So I guess I’ll start by apologizing to the couple of people who read my last blog because this is the next one and I know it’s not Twisted Metal. It is RAGE! It’s my own fault I got overly excited and went to Infamous 2 skipping over Rage which was the second game I played this year. So while I’m already out of order let us continue. For those of you not following this is a series of blogs about the games I played this year which have not necessarily been released this year. These blog posts are because I wanted to do talk about games I played this year but because I’m a poor student am not able to create a proper top ten games from this year because I can’t afford ten brand new games ha ha. So instead I catch up on last years or games from other years I have missed and don’t wanna feel left out of all the fun (insert sob) so thank you guys now on to VIDEOGAMES!! Oh and happy Halloween!

In this episode I will discuss Rage. After completing Resistance 3 I jumped into Rage mainly because I don’t think I was ready for a story heavy game and I wanted something simple. Rage was to my surprise a perfect game to play after my disappointment with R3. I’ll start off by saying that before Rage I’d never played an Id software game before. With the smallest exception of playing multiplayer Quake at a friend’s house when I was like 11. So having barely remembered that previous experience I walked into Rage amidst the many negative receptions surrounding it. As per usual when my expectations were low the game easily exceeds them. The main issues I heard about this game were that it had a crappy story and a useless open world. For some unknown reason I heard a lot of people saying this game is not Fallout so guard your expectations. When I heard that even before I got the game I was like two games can’t be in the post-apocalypse without being compared? Seriously? Rage was obviously not going to be like Fallout minus the setting it is an FPS and was never described as an RPG dunno why people thought it might be more like Fallout. It was an FPS and maybe it was simply because I have never played an Id game before and was not expecting Quake or Doom that I thought the shooting was great, the guns felt powerful and the enemies had decent movement.

The one positive thing every reviewer had to say about Rage was how beautiful it was. It was a great looking game and that’s a plus for me but not one of the main reasons I come to games. Even though the story wasn’t there I liked the scavenger gang lifestyle and atmosphere set up by the game. The post-apocalypse never seems complete without a full complement of raiders (in this case British raiders which was even more awesome) or cannibals. I mentioned it above but the way the enemies move amp up the traditional shooter difficulty just because the enemies dodge fairly effectively. I don’t know how many times I had a mutant in my sights with a shotgun and he would jump to the left or vault over a piece of cover and I’d miss. Then he’s coming right for ya and I’m all shit now I have to reload. So I really liked that because it changed up my strategy for taking them down. The gadgets were also a welcome surprise. Personally my go to weapon when I had to reload was the boomerang weapon. It made an excellent noise and was super fun to decapitate people with. You also had the traditional turret or the more entertaining spider bot who would scramble around attacking enemies. When the spider bot would go on the offensive I was often hanging back watching him do his work and rooting for him not to get destroyed. I found the gadgets to be a welcome distraction from the traditional run and gun play style.

Alright here we go, I suppose I should address the “story” or what they called a story. It wasn’t good a typical you are dude out of time who arrives into the future and must take down evil agency. Whatever. It was probably because I knew based on reviews that the story would be shit that caused me not to worry so much about it. It was just a reason to keep going and shoot more dudes which was fine. Also the story and characters have JOHN GOODMAN on its side so who can complain about that? I mean dude in game didn’t really look like him but that voice oh yeah. Also they named him Dan. As someone who watched WAY too much Roseanne growing up seeing Dan Connors mixed with Walter from Lebowski put a smile on my face. Oh and yeah the ending was shit…it just sort of goes one typical ending filled with sequel allusions coming right up! Even though that was shit and Carmack has like apologized for Rage I really hope some sort of sequel or type of game similar comes out.

Finally I’ll talk about the mini stuff present in the game which boosted my playtime by probably ten hours or so. I have no idea why but with videogames that have a card collecting/battling minigame I go nuts and play the shit out of it. I don’t know if it is a part of Pokecraze coming back to me but in Final Fantasy IX I played the shit out of the card battling game ignoring the story on one of my playthroughs just to collect and battle with more cards. I did a similar thing in Rage in which I ran around looking for better cards and battling people for hours loving it even though the game wasn’t really complex or had a lot going on. I actually wish there were more cards and people to battle which would have made me more happy. The finger stabbing game was entertaining but a bitch to get to the highest level. The coliseum was a standard shooting gallery which it seems many games include now. The open world was useless but the dune buggy was fun enough to use and fight with, including the multiplayer which I think was bold of them not to put in a shooting aspect to the multiplayer. I have not played the legends of the wasteland missions yet which I know I should and I would be interested in hearing from people if they were any good.

Trophies: As far as the trophy list goes it was pretty decent mix of difficulty trophies, story, minigames and gadget use that made you play the game to its fullest. Which I may have mentioned before is what a good trophy list should do. I particularly liked the field goal trophy which was really weird and amusing. As well as the decapitating with the boomerang which is just something you want to do with that thing. Unfortunately this is not a plat I have attained yet, more out of laziness than anything else. I just have the legends of the waste mission trophies and hardest difficulty trophies left. I’m looking forward to coming back to Rage when I have a drought of games because I just had fun with it which was great for a somewhat simplistic FPS to do.

Alright thanks for reading and the next entry I swear will be Twisted Metal. Til next time.