Reviewed by Brandy Shaul
I never thought I’d get the chance to say this but id Software actually made a disappointing game. Maybe id is a bit of a victim of its own success but who honestly believed that the masters behind DOOM and Wolfenstein 3D could release a mediocre shooter? I certainly never believed this could happen but not all hope is lost with RAGE.
RAGE starts off with you waking up in an abandoned wasteland. Dilapidated buildings lay in your path, collapsed highways line the dirt roads, run-down shacks now act as the survivors’ only form of housing, and there are mutants everywhere. Does this sound like the apocalypse to you? It should, because RAGE nails the atmosphere of being almost alone, being one of the few remaining conscious people left on earth.
The atmosphere that RAGE portrays is enhanced by the technical prowess on display, with the game looking absolutely gorgeous and still managing to run at a cool 60 frames per second (at least when installed on the Xbox 360). It doesn’t happen too often with these aging consoles but I was very impressed with the visuals in RAGE.
Adding again to that atmosphere is the personalities of the other survivors along the way. Dan Hagar (voiced by John Goodman) is a very interesting, dynamic and funny character that you meet very early on; it’s just unfortunate that he is pushed to the side almost as quickly as he appears. Actually, that seems to be something that happens quite often in RAGE. Just as you are really starting to like certain characters or areas, they get taken away from you and you have to start all over again.
Shooting isn’t a new concept in games, and is definitely not foreign when it comes to id games, so it came to my surprise pretty early on that the shooting in RAGE just doesn’t feel right. It’s taken me a while to understand what exactly isn’t great about it but it comes down to the feel of the hit. For example, when I shoot an enemy in Call of Duty, the hit registers in a satisfactory way. Either the enemy responds by falling down, shouting out in pain, or dying. As far as I can tell, this doesn’t happen in RAGE with most of the weapons. If you’re using anything but shotguns, prepare to fire close to 8 bullets to kill a single mutant. Occasionally, an enemy will fall down and start shooting you while on the ground but it seemed to be a rare occurrence.
Besides not having much good to talk about when it comes to the shooting mechanics, RAGE also has an open world that almost makes you wish they had just scrapped that part of it entirely. You’ll be given a buggy to ride around in that you can then upgrade or sell. Riding around in this buggy can be fun at times but there isn’t much to do in this open world besides ride your buggy from point to point as the objectives dictate. There are a few enemies once in a while that you can fight but they can cause you major damage that may overwrite any money you can earn from killing them.
RAGE’s downfall mainly comes from its inability to innovate, or having anything interesting to do outside of the main storyline. Even the main quests suffer from monotony as they tend to be centered around traveling to areas with your buggy and then shooting everything that moves. The sad part is, if the shooting mechanics functioned more competently then this really wouldn’t be much of a problem. As it is though, I can only recommend RAGE as long as you can bare the awry shooting mechanics and barren open world.