards by completing quests, buying them and finding the scattered cards around the wasteland. Anyway play the mini games if you lack cash to buy items/ammo/ingredients.

Once you're done with Campaign mode (single player) you can play Multiplayer. Unfortunately RAGE's multiplayer is lacking in my opinion. Because you can only have two modes, Road Rage (vehicle combat) and Wasteland Legends (story driven co-op mode).

Author's Note: Since this is an old game, it's hard to find any multiplayer matches in RAGE.

In Road Rage, you can customize your ride from themes (skins), weapons and car parts (wheels, armor, boosters, etc.) and take them to combat. There are power-ups scattered in the combat arena, like Boost Recharge, the classic Quad Damage, etc. You can earn points and exp during matches to raise your level and unlock more stuff for your car(s).

The Wasteland Legends is a co-op game and it's part of the game's story. It's mostly back stories (or origins) of the people and the events on the wasteland before you, as the main character, wake up from long sleep in the ark. You can play solo or with a friend either online or split screen mode.

This is a FPS game they should have added a standard DOOM-like/Quake-like deathmatch and other standard modes like team deathmatch, capture the flag and domination.

GRAPHICS
The graphics on this game looks great. id Tech 5 is a great game engine, it features "megatextures". It means that there are less same textures in the map. But it suffers from constant texture buffering (blurry to sharp textures) when you stay in place and quickly look around. I don't mind though, because you'll forget to notice the buffering when in combat and every location in the world of RAGE is new and unique (except for the sewers).

The character models and animations is superb. I really like how they move and talk. I already mentioned the "dynamic ragdoll physics" that makes the enemies react to bullet hits and their death animations that consistent to their momentum.

The guns and vehicle models looks great and have lots of moving parts. I like the animation when you get a new gun and then turning it around to check it out.

MUSIC/AUDIO
The music is good, it's mostly sounded like wild west. Other soundtracks sets the tone on every map in the game. The music tones elevates to action if you're fighting the enemies.

Voice acting is great. It compliments the character's animations making them enjoying to watch and listen to. Too bad the story is not that great.

REPLAY VALUE
There's no new game plus in RAGE, so you have to start from scratch if you want a new game after completing your first 12 to 16-hour playthrough. If you want a challenge you can go for a higher difficulty.

There are DLC's as well. I got the Sewer Missions for free and there's The Scorchers DLC which expands the game a bit by unlocking more areas and adding a new bandit group. If you get the two DLC's, they add up to 5 hours of gameplay (or more) in RAGE.

If you're done with the campaign, you can go to multiplayer and play online or split screen with a friend.

CLOSING REMARKS

RAGE is a great game because of it's gun/vehicle combat, graphics and sound. You can just ignore the story and explore the great-looking post-apocalyptic world and shoot some enemies. Even though this is a great game by id Software, the game feels unfinished because the game ends by pushing buttons without even fighting a final boss. Let's just hope that id Software and Bethesda give this game a chance and give it a sequel that is more complete and have a proper ending (even if it's another sequel bait).

RAGE is also available on XBox 360 and PC