I’ve been working my way through my Steam Holiday Sale games, and Rage was next up. I wanted to wait until I had finished to post my thoughts and I just did not five minutes ago, so here they are!
Steam says I played for 15 hours and the game tells me 11:30, so somewhere in between those two I imagine. I did pretty much every sidequest that I could (I know I missed two), but I didn’t bother too much with racing unless I felt like I needed to upgrade my ride. I think 12 hours or so is pretty good for a shooter these days, and I never felt like things were dragging or padded out.
Performance-wise, it was smooth and I never had a crash. I understand ATI cards might still have problems, but Nvidia works great.
I played on “hard” difficulty and I felt like that was just right. I never waltzed through any fights, but I never felt like things were just unfair either. I died a handful of times, and probably died died just two or three.
All in all, I thought it was a fun little post-apocalyptic romp. The story is nothing too original or engrossing, but it does the job. Outside of the opening “Hey you just thawed out five minutes ago, here’s a gun, go kill two dozen bandits,” it never strays too far outside of its own internal logic. And even that head-scratcher does get somewhat explained–you’re an Ark survivor, Ark survivors were hand-picked, Dan Hagar knew that, etc.
If the setting itself is a little generic, what id’s artists did with the actual world-building is just gorgeous. The level of detail in every little location is incredible. And the environments! I know the game caught a lot of flak for its low-res textures and I’ll be honest, I spent some time tweaking .ini files and trying to squeeze a little bit more detail out of them myself. But that blurry stuff is mostly close-up, and it didn’t bother me if I was actually playing the game and not fixating on it. The middle and far distances though, man–like matte paintings. Concept art. I had to stop every once in while and just look around. That megatexture tech can be pretty spectacular.
Combat was terrific. Nobody does shooting men with guns like id, and they’re in top form here. Each weapon has its own personality and the only one I felt was a little redundant was the assault rifle, once I picked up an Authority MG. I had my favorites, but the variety of ammo for each gun kept me using all of them throughout the game.
Enemy design was good. A couple of the bandit gangs were sort of samey, but mostly they all had their different styles and approaches to combat. I never got tired of fighting swarms of mutants with my trusty spiderbot, wingsticks, and a shotgun. Oddly enough, I thought the fearsome Authority could have been a lot tougher–the Gearheads, for example, gave me a lot more trouble. Animations across the board were great. I loved/hated how mutants and certain bandits could dodge my fire and get in close. Even after I knew they were going to bob and weave, they could still pull it off–I shoot high, mutant ducks, I aim low, mutant jumps up and bounds off a wall, I aim for center mass and it spins to the side and smacks me with a club. Sure, it’s enemies-running-towards-you AI, but at least it’s interesting! And the death animations were some of the best in my recent memory. They were a mix of ragdolls and canned animations that came off really natural. A bandit might run towards you, get shot, drop his rifle and stagger a few steps clutching at his chest and then trip forwards into a heap. Fun!
NPC design was great all-around. Even the mostly-(or entirely-)static ones were well-voiced and memorable.
The RPG mechanics were tacked on and a little half-hearted. I did upgrade all my weapons, build (and use) all sorts of toys, and upgrade my cars. But that stuff all felt like it was included because it was expected, not because id was particularly interested in any of it.
Rage is a bit of an odd duck. Fallout 3 (and New Vegas) did exploration and roleplaying in a post-apocalyptic wasteland better for sure, but it can’t hold a candle to Rage’s gunplay–which is shame, since you spend so much time shooting things. It’s sort of like a more stern-faced Borderlands, but with better NPCs.
All in all, it’s a solid shooter with memorable characters, some great set-pieces, and some terrific environments (The Dead City! Jackal Canyon!). Like RobotPants said, if you like the type of game id makes then this is a no-brainer. I think it’s unfortunate that it got such bad press when it was released (performance issues, ATI driver problems, omg blurry textures wtf), because while those may have been legitimate complaints, they kind of overshadowed what really is a solid, fun game. I would buy a sequel, but I don’t think that’s very likely.
