- Publisher: Bethesda
- Developer: id Software
- ESRB Rating: “M" for Mature
- Genre: FPS
- Pros: Fun, satisfying shooting; neat weapons / gadgets; great graphics; fun multiplayer; decent amount of content
- Cons: Story; claustrophobic, boring, mostly non-interactive game world; every mission is a fetch quest
Story
The story in RAGE begins with the discovery that a massive asteroid will hit the Earth in the near future. An International undertaking known as The Eden Project builds hundreds of "Arks" deep underground where mankind's best and brightest will go into deep freeze hibernation to survive the asteroid impact and, in a few years, wake up to start re-building society.
After the impact, the non-Ark survivors emerged from their shelters and started building small communities and outposts wherever they could in the now harsh desert wastelands of Earth. Mutants roam the surface, attacking and killing humans. Some humans form bands of raiders that kill and steal from other survivors. And a mysterious new group known as The Authority has appeared and started rounding up Ark survivors for unknown reasons.
You play as an Ark survivor that awakens to the dusty, barren wasteland and are immediately attacked by mutants. A friendly sniper takes care of them for you, and then tasks you with helping his small settlement with a few odd jobs in exchange for weapons and a vehicle. And so begins your time as a hero in the wasteland.
Fetch Quests From Robots
Bethesda
The quests they give you are another problem. Every single mission in the game is a fetch quest. It is always "Go to X location, kill everyone, and bring back Y item". Since there are only a handful of actual locations in the game world, you visit some of them twice, such as your visits to the Dead City where you fight through in one direction, and then come back minutes later and fight back through everything in reverse order.
And when you finish with these missions, and retrieve whatever item or do whatever the mayor or mob boss or whoever asked you for, you never feel like you are accomplishing anything. You never see the results of anything you do. The NPCs don't treat you any differently even though you just saved their water supply or wrested control of the power plant from a rival faction. You are never really emotionally invested in anything you're doing because you never see any results. And then the final mission suddenly comes up, which is supposed to be a major turning point for the survivors, and it plays out exactly like every other mission with no real climax - at least nothing tangible. You feel nothing at the end.
A Big Empty World
Perhaps the worst part of the overall world design is that it is mostly non-interactive. The levels seem like they are detailed, but you can't actually interact with any of it. You do find small caches of extra ammo, parts, and junk to sell, but for the most part the game is just bland and 99.9% empty and non-interactive.
Gameplay
Bethesda
The game doles out new items and stuff to you in a pretty clever way as well, which keeps the gameplay varied and interesting. It isn't an RPG. There is no XP or level ups or anything like that. But the game tends to give you new weapons and items at about the same time you'd expect to level up anyway, so you do feel like you are progressing and getting more powerful even if, technically, you aren't. You start out with a pistol, and end the game with a BFG (it is an id game, after all), and it all feels good, man.
