Excellent AI and artistic design are not enough to save this unsatisfying, flawed and generic experience.
Catacomb 3D set the template for first-person shooters. Wolfenstein 3D popularized it. Doom perfected it. Quake introduced new 3D technology. Quake III defined the modern multiplayer deathmatch. Doom 3 pushed technological boundaries even further. Even every sequel that appeared between these groundbreaking titles (Doom II, Quake II etc) improved upon the original game in one aspect or the other. And Rage, well...what DOES Rage give us?
Obviously, my love for id Software made this fanboy very excited about Rage, a game that had been in development for several years, and featured an all new engine – idTech 5. With these key id Software ingredients in place, what could possibly go wrong? Well, a lot as it happens. Before I get to the nitty gritty details, the stuff that YOU want to hear, here's a brief summary of just what Rage is all about...
Rage is a post-apocalyptic FPS. How original. You play as an 'Ark' survivor of the Apophis asteroid strike of the year 2029, which destroyed just about everything and turned Earth into a wasteland, and you awaken a long time after the disaster. Small colonies are scattered around the Wasteland along with the overpowering authority, vicious gangs and, er, motor races. The outline of the actual story is pretty bog-standard and generic, and involves you joining the resistance fighters to free the other other remaining Ark survivors, or something along those lines. With so many games of this ilk on the market today (Fallout 3 anyone?), it takes something special for Rage to shine.
What id did get right was the game's artistic design and values. Even though Rage is a post-apocalyptic FPS, not exactly the most inventive of settings, it still looks unique and just feels 'right'. Surprisingly, you can quite easily set it apart from Fallout or Borderlands, making it at least memorable in it's presentation. Although the game is quite obviously inspired from a variety of different, existing sources visually, it comes across with it's own formula of post-apocalyptic goodness. The whole desert environment, characters, weapons and level design is well done, as you'd come to expect from id Software. It didn't feel like they were ripping anyone off particularly; if they were, well it's kind of hard not to anyway, what with all the other games and movies like it.
id Software have always stuck with linear, straight-forward shooting with pretty much all their past FPS's, and this is what they do best. For Rage however, it's evident that this time around they wanted to go for some variety in the gameplay, and after all those defining Doom and Quake's, I guess I can't blame them for trying something new. The thing is though, they failed in most respects. As a shooter, Rage isn't that bad – the weapons are varied and feel pretty good for the most part, and they range from pistols and shotguns to rocket launchers and machine guns. There's also crossbows and 'wingsticks' – essentially boomerangs used as projectiles (a very interesting melee weapon if you ask me) – plus the amount of ammo types for each firearm is surprisingly large.
Surprisingly, the AI tends to be excellent throughout. Think of the enemy soldiers in F.E.A.R., only more sophisticated. All kinds of enemies armed with guns will take cover and vault over scenery, work together to flank you, flush you out with grenades, and when the going gets tough, they'll retreat. Heck, even mutants armed with measly knives and machetes will hunt in packs. Considering I wasn't expecting such impressive AI, especially for an id game, I can only praise the developers for their work in this category, as these are some of the smartest foe I've seen in a while. Not only that, but action can be relentlessly exciting – in some parts of the game, endless mutants are thrown at you meaning that's it's never safe to stand still. This of course, harkens back to the old-school gameplay of Doom. The variety of enemies means that the shooting sometimes ranges from classic FPS shooting to more modern gameplay.
Sadly, the vast majority of the level design regarding shooting sections in Rage are uninspired, straight-forward corridor crawls, and while I have nothing against corridor shooting, especially from id, it just seems like the impressive AI has often been wasted on the stupid level design, and it leaves enemies nothing better to do than either charge at you, run away or simply just stand and there take the hits due to the lack of places to go. Waste of effort if you ask me, and more to the point, Rage doesn't really feel like much of an old-school shooter to have this excuse, so this renders corridor shooting pointless. Add to that the fact that the whole Wasteland itself is disappointingly small and full of boundaries; there is little reason to explore it. Instead of being a vast, open world, the whole game is set within canyons and valleys that have set roads leading to new areas. In other words, the roads lead to dead ends.
Vehicular combat plays way too much of a role in Rage, as does driving in general. Not only does it feel unfinished, it also just feels like filler. The Wasteland is a relatively large place, but you don't ever want to explore it because the only way to survive the open is to be driving. Everywhere you go, no matter what the situation, you'll be constantly shot at by other bandit vehicles, guard towers and whatnot, and it all gets old really fast. While the whole driving business may have worked if it was done in small doses, the fact that you have to drive if you want to travel, well, anywhere, just gets annoying pretty soon. Not only that, but the driving is almost always thrown in between a mission making it tiresome if anything.
Cars can be modified with different weapons and power-ups, but who really cares? Every time I drive anywhere in this game, I try and boost as often as possible just to get to my objective faster, and to avoid fighting enemy vehicles simply because I can never be bothered to engage in a fight. The driving physics suck too, and feel really basic and twitchy – you know the drill; you attempt to use the handbrake and you quickly find yourself in a ditch somewhere. Races can be attempted to earn more cash, and some are integral to the story, and I just wanted to get them over and done with because every stupid car in the game handles like a shopping trolley. Plus, I didn't even find them very challenging – once you get in the lead that's basically it – you've won.
Unlike, well, pretty much every other id game ever made, Rage has an RPG side to it. You can purchase new guns, ammunition, supplies etc, and you can also build useful tools out of old junk that you've found a long the way, but this whole aspect of the game felt a bit simple, and too similar to that of other games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or even Elder Scrolls to stand out. There's also a lot of characters to be had throughout the game, and colonies all feature plenty of citizens roaming about, but other than the one's who are integral to the main story or one's that offer side missions, they don't really have anything interesting to say other than a few predictable one-liners – usually "The authority this and the authority that" or "Wow, you're one of those Ark guys!"...you get the picture. So even though the world of Rage is full of people, most of them don't even have anything good to say.
The actual campaign missions seem to have no real structure. Enemies are mostly well designed, but naturally I still have plenty of complaints regarding bosses as well. For example, pretty early into the game you'll come across a huge boss fight, and you most likely won't be ready for it. When I got to this point, I was still getting used to the way Rage works – I had already fought God knows how many mutants and because of this, I ran out of ammo for just about every weapon I had, then this huge, beast of a mutant boss is thrown at me. Luckily a rocket launcher with respawning rockets is provided. But this is irrelevant, because the boss fight itself didn't make much sense. You just sort of fire a few rockets at it, find out that it's practically immune to them, so you wait and see if you can find a weak spot...but it just keeps on throwing endless rubble at you. So, going back to step one again, you shoot rockets at it's seemingly invincible body and then it kind of just charged forward and revealed the top of it's head...and then you FINALLY figure out how to hurt the darn thing. Conclusion: Boss fights are rarely a good thing in any First Person Shooter, and id clearly haven't figured that out yet.
Another minor flaw that you'll no doubt spot include the map on the heads-up display. For whatever reason, it only seems to appear when traveling outdoors. In other words, it's only useful when driving to an objective because when in a built-up area, or any shooting part of the game, it's not present full-stop. I know this encourages you to explore the levels, but seeing as there isn't much to see anyway, what's the point? It's also a bit annoying not having the map in the corner of the screen when looking for whoever it is waiting to give you a mission.
For me, Rage's biggest letdown is the fact that I just DON'T CARE about the characters, any of the missions or the story in general. Rage just doesn't have that vital spark that other games of the same ilk had (Fallout 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. etc). The whole game just isn't very interesting. The characters are unmemorable along with the bland story which sometimes falls flat on it's face. I mean let's face it, the whole 'resistance overthrowing authority' business has been around video games for a long, long time now, and just because it's now in a post apocalyptic setting doesn't make it any more special.
Graphically, Rage is a mixed bag with it's new engine technology. The biggest problem is that the textures are inconsistent. Sometimes the game looks absolutely fantastic, but sometimes it looks less impressive than it's idTech 4 predecessor. That's something I never thought I'd say. Doom 3 was a groundbreaking game visually, but Rage is 'good' and that's about it. Outdoor textures are excellent, and there is a lot of nice lighting to be had with it. Character models and animations are also top notch, but other than that there's not much to rave about. Considering how incredible Doom 3 looked in '04, the same can't be said with id Software's latest engine. To be honest, most indoor environments just look really average, with some muddy textures thrown in on objects. I'm not going to lie, I thought Rage would completely steal the show for the best graphics of 2011, but obviously I was wrong.
Upon release, Rage was prone to some horrible technical bugs, with Nvidia and ATI chipsets having their own different issues. Most of these glitches seemed to have been resolved by the time I started playing the game, but even my GeForce card suffered from some annoying screen tearing without V-Synch being enabled. I could rant on about id Software putting consoles over PC gamers (which was shocking news!) and that being the reason why the PC version of Rage was buggy on release because of this, but to be honest, in this day and age, PC games just seem to be getting worse in terms of technical quality, and, rather worryingly, I'm getting used to it. If you play Rage now, I doubt you'll be suffering from many bugs, so this argument is rather irrelevant these days, but it still had to be mentioned.
Sound-wise, Rage probably won't disappoint. The voice acting can be excellent, with certain characters played very well and great banter from your enemies in fights. But with the colony citizens uttering dull, generic one-liners, it's not all good stuff. Sound effects are mostly well done however, from gunfire and explosions to the music. Although not exactly the most memorable, the sound design is still well above average for the most part.
Rage does support multiplayer, and this makes the whole concept of racing more understandable and competitive, but I'm just not a fan of multiplayer driving games full stop. You can also team up with a mate and play through some co-op missions in the same vein as the single-player Rage, which is actually quite fun at times, though nothing special. Seeing as I'm not exactly the biggest online gamer, I haven't spent much time with Rage's multiplayer, therefor, these are just my humble opinions, but if you do like your games to be competitive, then Rage offers a surprising amount of variety and depth online, and I would be surprised if you were sincerely disappoint with this aspect. Even so, it still doesn't feel like id were focusing on multiplayer gaming over single-player.
As a hardcore id Software fan, I expected much, MUCH more than this. This is the first time I've really felt let down by, well, ANY of their games. I guess I can't blame them for wanting to do something different for a change, but Rage just has way too many flaws to stand out from the rest of the post-apocalyptic video game competition. Had the game been released by a smaller developer, this review would probably be a little more thoughtful. Granted, it is occasionally a stupendously crazy FPS with a fantastic sense of artistic design and excellent graphics that id Software does best, but at other times it's a mediocre-looking, generic corridor crawl with a boring plot and bog-standard driving elements. Inconsistent is the word. I just hope Doom 4 does id Software justice.
Wrap-up:
+ (Nearly) a gem regarding it's artistic design
+ Some nicely designed weapons and combat sequences
+ Occasionally the game looks spectacular...
- ...but much of the time it looks mediocre
- Doesn't feel like an id Software title
- Driving sections are tedious and repetitive
- Some horrific performance issues to be had across a wide range of different chipsets
- Story is generic and boring
- It's obviously been designed with consoles in mind. Thanks a lot id Software, you've let millions of loyal fans down