The inventors of the FPS seem to have taken a step backwards.
My suspiscions were first aroused when I found out that the main game comes on two discs (the multiplayer coming on a third). Contrary to popular belief, a game coming on multiple discs does not necessarily mean that it's big, it just means that the developer went cheap with their compression coding, and if they went cheap with something that would save them money on materials, well, you can bet that they went cheap on everything else too.
But Bethesda is on the ticket too. The creators of the Elder Scrolls series and the reinventors of the Fallout games. Vast, open-world games are all they do (we're conveniently forgetting that Wet ever happened): Surely that means that we're going to be treated to a world of such scale, our minds will be blown just by trying to see to the horizon, right? Well...no. You see, Skyrim is bigger. Hell, Oblivion (technically Cyrodil) was bigger. Geez, even FarCry 2 was bigger, and that was maybe 100 hectares. Compared to almost any open-world game you care to name, this one looks pathetic in terms of size. It doesn't even really feel like a open-world game - it feels more like a series of missions with repetitive driving sections between each one.
So, Bethesda must have been on board to provide their stunning, panoramic visuals, right? Well...yes...sort of. Sure, gazing off into the distance may bring a tear to your eye, but look at anything closer than, say, 10 metres, and it's just ugly. A lot of the plants are just two-dimensional drawings that turn to face you wherever you are, which is a trick so old, I didn't think anyone did it anymore. The visuals are all at least five years behind their time. Even Oblivion looked better than this. ...In short, I have no idea what Bethesda are doing here.
I'm sorry, that was a lie. I DO know what Bethesda are doing here. They're here so that Id Software can rip off Fallout without getting sued. But unlike Fallout, which makes an effort to establish who you are, how you feel and what you're doing before thrusting you into the great unknown, you wake up in a vault that is precisely the size of one room, everyone else is dead, and ten minutes later you are shooting Olympic gymnasts who have turned to banditry, at the behest of a man whom you apparently care about enough to take on an entire bandit clan with nothing but a revolver, and get killed in the process. Spoiler alert! You die in the first mission. But apparently you can revive yourself because of "nanotrites" in your blood which you have because...uh...you were in a vault? What?
It occured to me while I was doing my first draft of this review that the only reason why I have any idea of what is going on the story is because I watched a few interviews with the developers before playing Rage. No one actually explains why the "Authority" is hunting Vault survivors, or even what the Authotiy does with them. For all we know, we get drafted, given a shiny suit of armour, some guns, and then sent out to fight the Resistance, which, as far as I can tell, consists of five people. And those people are *ssholes.
Alas, this is an American game, and in American culture the anarchists - I mean, 'rebels' - are always the good guys. So, we get roped into the Resistance without so much as hearing the Authority's side of things, and sent off to break the Resistance's fearless leader out of an Authority prison, during the process of which the fearless leader fearlessly leaves you behind the instant he sees a way out for himself. And he never shows his face in battle again. This pretty much sums up my opinion of the Resistance.
I know I've been very negative so far, but that shouldn't indicate that there is nothing good about this game. The combat is definitely the high point, but, well, it's not what you'd expect if you're accustomed to more contemporary shooters. For instance, I expect a headshot to be a one-hit kill and, later in the game, it isn't. While having to plug a guy in the head repeatedly with my sniper rifle bothered me at first, I grew to like it. When fghting mutants, you're typically dealing with swarms, and you get to go crazy with the shotgun for a bit, but when fighting armoured enemies, their numbers are much more conservative, and you feel more like you're facing down worthy foes than just being a one-man apocalypse. The combat runs from fast and frantic to slow and methodical, and the variety is refreshing, but unfortunately this means you use almost exclusively the shotgun and sniper rifle. The assault rifle is weak at a distance and inaccurate up close making it useless in most situations. Even the rocket launcher feels under-powered.
Rage lets you "engineer" items on the fly using junk you pick up in order to "turn the tide of battle in your favour", and the limitations on your handheld weaponry make these force multiplyers feel really necessary, but the problem is that they are too easy to abuse. If you can field a couple of Sentry Bots, you've as good as won the next three or four firefights. Advanced Wingsticks will seek out enemies, even around cover, and decapitate all non-boss enemies in one hit. Even the final boss (if it can be called that) can be beaten by running in a circle and loosing neck-seeking shuriken-frisbees of doom on anything that moves. You see, calling the combat "unbalanced" fails to really describe the problem. It is simultaneously too hard AND too easy, and, strange though it sounds, that's the best description I can give.
The vehicle combat is...well...meh. I've certainly played worse, but it would be nice to be able to get somewhere once in a while without having to fight a fleet of bandit buggies. I will say that the races you run to get certificates for vehicle upgrades are competently made and pretty fun, except for the rocket rallies in which you rely more on luck than skill in order to win.
I will also say that the card game you can play in Rage's bars is more fun than it has any right to be. It's not as complex as it could be - card bonuses only extend as far as boosting the damage or health of similar card types - but after scouring every nook and cranny of the Wasteland looking for more cards, it's nice to see that effort pay off when you assemble a small army of bandits, mutants and Authority Enforcers to do your bidding.
So why, when all is said and done, do I like Rage? I think it's because Id has embraced a concept that developers are very slowly coming around to: We don't want games; we want experiences. And Rage is certainly an experience. You're not just blowing up bandit buggies in a car - you're blowing up bandit buggies in YOUR car. You're not just winning a game of cards - you're winning a game with YOUR cards. Your not just taming the Wasteland as an armoured badass - you're YOUR armoured badass. This is precisely what is satisfying about an RPG, but without any RPG elements.
Don't get me wrong: Rage doesn't hold a candle to Fallout as an RPG. There is just no comparison between the two. Fallout is an RPG with the satisfaction of a shooter; Rage is a shooter with the satisfaction of an RPG. I have to say, I don't really understand what Id and Bethesda were trying to do with Rage, and I've got the feeling that they didn't really know either. Continual references to their other games smack of insecurity, and lessen the experience. But still, I can't call this game a failure. It just feels unfinished. They tried to do something really ambitious here and I think they just got cold feet towards the end. I would have liked to have seen this game with the resources it deserved. If nothing else, it merits attention for what it might have been. Better luck next time...?