Oh Please,spare me the RAGE-ing about Graphics and see the whole picture!
Story 7/10
A meteorite threatens the Earth with annihilation.Humanity comes up with a project to secure their future and see a tomorrow:"The Arc" project.As one of the volunteers, you enter one of the so called "arcs" and get buried safely beneath the earth so that you will awaken after the disaster and preserve the human world.But after a long time of sleeping you forcefully awaken to see that you are the only survivor of your arc into a devastated wasteland that is the earth of today.
That was a brief description of the game's prologue to set you into the mood!The story as an idea is wonderful as it borrows it's concept from the magnificent "Fallout" that we all loved.The main character follows the mercenary way of dealing with wonderfully made NPC's brimming with personality and variation.Unfortunately though somewhen you feel like "you have done this before" and in fact you don't get really connected with the world and the beautifully made NPCs which is why you may lose interest on what's going on. And do not get me wrong it's not the RPG element that misses here but when you enrich a world so much especially it's characters , you expect that your protagonist would affect them more than this game let you. Still the story is there and keeps you going but late game you realize that it's not the reason why you still play this game with your interest still high.
Graphics 9.5/10
And that's one of RAGE's strong points..Breathtaking environments in terms of depth and display , and magnificent detail on in-game characters both NPC and enemies.You can literally stand still and bask on a landscape for some minutes without realizing you are doing it!Adding to that is the amazing detail of the characters to the point that you can see their facial expressions change so realistically and naturally that you understand what they want to say and how they want to say it before they even start speaking!And now for Gamespot and all those who criticized the game for it's technical issues..YOU GOT IT ALL WRONG..id created a wonderful graphics engine and the fact that the graphics vendors' drivers did not work correctly is not id's fault...well not entirely at least!If you should bash them for something is the fact that they inexplicably left out VITAL video setting from the options like V-SYNC and some other.But even that they immediately fixed as 4 days after the game's release they posted an update that addresses most of those issues..and if you still have some well.. there are EASY instructions in nvidia's site of How to create a custom .cfg to play the game as it is meant to be played.
Gameplay 9.5/10
The second and most important strong aspect of the game!For what is worth i am an RPG player and i mostly play such games . I rarely get interested in FPS games so you can understand that this game has surely something different to make someone that is not fond of this Genre like it!
For starters : A.I
It's been a long since i saw such a clever A.I in a game.Enemies dodge your rain of bullets in the best way they can(and believe me they do it quite well) and they actually TRY to stay "alive" (unlike other FPS games)... well...even when they mindlessly charge you ! Outstanding evasive and offensive maneuvers , hiding behind cover and keep hiding while shooting,running strategically when they are in danger , keep shooting you with their dying breath and even dying in style is what you are gonna see from RAGE's bad guys, be it bandits or mutants or ... Well the other part is kind of a spoiler :P . Adding to that outstanding A.I is a great array of weapons that allow you to decimate your afford mentioned enemies while letting you have fun and seem cool at the same time:Shotguns , Sniper Rifles , Pistols, Crossbows ,Windsticks (that one you are gonna enjoy most :P) and many many others all ofc in a unique Post apocalyptic style!You can also change ammo to add to your fun AND strategy of killing the opponents!Major part plays also the Driving you do with your trusted buggy which you can customize as you please and pit it on race tracks or free ride it in the wasteland face melting muties and bandits which are both great fun!Having that said there is the issue that driving is not so challenging since you can get upgrades FAIRLY easily but there is Mutliplayer mode to compensate for that and EVEN add more length to the game.Finally there are also many mini games, sidequests and collectibles to keep you going!Truth be told i am playing on HARD mode and i am not having particular trouble even if the game offers so much resistance but there is always Nightmare mode(or something like that)
Overall 8.5/10
As you can see(if you went through the trouble to read my whole lengthy review lol :P) the game HAS SO MUCH to offer that make it worth to lose some of ur time(about 20 minutes lol) to address the graphic issues that many ppl considered a reason enough to condemn such a beautiful game!Do your self a favor and buy it even if you don't like FPS so much and if you LOVE FPS as a genre...Then i really wonder why are you still reading and haven't run to your local retailer or your preferred digital distributor to buy this!