Welcome to the wasteland. Again.
Rage(2011), ID Software’s first major release since Doom 3(2004), is a complex disappointment. It had so much promise following the tech demo in 2007. It looked as if it was going to revolutionize the post-apocalypse genre and raise the bar for story-driven shooters across the board. Replete with RPG elements, deployable turrets and spider-drones, Rage even had “Mad Max” influenced roadsters you could zip around in.
It seemed like what every post-apocalyptic game strived for. Sadly, it fell short of legendary and landed itself within the “meh” purgatory of OK shooters.
It’s all garnish and no meat. The visuals and seemingly fresh gameplay carry Rage into the forefront of consumer interest, probably selling quite a few copies on that alone. Nevertheless, the abysmal story, boring quests and generally half-cocked feel of the graphical optimization ruin what could have been a pure blockbuster of a title.
The graphics are gorgeous, not counting the rampant pop-in textures that assassinate the gritty realism the developers were aiming for. Each area screams “attention to detail” from every nook and cranny. The smoldering and aged buildings, the flickering lights of an abandoned sewer, the makeshift scrap metal bridges leading to secluded bandit hideaways, Rage hosts a believable and haunting post-apocalyptic setting—visually.
The guns aren’t anything to write home about. They’re your standard-issue pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, crossbow, blah, blah. The ammo selection was quite a bit more fun, but special ammo isn’t anything revolutionary. It gave the weapons almost a Bioshock-like feel to them, but with more kick.
Bullets have a visible impact on the target and its movement. A shot to the leg will stumble a runner, a shotgun shell to the chest will throw the baddie on its ass. Nothing new here. Although there is a certain satisfaction that can be gleaned from embedding an explosive crossbow bolt into the rear of some random cockney bandit, making him run in circles, hurling profanities, until he explodes.
Another fun weapon was the wingblade, a flimsy three-bladed disposable boomerang that homes in on targets, decapitates them and sometimes returns to sender. Most of the time, however, they disintegrate on contact.
The driving had a very arcadey feel to it and was, at times, downright goofy. Vehicular combat was rather fun, at first, but soon became quite repetitive, like the rest of the game. This is the only part of the game that is multiplayer outside of the online co-op, which basically consists of one-shot missions akin to Modern Warfare 2’s “Spec Ops” mode.
That’s right, a shooter by the creators of DOOM’s “Deathmatch” mode not including a run and gun multiplayer in a major release. It just doesn’t make any sense.
While these negative factors can be overlooked in lieu of a great story, the story of Rage is pure garbage.
It begins in 2029 with a huge plot device (asteroid) crashing into earth, scorching it Cretaceous style. As this is going on, the player, a nameless guinea pig, is injected with nanomachines, cryogenically frozen and safely tucked away inside an “Arc.” No, not a vault. An “Arc.” (Bethesda’s publishing of the game probably had nothing to do with this, right?)
Blah, blah, blah, apocalypse.
The Arc Dweller awakens over a hundred years later and everyone in the Arc is dead, but him. Surprised? Didn’t think so. The player saunters out into the sunlight and is almost immediately accosted by a bandit which is subsequently killed by Dan Hagar, played by John Goodman.
One would think that John Goodman’s character would be a bit more important within the grand plotline, being that he’s the only widely known actor in the voice cast, and that he’s John freaking Goodman. However, once you leave him, after a few starter missions, you’ll never see him again.
Talk about wasted potential.
In fact, most characters are just as disposable within the plot. They come on strong, forcing importance and gravitas, then disappear without a trace the moment the plot shifts. They are beautiful to look at, just like the scenery, but one dimensional and very boring, personality-wise. It is very hard to care about the well being of these characters that have no back-story, personality traits or, to be frank, character. Every personality is forgettable, even Goodman’s Dan Hagar.
The story is disconnected and vague, with “The Resistance,” a ragtag group of anarchic guerilla fighters, warring against “The Authority,” a Kafka-esque fascist government, in traditional good guys vs. bad guys fashion that has been done to death in everything from Star Wars to Half-Life. The bland nature of the plot is further exacerbated by constant fetch quests from random NPCs.
“Rage” is a misnomer. The Arc Dweller never really exemplifies any “rage” at all. More like apathetic muddling along. There is never really a sense of urgency and the anti-climactic ending of the relatively short story merely puts a damper on the already dreadfully unremarkable plot line.
Rage is what would have happened if Fallout: New Vegas had a baby with Half-Life 2 which was adoptively raised by an abusive DOOM 3.
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