Pretty much bought this game over the weekend and finished it (35 hours!) in catch-up to the sequel. Played it completely solo, just for kicks and it's totally playable. Did Mordecai, and being a sniper (I hardly play one in other games) with the Bloodwing was great fun. A lot of it is basically what RAGE should've been.

I liked it, it's an awesome foundation, but I have quite a bit of nitpicks. I really liked the shooting, headshots feel great, dismemberment in any FPS gets bonus points. It definitely has that "one more quest" feeling, I just want to complete quests just because of the UI presentation with the sound effects and parade, very satisfying. Definitely getting into loot games now (Too Human was my first proper one, believe it or not). I'll start with the negatives, and then leave on a good note.

How do people hate on Far Cry 2 for the respawning guard posts, and not this game?! You could be even in the same area like Old Haven, and as day/night cycle changes or if you're near a save-point enemies just keep on respawning. I guess that's a part of a way of farming in loot games?

The fast travel system needs to be singled out for how awful it was paced. Took me maybe 10 hours when I'm at New Haven?! Especially for such a barren world where there's not much visually interesting, and not enough cool random moments like AI vs AI (Bandits vs Skags/Scythid/Spiderants, Lance vs Bandits, Lance vs Guardians), it felt really tedious with the back-tracking. I guess not every game can be STALKER.

I didn't appreciate every female being referred to a "bitch", especially after the FilmCritHulk article on Catwoman still on my mind.

Yes, the ending is pretty bad, it was getting interesting with the Guardians and the Crimson Lance (now I felt bad for the bandits), and then it's a tedious end boss battle. Everything after Salt Flats where you're stuck on this linear course because there are no other missions in the other towns was just a downhill course. What's worse about the ending is NO ONE FUCKING ACKNOWLEDGES IT HAPPENED! I hate this in some RPGs where the world just isn't reactive to your progress. Maybe the DLCs do this.

Now some significant PC problems. It's not a good port, I hate not being able to mouse scroll through a lot of stuff, especially graphics options. Music would be mute during the splash screens when the game booted up. I was getting framerate drops whenever the day/night cycle changed, maybe just my laptop. I was constantly getting stuck on geometry, was I the only one?! I'd get stuck if I was sprinting and went into menus, came out and was glued to the floor.

And I now fucking hate cutscenes on PC games as really low-res videos, it just screams CHEAP PORT.

It's severely underwritten! There were like 8 writers in the credits, including Randy Pitchford. I want more dialogue, most of the characters mumble a bit, the rest is just written as descriptions as if we're a 90s RPG. TK Baha's fate was a shock to the system, really gave that bleak post-apocalyptic western feeling. I love the enemy chatter ("Time to pound some meat puppets!") and how they threaten you if you're just far enough, telling you to back away.

It's just that one layer of AI that makes it feel more alive.

The only character we got fully voiced is Claptrap, and that's great but I want more. I really like all the characters, Crazy Earl is my fave and with his ridiculously cute pet!