Rage is like a ballpoint pen. Bear with me here, I’m not just staring at the items on my desk, I’ll explain. A ballpoint is functional and nothing else. It’s not interesting, exciting or unique. It just does its job and you forget about it. Then when it runs out of ink, you’re left with a bunch of useless squiggles before you throw it in the bin. I mention this because Rage is about as interesting as a ballpoint pen. It is just a slice of ‘game’. You do things and things happen and you go from place to place. But otherwise, it’s completely unremarkable. I spent a few weeks playing through it, hell I finished it last night, and I can not tell you what I did or who I should care about. It was a blur of grey walls, tire noise and the occasional gunfight.

It’s just such a vague game. The main enemy is an authority called the ‘Authority’. We’re roped into a resistance group called the ‘Resistance’. It sounds like they just wrote down a basic plot on a whiteboard and then called it a day. They had enough ideas for a three hour game and stretched it into twenty. You see, this is the type of game that annoys me. Bad games, I mean obviously, barely functional bad, I don’t care about because it’s obvious no real effort went into it. It’s just there to make a quick buck. But Rage comes on two 360 discs, it brings in well known actors (John bloody Goodman!) and generally presents itself as a Triple A Game but it’s so completely uninspired that it just washes over you, leaving no memory of it in place.

This is normally the part where I sum up the plot of Rage. I now face the challenge of not just doing that in a single sentence, maybe two. You are the survivor of a ruined world, sealed in a human time capsule called an ARK. Best I can figure, you’re an enhanced form of human (given the defibrillator installed inside your chest cavity) but your actual goal seems somewhat unclear. After fighting your way through hordes of bandits, while wielding a tiny pistol, you’re sent to a town to gather supplies. Once there, you learn of the Authority, who are evil because we say they are. I mean we don’t actually meet them until we’re sent on a mission against them. We could be best buds for all I know. From then on, we kind of drift from place to place, picking up jobs off everyone that don’t feel in anyway connected.

You are roped into the Resistance, because you’re mute and unable to properly convey that you don’t want to sacrifice yourself for a bunch of chumps you don’t know, and sent into the Authority base to activate all the other ARKs. Which will help for some reason. Then it just ends. I knew the ending was bad, it’s long been my go-to example of bad endings, but I had forgotten how apocalyptically, inexcusably bad it is. I can’t even spoil it for you because there’s no plot revelation or twist. You go into the Authority base to activate the ARKs, you press some buttons and the credits roll. What’s worse is that there’s no final boss fight; no climax at all. It introduces a new, only slighter tougher enemy, fills a room with them and then ends it there. It would be like if DOOM introduced the Cacodemon, stuck you in a small room with a couple of them and then cut to credits. Preposterous.



But maybe Rage isn’t meant to be about the story, maybe it’s about the world. Well, it’s post apocalyptic. So a lot of grey and brown. Not a damning colour palette by itself (Fallout has basically built itself around it) and the graphics have not aged terribly. It’s gone for a slightly cartoon style, but still with an edge of realism. The people at least look great and there are various different bandit factions that have different styles of dress. That I appreciated. Less welcome was the actual world design itself, as driving through its grey and brown hills was less than exciting. It was a stab at a Mad Max post-apocalyptic world and, while the bandits are alright, the actual open world feels tight and enclosed. Still, the two main city hubs are quite nicely designed and feel distinct from each other. They have some personality, so that’s something at least.

Gameplay-wise, Rage has two main strings to its bow: driving and shooting. Let’s save shooting until last because it’s a sore spot for me. The driving is another nod to Mad Max, though the cars look disappointingly standard. You can deck them in flame paint if you want but there aren’t really any crazy, post-apocalyptic designs. In fact, all of Rage could have benefited from making its main cast a bit more like the bandits. Either way, the driving is mainly a way to get from A to B across the relatively short map. Otherwise, you can take part in races, which you need to do in order to progress and upgrade your car. The races aren’t too bad, other than the very obvious rubber-banding in the competitive ones, if a little easy. The car physics are very shaky though. The cars feel loose, able to take tight corners at any speed, and don’t carry momentum. You can hit the handbrake on the buggy while boosting and you’ll just instantly stop. Yet if you lightly touch a rock with it, you have a potential to be launched off, complete with a tiny scream. Which is hilarious, so points there.



Mostly though, the driving feels like just another afterthought. There are bandit cars in the wastes that you get cash for blowing up but all you need are a few homing rockets. I just wanted a fast travel in the end, as the driving just wasn’t satisfying. Nor, indeed, was the shooting. And now we’re getting to it. I used to hold up Rage as being an example of how gun combat was meant to be done. In a way, that’s still true. Enemies react to being shot fairly realistically, in that the body part you hit will affect the animation. That’s good and Rage is the first game I really remember that happening in, at least in a way that felt sophisticated. Unfortunately, it seems like I may have gotten caught up in that detail. Upon replaying it, I thought the animations fell flat because of the amount of bullets it took to take someone down. Borderlands got away with it because it brought in RPG elements and held its numbers up in front of us. So, while still fairly dull, it does at least have an excuse.

Rage doesn’t. I can unload an entire clip of the assault rifle into a bandit and, after he’s stopped dancing around, he’ll go right back to firing again. Enemies will react to low health, crawling on the ground as they fire, but I shouldn’t have to unload point blank shotgun rounds into their face to get them there. It’s frustrating as it turns the combat into shooting at a bunch of sandbags. As a result, the weapons feel flimsy and unsatisfying. Like we’re not even having an effect. Enemies have little to no variety either. Usually it’s just hordes of bandits with assault rifles or shotguns, all dispatched in the same way. It grows wearisome after the first fight and, without any interesting weapons to try out, it’s hard to keep slogging through. Like the rest of the game, the combat feels vague and dull. Like it’s a basic drawing of a combat system but without any unique touches. The Wingsticks, essentially bladed boomerangs, are nice though.

I’m surprised at you id Software. I’m glad you’ve proved now that you do still have it in you. You can even feel their touch here and there in Rage. Getting a new weapon plays a little animation where the protagonist fiddles with the gun. There’s even a BFG. It’s given to you right at the very end, just before that little ending room full of standard enemies. In case you needed to see the credits that bit sooner. But everything else feels distinctly unrefined. That writing on a whiteboard analogy keeps coming back to me every time I think about it. Someone wrote ‘Rage’ on the top and people threw out ‘Mad Max’, ‘Authority’ and ‘Resistance’ and then there was just silence, aside from the ticking clock. Eventually they had to go home so they just decided to slot those words into a basic shell and call it a day.



I have to say it before I explode: Rage fills me with rage. Okay, maybe it’s not that bad, more a strong sort of disappointment. The ideas are there, somewhere, it’s just lacking any sort of refinement or deeper thought. The characters are nicely detailed and well presented but we’re just drifting from place to place without any real guidance. It’s like they had enough ideas to fill a single act and had to stretch that one act out to fill an entire game. Now that time has passed, there really isn’t a reason to play Rage anymore. If you want decent shooting, play DOOM or Bulletstorm. If you want something with a nicer overworld, play Borderlands. If you want Mad Max play, well, Mad Max. Rage is empty of all thought and creativity and merely stands as two discs worth of grey, dull disappointment.



Pros

-Graphical style is still serviceable

-City hubs are nicely designed

-Wingsticks

-John Goodman



Cons

-Shooting is dull and doesn’t change

-Truly terrible ending

-Vague, ill-thought out plot

-Main overworld is dull, without much to do

-Sidequests as well are mainly retreading the same locations

-Driving physics are awkward

-The rest of the game can’t compare to John Goodman



Rage

Developer: id Software

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Release Date: October 4th 2011

Play it on: Windows, Mac, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Played on: Xbox 360