First things first: when I first installed and booted the game, things did not look good...I was getting graphical glitches on shitloads of stuff, the player vision looked weird and the first hour or so of the game was pretty uninspired. Basically completely on-rails shooting and non-refusable quests and shit. Just to give an example: a guy rescues me in the first 2 mins of the game, takes me to his little outpost and tells me that I need to go kill the bandits who attacked me before they could rally and attack the outpost. So, he gives me a gun and the quest "accept/decline". Turns out it's a false choice, 'cause if you pick 'decline' he'll just stand there until you talk to him again, you can't even leave the freaking room! Not very elegant.
Anyway, having read about the driver problems with Rage on release I update my gfx drivers to the latest edition, which completely fixed all graphical glitches - good! Then I used a Steam launch command string to put the FOV to 100, vastly improving the console BS FOV that made me feel trapped in a box. And I slugged through the first hour, killing bandits with a tiny peashooter.
But rest assured, the rest of the game was way way better. From that point on I enjoyed myself almost non-stop. The game opens up and you're put in a town where you can pick up sidequests, participate in races (time trial, regular, rocket race, rocket rally), play minigames etc etc. It's still a very linear game by and large, but it feels a lot nicer to be able to go out and do some other stuff for a change. Also, you can leave town anytime to explore the wasteland a bit. The areas aren't huge, but big enough.
It can't really be overstated how good the game looks. It's classic Id, splashing on the graphics. But the gunplay and racing bits are a ton of fun too. There are at least 10 different weapons with different strengths (there's a BFG in there!) and different ammo types, crazy cool stuff like electric bolts, mind control darts, explosive shotgun shells...it's great fun. And the game couples that to crafting possibilities, allowing you to build or craft all kinds of stuff like bandages, sentry guns, remote control RC bomb cars, adrenaline boosts and what not. My absolute favorites however are the wingstick (a sort of 3-bladed boomerang) and the sentry bot. The latter is a spider-like robot with a machine gun and a nasty melee attack. They absolutely rock. Their movement is great...they'll jump up and down ramps, even hang from ceilings to shoot shit. I lub my sentry bots. Talking about movement, enemies move really well too. Melee enemies like mutants will roll and dodge as they run towards you, even jumping off the walls - they're not very tough, but they pack a punch and really mess you up if you keep missing them. Other enemies are more generic but even they will roll to cover and move up behind an armored/shielded ally, making them harder to hit.
The story isn't much to write home about, but eh, it's decent enough. The 2 major city hubs you visit are nicely built and feel atmospheric, and the gunplay and racing is tight fun. Coupled to the mad max feel of the cars and bandits (the different bandit gangs have very distinct and often cool themes) it was all more than enojoyable. I'd recommend it to anyone who thinks he might be interested in a game like this, provided he fiddle with the FOV, update his drivers and struggles through the first tutorial-like hour. The ending was kind of abrupt and a little bit too easy on normal imho, which is a slight issue. It also felt like it's setting up for a sequel without ever explicitely mentioning it, so...who knows.
Some pics! You'll notice that the shotgun was my go-to weapon. Statistics: Posted by Rinox — Wed Jan 11, 2012 5:50 pm
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