A month or so ago I replayed RAGE and its accompanying DLC and thoroughly enjoyed it. The game has a slow start that is accompanied by a rather repetitive moment since when you reach Wellspring, the game basically has a tutorial 2.0. RAGE is about a post-apocalyptic event where the real life asteroid, 99942 Apophis hit Earth in a hyperbolic event that destroyed human civilization. Humanity survived, however, and further with the Eden Project, where "Arks" were put into the ground with specialized subjects put in cryostasis to wake up and restore Earth. Gameplay The gameplay of RAGE is astounding. The game, to me, lacks any real filler content and all of the functions, mechanics, and minigames serve a purpose one way or another. From races improving your vehicles to card games and five finger fillet allowing a reliable method of obtaining extra cash. It's a pseudo-open world, the game's map is rather small and confined, a real pocket of the wasteland that the Earth has become. You drive from settlement to bandit outpost and start the mission there, fighting your way from Point A to Point B in a typical corridor shooter. The enemy AI is where the game truly shines, the tactics they exhibit, the tools they use, and the way that they react to you and your own methods of attack are very engaging and emergent. There are many bandit clans, from the Ghosts and Wasted to the Gearheads and Jackals. The main criticism I have about these bandit clans is that, at a point, you notice that these clans can start to feel similar to each other. It isn't too prominent unless you are actively looking for it (or simply remember behaviors from previous clans like I did), and for the most part each clan feels different to the other. Ghosts are fast and agile; they are typically melee centric enemies that rush the player and climb the walls or swing from the ceiling. Gearheads are hard hitting, tanky brutes that utilize advanced turret robots. The Shrouded utilize RC bomb cars and typically utilize suppression fire. But when you have: Ghosts Wasted Shrouded Gearheads Jackals Scorchers You're bound to notice similarities amongst them. The Gearheads share a similar enemy AI style from the Wasted, for example. It isn't anything terrible, but either with more time and consideration, or less bandit clans, each of these groups could feel entirely unique and separate from one another. Especially when, at times, the enemy design feels lackluster to what could have been. The driving and racing in the game is great, the handling is different per vehicle and it's very fluid, not too floaty or stiff. It's not hard to master nor is it hard to really pick up, but it will take some accommodating to. The way that enemies utilize gear on vehicles, the same kinds that you can use, is largely okay. At times, though, it feels like either they have infinite gadgets or simply abuse them (particularly the shield gadget). It gets to a point where the only real weapon you're going to use on the car is the rocket launcher. Despite that, however, the enemy AI in vehicles is just as smart as it is on foot, and they will flank you, utilize their boosts and gadgets, plant mines, etc. (The only thing I absolutely hate about this game are the relay races. those can burn in Hell.) The equipment in the game is very solid and all around, (almost) every weapon has its own utility and use. The starting settler pistol is a good, all around defense weapon that has some nice alternative ammunitions for it (my favorite being the Fatboy). The only two weapons that seem lacking is the crossbow (it has its uses, but is far more situational and due to stealth being a tacked on feature, isn't all that useful IMO) and the settler assault rifle (as it gets outshined by the Authority machine gun). But you'll often find yourself switching weapons and ammunitions to fit the enemy you're facing off against. The gadgets you can get are also, generally, very solid in how they're designed and very useful. The only one that I have issue with are the sentry turrets and the RC bomb cars. The issue with the turret is that it's highly situational, best used against those few missions where you need to stand your ground. It can be used outside of such scenarios, as it is handy against clans like the Shrouded or Gearheads, but largely it is a weak gadget that I rarely used. The issue I found with the RC bomb car is that, for how small a target it is, enemies seemed to have had pinpoint accuracy on these tiny bombs. They become a priority target, naturally, but the accuracy of the enemies makes it simply near impossible to use unless you're able to ambush them or are suppressing them via sentry turret. Needless to say, I found myself not using these two gadgets the most in my entire playthrough. The crafting that the game has is a nice feature, it isn't intrusive or burdensome and the components necessary aren't hard to come by, you'll typically come across them in the levels. You can always buy some more from the shops if you have a hard time finding them or are low on them. The only time I had issue with the crafting is the infusions, as they require ingredients that you'll find in the overworld rather than the levels, themselves, and they can be easy to miss. Boss Fights RAGE features a handful of bosses that you'll face off. Typically, the game does the standard trope of "here's a new big enemy, they'll later become a common-ish type of enemy", namely with the Kraken. It has about two or so unique bosses that are entirely kept to a boss fight, but even those are pretty lackluster in their gameplay design. They don't offer much in the way of a unique opponent, or patterns, or anything. One of the first bosses you'll come across is a guy in a car firing a machine gun and you wait until he reloads. And that's basically it. There might be a wave of Wasted if you don't take him out in time, but that's hardly interesting to me. The other one that comes to mind is a giant mutant. He has a very standard "pick up rock/debris, throw, repeat". Another, the Gearhead boss, is just a man with a higher health pool and red Gearhead armor. These bosses are disappointing in a game with very engaging enemy AI. Mission, Level, and World Design The overall mission design in the game is not bad, but it can become repetitive after a while. It's a corridor shooter, so shooting is very expected, but it doesn't do a lot to make it feel not as repetitive as it is, and it could do with more interesting mission design that isn't "traverse level to end of level". It has a few levels that have a "stand your ground" moment or "turn this valve" which are fine. The levels themselves are very well designed, the only time I ever got a bit lost or turned around was the return to the Shrouded's base as the developers thought to add some obstruction to make it feel less repetitive (which...works enough, I suppose). The game does have a bit of a reuse problem, it reuses a handful of levels quite a few times, usually when they reuse a level, they change it up some. Either adding new enemies, obstructions, or you do it in a reverse order. It isn't terrible and I never quite felt bored by doing a level backwards or slightly altered, but it would have been nice to have more levels that aren't the same but different. The world of RAGE is interesting to me. I enjoy the art direction and style, it isn't the most original and is quite derivative of medias like Fallout or Mad Max. But where it has those similarities it's also unique in its own ways IMO. I like a lot of the armor and apparel design (and how a lot of characters are unique and how often you'll see prosthetics), the choice of making a prominent, signature weapon be a tri-bladed boomerang is interesting to me and it's a solid weapon in the game. There's a lot of potential in its art direction. As for the design of the world, it's also intriguing. The game clearly takes place in the U.S. ...Right? It does, seemingly, but there's signs with Chinese characters. I like to think that in a similar vein as Mad Max, RAGE takes place wherever with no real reason. Mythological in a sense. That's just me, though. Story This is the weakest aspect of the entire game. It's an ID game, and further it's a John Carmack game. The story/writing isn't awful, but it's just incredibly background to what it is you're doing. It's a very standard "resistance vs oppressor" story, where the oppressive force in the wasteland is the Authority, a shadow government lead by General Cross. Their motives and goals aren't all that elaborate or thought out, we learn that General Cross had splintered before Apophis and had his own Arks for his own crews that were set to open up earlier, giving him a headstart in taking over the wasteland anew. You play as Nicholas Raine, an Ark survivor who wakes up mordaciously alive where your others have perished and turned into glorified mummies. As you progress in the game, you get more involved with the Authority and see how they take over a settlement, you help free a resistance member at one of their prisons and later go to another part of the wasteland that gets you closer to taking out the Authority by forcing the other Arks up out the ground. It's nothing terrible, like I said, but it's also nothing to write home about. It purely serves the gameplay than provide anything of real substance or intrigue. The ending of the game is incredibly lackluster and unsatisfying, however. DLC, The Scorchers The DLC sucks. It's not all that interesting to me. The "story" is even more barebones than the base game and it's...very 2011. The most interesting aspects that it has is the architecture of the region you go to (which is a very on rails, on foot experience), the new nailgun the DLC includes, and the tiny lore added about Oasis and other parts of the wasteland. Outside of that, it's just a pretty lackluster experience. Summary RAGE is a great game, it does a lot of things right and well, with only a few things that truly take it down just a bit. The flaws it has aren't nearly a big enough deal to detract from the overall experience that you'll get from it. It is easily one of my favorite games by ID and one of my favorite FPS titles, and one that makes me yearn for more corridor shooters. It's very cheap on Steam and I recommend it to anyone who's an FPS fan or an ID fan.   submitted by   /u/Benjamin_Starscape   to   r/gaming [link]   [comments]