Rage shies away from greatness by sticking to the outdated style and blandness of single player pure shooters.
GAMEPLAY - You should know what you'd expect from a shooter from ID, which is a pretty solid experience with good enemy AI and lots of fun fire-fights. This is actually what makes Rage really fun as a shooter. You've got enemies that don't just stand there and shoot at you. They scramble around on the ground, use cover efficiently, and try to flank you. So in terms of a shooter, Rage does really well, especially compared to others of its kind out there. Aside from the shooting, you have some mini-games (which aren't anything to write home about) and some driving sequences that include races. The driving is actually incredibly easy, so don't expect a challenge when it comes to racing unless you play online. You also drive to and from your destinations, so the need for a strong vehicle does come into play with the enemy vehicles that stand between you and your mission starting point. Speaking of missions, this game is loaded with them. Unfortunately, not all are up to the standards of, say...Borderlands. Most are fetch quests, or make you go to a location to kill everything and/or recover something. Finally, you have your crafting, which can be really useful if you invest enough time into it. Making specialized ammo and gadgets really makes the game that much more diverse.
But the one major problem plaguing Rage is this: you cannot gain experience and/or level up. This game tries to be a straight-forward shooter, but it has all the elements of a Borderlands clone without the need to gain experience. I strongly believe that if this game had gone the route of leveling up your character and making this more into a character-building experience that it could easily be the top shooter of the year. Who cares if it comes off as being a blatant ripoff of Borderlands? If ID thinks they can make a better mouse trap, so to speak, I say they should have gone for it. But instead ID goes with what has worked for them since the days of Doom and Wolfenstein by making this a pure shooting experience. I'm not going to sit here and say that this game is bad, by any means, but a solid shooting experience isn't really enough to set yourself apart from your competition anymore. This game is just BEGGING for some RPG elements to be thrown in. So yes, this is a fun game if you just want to run around shooting everything, but frankly, I think Borderlands does the exact same things this game does, only better. - 7.5/10
STORY - You are a soldier who awakes from being cryogenically frozen to what remains of what we can assume to be Earth. Your mission is to go out and save the world, basically, but for whatever reason, the story ends up just amounting to you doing fetch quest after fetch quest. And though I haven't finished the game yet, from what I've heard the ending isn't anything special. Unfortunately, a good story is just not one of ID's strong suits. They've never really been that good at telling captivating stories in their games, and the fact that we were promised one here makes me feel duped. None of the characters are that memorable, and there really isn't much of a central story to cling to. This game feels incredibly unpolished here, and it shows. - 4/10
GRAPHICS - A lot of people are saying that this is the best-looking game to come out yet. I have to strongly disagree. While the clouds and the sky do look very life-like, there is a tremendous amount of texture pop-in if you snap the camera around. Don't get me wrong, for a desert, ID did a good job of making it look beautiful. It just feels kind of contrived when you notice all the technical problems that are wrong with what should be a very solid presentation. - 7/10
SOUND - There isn't anything here to write home about. Music and voice-acting are on par, but I found myself muting the game after the first few hours to listen to music since I didn't really care about what the game sounded like by that point. Nothing here is bad, but nothing it outstanding either. - 6.5/10
LENGTH/REPLAY VALUE - Like I say for many other shooters, this all depends on what you hope to get out of the experience. For me, if a shooter is really THAT good, I'll play through it multiple times, but I usually don't for most. Length-wise, you're getting a good package here, as I'm only about halfway through the story missions at almost 8 hours of play. Personally, I can see that there is value here, but the game just hasn't been that fun to really consider replaying after I finish. - 7/10
BOTTOM LINE - Rage is yet another game that made the critics go gaga at first because of the great graphics and presentation, but when it finally came out, I think most were really disappointed with the lack of promises fulfilled by ID. Yes, we have a good shooter experience with beautiful graphics, but where is the great story we were promised? It even says there is one on the case, but I can't seem to find it in the game. I guess their basis on what should be considered a "great" story isn't the same as everyone else. Furthermore, this game would have benefited greatly from some additional RPG aspects, such as leveling up your character and acquiring combat skills. Maybe ID didn't want this to seem too much like Borderlands, but I think that was a big mistake. There are two other series of games out there that make the most out of the post-apocalyptic experience in Fallout and Borderlands, and both are far superior to what we get with Rage. There just isn't enough to like about Rage to warrant a recommendation from me. So much was promised that isn't here, and so much feels contrived that you almost feel ripped-off as you play. I hate to say it, but ID is really showing their age with this game, and it may be time for them to stick to developing engines for shooters rather than making actual games. I feel that the average gamer expects more out of a game these days than just a repetitive shooting experience, no matter how well-made it may be. - 6.5/10