An absolute joy to play hindered only by it's length and pseudo-linearity.
The first thing, unfortunately, that grabbed my attention, was the horrific screen tearing and texture popup. It really was next to unplayable, certainly alienated any sense of immersion in the game atmosphere. But after a quick patch those problems were long gone and the game performed very well on the highest settings.
On the topic of graphics, the game seemed inconsistent to me. Characters look really nice ( not the best i have seen but very very good ). However the terrain, which looks good from a distance, upon closer inspection reveals some rather blah textures. The poor environment textures are more than made up for however by the BRILLIANT character animation. Each type of enemy reacts very differently to being shot in different areas. While I realized that this is not a new feature in games, the way the different enemies moved and reacted truly made you feel as if you were taking on a different type each time.
The sound is on par with today's releases with the exception of the voice acting which is OUTSTANDING. I just wish that there was more interaction with the different characters. There was such a chance here to develop a sense of endearment to the characters that just wasn't capitalized on because of the brevity of the conversations you can have with them.
The core of any game is of course the gameplay, and Rage won't leave you unhappy in this respect. From the gunplay to the races it is just capital. That being said, the game is WAY on the easy side as far as my experience with FPS games has been. This is from someone who is *not* that great at FPS games. I had to ratchet the difficulty up to hard, and then the toughest level before I really felt like I had to use any real strategy to complete the short, but satistfying missions. The missions themselves take you to several different hubs of different classes of baddies, sometimes to a point where it becomes redundant. There was only one hub that I found to be very interesting in terms of level layout, the rest were fairly ho-hum been there seen that types of places.
The game tries to incorporate a type of crafting system which you pick up recipies for from various quests / vendors. This feels a tad contrived, many of the things you can make you will never ever need and you can end up making some things which really unbalance the gameplay to a point where there is little to no challenge ( advanced sentry turrets, advanced wingsticks, explosive shot gun shells ).
The story of the game is... well... poor. It could have been SO much better with the amazing characters involved, but alas it wasn't to be. My motivation to keep playing was actually to see the different types of enemies I would encounter rather than in any way being concerned with effect my actions were having on the world around me.
Overall, this game is a great example of something that COULD have been beyond amazing. The length of the game was disappointing to me, and the ending was just plain " wtf srsly ? ".
All faults aside this is a VERY solid game and by all means worth playing. I only wish that they had done more with the open world areas, the story, and the length of the game.