• PS3

by Arcee on 10.08.11

A 9.5 out of 10 from Electronic Gaming Monthly. A 9 out of 10 from both Game Informer and GameTrailers.com. And 4 out of 5 stars from X-Play. Look people, I get that you all think that Rage is the shit, but let’s be a little more honest than that. I will give the game this: Rage is about the most beautiful game I have played this year. The rendering, the animations, the lighting effects… id Software went way and beyond the call of duty in making Rage the most visually stunning game I have played so far. But when it comes to the meat and potatoes of the game, that being the actual gameplay, I am going to have to call id out on that one. The shooting mechanics of the game are great, and so is the driving aspect of the game. My problem with them is that they seem to be few and far between. At first I thought that the game was just slow in the beginning and that everything would pick up later – sadly, that is not the case. You are bogged down by some of the most mundane of quest I have found in a first person shooter.

Before I continue on with that however, I want to touch up on the good of the game. You’ve heard it everywhere by now, even in that opening paragraph: Rage is simply a beautiful game to behold. Whether it is how explosions light up everything around them, even in the blistering sunlight or how shadows move to and fro when exploring the sewers or condemned building beyond the Wasteland to the lighting effects from fires and gun blast, the people at id made sure that all their technical know-how went into making this game an absolute beauty. Trying blowing off a mutant's head in Mutant Bash TV and not admiring the chaotic beauty of the blood splash that comes off of it. Exit your vehicle on the dilapidated highway and look out towards the horizon and watch as the sun plays miraging tricks on your eyes just as you would expect in real life. Even as I am storming into Bandit or Ghost strongholds, I find myself stopping from time to time to see how every shadow and movements correlates to one another. It is the smallest details that make up the sum in Rage, and nothing was overlooked when the development team was working on these graphics. On those merits alone, Rage deserves some of the high scores it has gotten. 

Even the way the characters move in the game is something to be astounded at. The character animations are truly best I have seen on the PlayStation 3. Nothing out on the system so far can compare with them. As you duck and cover, there is no heavy bumping or clunky movements; everything is smooth and transitions well. For a great example of this, check out how the Ghost and Jackal clans move about in the game. I haven’t seen any evidence of clipping either, even during some of the most chaotic of fights; whether it be gun fights or vehicular combat. The vehicles move and kick up dust on the roads and lands just as you would expect to see yourself out here in the real world. With the exception of certain animations of some characters speaking or screaming, everything looks exceptionally well. In my opinion, Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 will have some huge new standards to live up to when they both finally see release. 

However, all that graphical power can’t help what I feel is the greatest grievance I have with the game; the pacing of the game. I know that the people at Bethesda are known for their usual RPG prowess, but the type of hybrid game that is Rage really slows down the pacing of the game. I know, it is a smarter FPS; but in the day and age where a lot of FPS fans are looking for a quicker pace in their games like that found in Call of Duty, Battlefield, Space Marine or the many other FPS offerings out there, making a smarter FPS was a big gamble for id that certainly seems to have paid off for many fans. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. I can appreciate a smarter FPS, but not at the cost of making the game substantially slower than it should be. With Rage, what doesn’t help the pacing of the game, and what made it lag for my taste, was the numerous uninspired quest the player must endure. For every fast paced gun battle you encounter in the game you must go through five or six others where you are lucky if you empty a clip from your weapon of choice. Like I said, shooter fans may be a bit spoiled by the faster pace of other games, and I commend id Software for going this route, I just think that there should have been more balance in the game. 

Another point of the game that makes it feel like a laborious chore to get through the game is that there is no way for players to become attached to the characters of the game. Either they are too underdeveloped to really give a damn about or they are seemingly just there for the sake of filling in spots in the game. At no point whatsoever in the game did I feel any kind of attachment to any of the characters from the game. And when the player has to deal with characters as boring and mundane as these throughout the course of a slow paced game, it just intensifies the feeling of playing a game whose action seems to come as fast as molasses pouring down a tree. In reality though, the characters are only as good as the story allows them to be, and the story for Rage is really quite forgettable. In my opinion based on the time spent with the game, it really does feel like the developers and creators of the game purposely spent more time developing the graphics of the game at the expense of many other factors. Sadly, those factors are just as important as graphics – pacing, characters and story.

Don’t take what I am saying here as a point of view of me not liking Rage; I actually do. I just wish that it would have done better. Watching the game at E3 earlier this year’s really had me pumped up for the game – but now that I have played it for myself I get the sense that the game could have been much more than what was presented to me. I feel a bit cheated. The simple viewpoint that I am trying to get across is this: the game does deserve high marks for all the technological and graphical feats that it does extremely well, but when story and pacing are sacrificed for beauty, I have tremendous issues with that. The people at id Software and Bethesda Softworks tried to present the perfect marriage utilizing shooter and RPG elements in Rage; but for all their hard work it just never comes together as smoothly as they thought it would. Someone should have sent this back to development to annul some of those oversights. If not for that, I certainly would have enjoyed the game much more than I did. Rage? It felt more like “passive/aggressive” in my opinion.

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