Lets RAGE!

I'm not talking about swimming with the dolphins or whatever. Im talking about ID and Bethesda's new shooter. Bethesda is well known for its amazing games such as fallout and fallout new vegas as well as Oblivion and the upcoming Skyrim. Id is of course known for Doom. Their formula for a game was simple, combine Ids shooter with Bethesda's massive worlds. The result is giant explorable world with lots of guns and plenty of bloody corpses.

One of the great prospects of the game was the ability to make items. They range from bandages to explosive RC cars. Honestly I'm disappointed in the crafting system. You never discover recipe's on your own from using the system and most of the time have to fork over cash to learn the recipes that are really useful. Not that getting money in the game is hard, it just seems like they could of made the system more rewarding by letting you "unlock" crafted items.

The weapon selection in the game is the standard array: fist, pistol, shotgun, assault riffle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, smg, and a crossbow. The game goes back to the roots of first person shooter, you can carry all your guns on you at the same time. It seems like the industry ditched that idea years ago for a more "realistic" approach to games. The thing that makes all of the weapons so fun is all the different ammunition available to you. Regular shotgun ammo is great, but exploding shotgun ammo is better. Crossbow bolts are great for stealth, bolts that let you controll the mind of your victim before making them explode into red mist are better. The ammo really makes the game fun. Dynamite crossbow bolts are my personal favorite. Regardless of how much armor the target has they take tons of damage from it.

Ai in shooters is something that is usually lacking. Deus Ex: Human Revolution had amazing AI. This game does in a different way. Most shooters you cant flank your enemies. They always seem to know where you are, That is not the case in Rage. If you shoot at them from one place and they duck behind cover, you can quickly move to a new spot and watch them still fire at the last spot they thought you were at. Reposition yourself and get clear shots where they have no cover available. The enemies aren't stupid however. They will use grenades and covering fire to allow their allies to close the gap to you. If you manage to kill enough they will run and alert another batch of baddies. When you flank them or are ambushed the enemies will climb over, under on or jump around tables chair pipes or any other object in their way to get to you. In a game with so many weapons you'd think that the idea of melee enemies would not work well. Id makes it work REALLY well.  Melee units jump, roll, tumble climb, and are just plain freaking fast and do massive damage. Mutants are the most sporadic moving targets in the game. Able to run on walls climb on pipes hanging from the ceiling and are clever enough to know if your aiming your shot gun at their legs to jump in a doorway and hold on so your shot hits nothing but the concrete below them.

Racing....I hate racing games. But I LOVE racing games that allow me to destroy my competition. Your range of vehicles is limited and your upgrades are plenty. The only way to get upgrade currency however is to race. Or to go into the vast wasteland and slaughter other bandit vehicles and collect a reward in town. Targeting your enemies in a vehicle is automatic, just wait til you see a red hexagon on them and fire away. You can also upgrade your wheels with spikes or your grill to do massive damage when ramming.The mini-gun and rockets are easy to come by and easy to go through though so beware not to run out of ammo while fighting four or five other cars at once.

Story is almost always lacking in shooters. Not too much different here. Its not a post nuclear war landscape. Its a post giant meteor landscape. Include your evil military regime and resistance faction and tada you have a cookie cutter story line. Oh wait, whats that, they are doing genetic experiments, oh wait its an Id game, no surprise there. In all honesty though, story lines like that are what I have come to expect from almost all shooter. Its the way they tell it that makes them good or not. Rage does a good job of making your character an intricate part of the story, I wont continue cause I don't want to spoil any surprises however.

Overall rage is a good buy. It has competitive racing multi-player, shooter co-op and a nice amount of time to beat the game, especially if you try to beat it 100%. It is the product of two amazing game companies, and wont surprise me to see if dlc is available with new stuff for it in the near future.

Other reviews and posts in the near future: Battlefield 3 (I'll be joining a co-workers clan and shooting lots of people), Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and Ill be working on a page for my Warhammer 40k stuff.

Until next time: Follow. But. Follow only if ye be men of valour, for the entrance to this cave is guarded by a creature so foul, so cruel that no man yet has fought with it and lived. Bones of full fifty men lie strewn about its lair. So, brave knights, if you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth.