Solid shooter with good travel system and fun racing game.
The game starts you off with waking up inside your cryogenic pod and finding out that the rest of your squad mates are dead due to equipment failure. So alone and disoriented and no information on your objectives, you are forced to become a loner and find a way to survive. So in the game, you will meet people that will ask you to do a mission and in return will give you supplies that will help you survive. Wiping out a whole clan of bandits and searching for a missing community member who has gone missing are two of the many missions you will be doing. The game provides a few vehicles to reach your destination which is a major part in this game. I am not a racing fan but I enjoyed playing the vehicle part. You can buy weapons like a mini-gun to be installed on the vehicles except for the quad bike. You can also install a rocket launcher, armor upgrade, sport suspension tires that have spikes, and a few more things that you will need to make it in this wasteland. To be able to purchase these items, you have to join races and win to obtain race certificates which is the currency for buying vehicle upgrades. It has timed races where you have to finish the race within a certain amount of time and checkpoint race where you have to reach it before your competition does so you can gain points to reach the required amount. In checkpoint race, you can also use the installed weapon to take out enemy vehicles to slow them down.
Of course, first and foremost this is a shooting game and is solid at that department. Weapons have different ammos like fatboys for your pistol which is good for exploding headshots and killburst for shotguns which is basically an ammo with an emp for heavy armored enemies. Game also has a crossbow that you can use for stealth or take out multiple enemies on water with an electric steel tipped ammo. I don't know how effective stealth in this game since I shot first and asked questions late in this game but don't expect a Deus Ex kind of stealth. Game also has a wingtip which is a boomerang that decapitates enemies and an rc car that explodes similar to what Call of Duty Black Ops have in that game. So the game gives you a variety of ways of killing the enemies and that is a good thing.
Rage also has rpg elements like creating your own bandages for healing and mixing ingredients for creating a powerful ammo for your weapon. There are items that you can loot throughout the game like junk parts that you can sell for cash. Rage also has mini-games you can play for cash and it is actually fun spending time playing it. There is a card game which is like a turn-based game ala Civilization. Each card is represented by a character or a weapon in the game and the card has damage and health statistics. There is an instrument game in the form of a guitar. The objective here is to memorize the color of the note that is played and if you have a great memory then you can listen to the entire tune which is cool. And there is a knife game with your hand in where you have to press spacebar at the right moment so you won't cut yourself. If you have seen the movie Aliens then you will have an idea.
A new ID Tech engine is introduced in Rage so make sure your computer can run this game fine. Although characters are very well detailed and has one of the best facial animations you will see to date, the surrounding objects on the other hand have low resolution textures. I don't know what happened there but someone dropped the ball in that department. Nevertheless, graphics is still top notch.
Unfortunately, the world is not that big and some missions will have you going back to the same level that you finish early on in the game. Towns also look dead with hardly any people in it. I know it is a post-apocalyptic world but come on ID Software. You can count how many people there are in towns with your own two hands. The game feels short also. I finish the game in 15 hours but I did all the side missions and racing missions. The ending looks like it was rushed and half-baked. This game would have been a legit contender for game of the year and would have been more successful if ID Software would have lengthen the story. I feel like this game is merely an experiment to see what they can do with the new engine and make money in the process. Hopefully Doom 4 will be the polished version of this engine.
In conclusion, Rage is still a good game on pc with its top notch facial animation, good graphics, and fun travel system. Hopefully ID Software creates a bigger and more lively world and have more missions like the sponsor mission if they do decide to create a sequel. I rate this game 8.0. Recommended especially to shooter fans