by Jeff Woleslagle on Oct 11, 2011
Rage
is, at its core, a retro shooter, spurning magnetic cover systems,
a convincing stealth system, headhunting ammo, and other namby pamby
niceties common in today's shooters. The closest Rage
gets to true
innovation in the gameplay department is in enemy AI and behavior. The
wasteland has a talent for breeding melee mobs adept at dodging
gunfire, and more than once I marvelled at the mutants and bandits
repertoire of parkour moves. Enemies leapt to overhead pipes, ran up
the side of walls, somersaulted, tumbled, and otherwise evaded my
shotgun shuffle and scored a few whacks to my face with regularity.
In an era of hard-charging zombie villains, Rage
brought a pissed-off
Cirque du Soleil cast, complete with flaming spiked baseball bats.
Ranged enemies, on the other hand, will sometimes withdraw to stronger
cover, but more often act nearsighted, exposing their noggins for an
easy headshot or standing inexplicably still. The only real
negative in the core gameplay is the arena wave battle feel of enemy
encounters. While it's not the rote room-by-room cover and kill now en
vogue across the shooter genre, Rage
does play a little too much to its
acrobatic AI strengths and resorts to simply bum-rushing the player a
shade too often. That said, there's plenty of story twists and map
cleverness to help me overlook the occasionally tiresome sequence of
tripwire spawns.
Rage
also offers a comprehensive vehicle travel and combat system
complete with its own racing circuits. Players can acquire four vehicle
classes of increasing toughness and weapons variety, and can race (or
hunt bandits) to buy better modules like engines, boosters, tires
(including spiked tires), and more. The switch from behind the wheel to
boots on the ground is seamless and puts me in mind of games like
FarCry
or what I hoped Auto Assault
might be.
In addition to the racing circuit, Rage
offers minigames in spades. A
card dueling game, a dice game called Tombstones, a memory game called
Strum, even a rehash of the Five Finger Filet from Red
Dead Redemption.
Even death offers a second chance minigame - if the two electrodes are
stopped when they intersect, the player regains more health and
electrocutes nearby enemies. Each but the last has Steam achievements
tied to it, and offers a fairly reliable source of money. Also
available are vehicle-based Stanley Express missions to deliver
packages to a number of drop boxes in a set time, a demented TV game
show called Mutant Bash TV, and job board postings that require a
second clear of game areas or much more enjoyable sniper cover missions.
Storywise, however, the game's veneer is rather thin, which is to be
expected from anything in the FPS genre. The game reached its
emotive climax about halfway through, for me, and the end sequence was
disappointingly short after an exceptionally long run-up.
Still, as a shooter with RPG tendencies, Rage
keeps players busy and,
in the end, more than satisfies.
On the plus side, once you're patched up, Rage
is a gorgeous game,
enlivening the sterile climes of a post-apocalyptic wasteland like no
other game before . I loaded up Fallout
New Vegas just for comparison's
sake, and its absolutely astounding how much difference one year and a
whole new engine makes. Most of what you can see in Rage,
you can
explore, and you'll want to explore, given the collection, crafting,
and side mission hooks (not to mention the sheer joy of roaring through
the wasteland in your Mad Max-mobile).
While the wasteland environments were pleasingly terrifying at every
turn, the unsung hero on the art team might be the character model
artists animators. Rage
constantly surprised me with the level of
detail, style, and (I daresay) personality of both NPCs and enemies.
Though Rage seldom scaled up the size of enemies, those few encounters
were memorable. I can't recall a game that more convincingly matched
lips and facial expressions to spoken dialogue.
Driver issues shouldn't take away from what's assuredly the best
looking FPS title of the year, but first impressions count for a lot.
Our early pain with Rage
is detailed in a
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/reloading/2011/october/6">recent
edition of Ten Ton Hammer's
newsletter, so I won't belabor
the point here. It's a shame that a game
with astounding level of detail and view range has to suffer a point
drop for an issue that should have been caught early in QA, but we
(with some chagrin) review games as they launch.
If you're as enthused about vehicle combat as I was, Road Rage has
slightly more to offer. Five unlockable vehicle classes (compared to
the four in campaign) plus a bevy of weapons like cluster bombs and
nailguns that aren't available in single-player mode. The competition
is a lot stiffer than I encountered in campaign mode; all races are
rallys (first to checkpoint scores, with smaller point values for
kills), a mode that's more difficult than all out racing. If you like
the taste of racing you get in the campaign, Road Rage will be your
kind of multiplayer.
Cons: