rating: ★★★1/2

He looks like a friendly bloke.

Post-apocalyptic games seem to have reached their peak in popularity recently with games such as Fallout 3 and Borderlands. Now another post-apocalyptic shooter, Rage, enters the arena desperately trying to differentiate itself from the rest. How does it do that? Well, by doing almost nothing new at all.

Rage is the newest shooter from veteran developer id Software, known for classic games like Doom and Quake. Although Rage does not do anything new, that is not necessarily a bad thing; id Software has never really been much for innovation in the first place. Where id doesn’t succeed in originality of gameplay, it does a fantastic job of taking the core components of first-person shooters and making them feel very satisfying and fun.

Rage’s actual action feels very much like the Call Of Duty games, but a little heavier. For instance, you can really feel the weight of the guns when shooting them. Looking back at games like Doom, it is clear that id knows shooter gameplay better than most developers.

Rage seems to be set in an open-world environment, but all of its missions and action take place in separate areas that you get to by vehicle. Once you get to these objective areas the game turns into a completely linear, close-corridors shooter. The game has some light role-playing elements in the form of loot gathering and a bit of customization. However, it feels like a missed opportunity that you’re not given more options for customizing weapons, which would have made the action all the more interesting.

The driving in Rage has been heavily advertised and it is very well implemented. The controls for the vehicles are arcade-influenced, comparable to the driving in games like Twisted Metal. The vehicle is mostly used to traverse the main wasteland areas to get to your objectives. On the way, there is basic vehicle combat in which you encounter many bandits whom you can take down for money. There are also races and time trials to do on the side in order to earn money and pay for more upgrades for your car. Although they are side missions, the races don’t feel tacked on and add variety to the game.

The story is the biggest weakness of Rage. It is completely unsurprising. All the characters’ intentions are clear from the get-go and there are no big twists or shake-ups to throw the player off balance. It’s a real shame because the world id created with Rage is absolutely stunning. This game is beyond drool-worthy — I actually lost track of what was coming out of my mouth while ogling the game’s visuals.

As beautiful as this game is, there is an issue with the new engine id created for it. The game has a mean texture pop, meaning that the game loads details while you are playing instead of pre-loading it before a level. The result is that the graphical changes in the environment appear suddenly and can be a bit disorienting.

However, beyond that, the amount of detail in the characters is incredible and it is clear that they were all hand-animated. The voice acting is great with actors like John Goodman lending their voices. It’s just too bad that the characters are never given anything interesting to say.

The game lasts about 15 hours if you complete every available side mission. After a while it eventually does wear out its welcome, especially in the last area, but there are plenty of distractions in the towns that mainly consist of gambling mini-games. They are all surprisingly fun, especially the strikingly deep Magic: The Gathering-style card game.

Rage plays it safe, but it is executed exceptionally well. It’s just a shame to imagine the game it could have been if id were willing to take more risks. With that said, Rage is still an enjoyable piece of eye candy.

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Image: id Software