A Little Something to Rage About

Rage is an ugly game, but not in the traditional sense of the word. Rage is gritty, depressing and really friggin’ cool. This futuristic, post-apocalyptic, mutant-infested take on the year 2135 is one that makes you glad you won’t live that long, but fills you with glee experiencing it virtually. I feel Rage can be summed up with a game everybody knows is good, but nobody played.

As the game begins, you are almost killed by bandits, only to be rescued by none other than John Goodman AKA Walter Sobchak from the best film ever ‘The Big Lebowski’. He plays honourable badass Dan Hagar. Hagar takes you in and helps you get back on your feet, arming you and sending you out on missions to rescue his friends and kill mutants. The Hagar camp sets the tone for the game well, explaining everything you need to know to get by and survive in the wasteland. The game really gets started once you get to the town of Wellspring, where it offers you opportunities to change things about your character and do some futuristic gambling over hologram fighting.

Rage is a first person shooter on the surface, but an RPG at heart, striking a familiar note with fans of both the Fallout and the Borderlands fanbases. You loot bodies, upgrade your weapons and there’s a metric tonne of elaborate and creative side quests. One of the best things about Rage is the voice acting. It’s all done brilliantly and the cast all hit home runs, making the game feel epic and cinematic, if gaming had Oscars…

The setting is very unique, it has a huge steampunk vibe to it, without being too niche. The game is accessible and not too difficult, though still presenting a challenge to throw a bone to more experienced gamers. This isn’t a game you play for the difficulty though, this is a game you play for the story, the atmosphere and everything in between. The game manages to never make you feel optimistic or happy, as ammo is scarce and the world is just a dusty mess, a memory of what once was.

Running low on ammo isn’t much of an issue though, as the game has a lovely unique weapon called the wingstick. A three-bladed boomerang that will always come back to you after cleaving it’s way through the skull or nutsack of an enemy unless it gets lodged somewhere in their brain, in which case you can just loot it from their body. There’s also a crossbow, which is just as awesome and brutal as it sounds, with electrified bolts and bolts smouldering in flames. the varying ammo types isn’t exclusive to the crossbow, as you can fill your revolver up with armour piercing rounds and other types too, affecting all of your weapons across the board.

The racing in the game is a big plus, most of it involves combat but there are more friendly races you can take part in at Wellspring. These are less like the Twisted Metal-like vehicular combat and closer to the high velocity ATV racing you would get from a game like Fuel. The vehicles are also upgradable and add even more depth to an already deep game.

Unfortunately, it’s not flawless. No game ever is, and Rage suffers heavily in some departments. The combat can get extremely repetitive as you clear stronghold after stronghold of the same enemy types, using the same weapons and earning the same rewards. It’s the games biggest downfall, and for an FPS game to have boring combat is a real arrow to the knee of a potentially great adventurer.

Rage is also quite a short game, clocking in at a total of about 10 hours, with side quests. When compared with other games in the genre, this is especially short. It also doesn’t have much replayability due to a pivotal story moment (No Spoilers). This is a game that’s best played in multiple sittings, but then to be put back in it’s box and never played again. It’s a real shame because this game got a lot of things right, just missed the mark on some major things.

Overall, Rage fails to disappoint. Even when you’re feeling bored of the empty wasteland and repetitive combat there’s always something to do just around the corner. I’d call it a hidden gem, but everybody knows about it, so really it’s just a gem. A standard, flawed gem. There have been talks of a sequel after ID software is finished with the new DOOM, so keep your eyes peeled.

7.8/10

Conclusion

‘Not necessarily a poor man’s Fallout, more like a poor man’s Mad Max’.