That Rage is a visual marvel should be no surprise. id Software has consistently set new industry standards since the days of Wolfenstein 3D. Rage , built using id Tech 5 engine, is one of the best looking games ever made, boasting an incredible blend of artistry, animation and smooth performance. The amount of detail built into Rage is staggering. It's easy to be overwhelmed with awe at the sight of rocky canyon walls that never seem to repeat and the meticulously designed and animated character models. Rage controls smoothly, consistently throws interesting challenges at you, and provides cool ways to upgrade and evolve your arsenal from beginning to end. Story and character, elements traditionally shoved to the side in id products, play a much more prominent role in Rage, but don't match up to the quality of the visuals and mechanics. Enjoying Rage is easy; caring about what happens is more of a challenge.

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The story setup is simple: the world was nearly wiped out by an asteroid and you emerge from an underground vault. Blinking in the bright light of the sun, you take a few moments to admire the scenery and are then abruptly attacked. Id's wasteland is not a friendly place. Most of those you meet in Rage desperately want to kill or capture you, and gradually you begin to find out why. Despite the presence of upgrade systems, mini-games, side quests and car racing challenges, Rage is primarily a shooter.It's a fairly traditional shooter, too, favoring smaller zones of combat instead of the open spaces seen in Far Cry 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Larger explorable areas exist in id Software's wasteland, but they're merely playgrounds for the vehicles. You can ride around in buggies and heavily armored cars, blast rockets at bandit vehicles and speed over jumps to smash floating beacons and earn extra rewards. It can be fun for a while, but by the time you get to Rage's second half, it starts to feel more like filler. The gunplay is always entertaining, as you adventure through corridors and interiors lined with hiding spots as mutants erupt from unseen spaces and bandits fire pistols and shotguns. Rage is not revolutionary shooter, but it's extremely well made.The weapons in Rage feel powerful, and not just because they're loud. Hit a mutant in the leg and you'll see it snap back. Bandits under heavy fire will scramble behind cover with their hands over their heads. Charging mutants can be abruptly stopped with a well-aimed shotgun blast. Hit an armored enemy across the chest with assault rifle spray fire and he'll react to every impact. It may sound like minor detail, but the high degree of correlation between shot and effect has a huge impact on making each weapon exciting to use. There's a big difference between a shotgun blast that simply kills a mutant and a shotgun blast that knocks them into a backflip and blows apart their skull.Combat encounters build in difficulty and throw a variety of increasingly difficult enemies in the mix, forcing you to be creative with your weapons. Eventually you'll acquire all the basic gun types, including a sniper rifle, rocket launcher and two assault rifles. Though only four can be active at a time, you carry everything in your inventory, so weapons are never left behind. The creative element comes into play once you gain access to all the different ammunition types and crafted items.Like in BioShock, the combat areas in Rage are littered with glittering components. With the proper materials and associated schematic you can build new ammunition or items at any time. The products can be as simple as armor piercing ammunition or as complex as mind control bolts fired from your crossbow that turn enemies into walking bombs for you to move around. Later on you'll find advanced ammunition types become almost necessary to use. Deploying sentry turrets and spider-like attack robots is extremely helpful against enemies with thick armor plating and slavering groups of mutant. Though only a handful of the alternate attack options truly stand out – the razor-edged boomerang-like wingsticks, the mind control bolts and dynamite bolts to name a few – all are useful against Rage's intelligent enemies.Even foes that run on a suicidal path toward at you armed with sticks and blades display a degree of self-preservation. They approach in zig-zag fashion and flip off walls and ceilings to make precise targeting no simple matter. Others fight from a distance, cowering behind bits of cover and popping out to take a few shots. They duck, dodge, switch positions and in general don't act like mannequins patiently waiting to receive a bullet through the skull. A few types even work together, ducking behind those with energy shields for additional cover. Rarer special types, like mutants that toss vision-smearing gunk, are especially aggressive, sprinting around and generally making life a lot more difficult. And as further evidence id Software knows how to pace a fight, just when you think you've exhausted a particular combat arena's challenge, a giant with a tentacle on its arm will burst onto the scene and send you scrambling for cover.