Why Am I Doing Any of This?!?!
Straight out, Rage is gorgeous. One of the best looking games on the Xbox hands down and to be honest I think this game is largely a tech demo for the Rage engine more than anything else. The sky backdrop has to be one of the best I have ever seen. The actual gameplay itself is rather boring and pedantic.
Rage can get a lot of comparisons to Borderlands in its initial structure. That is fair to an extent and the game also suffers some of the same problems Borderlands does. Eventually all of the shooting around just gets boring. Borderlands was able to keep the player going with endless loot. Rage on the other hand gives you are rather standard cadre of weapons that you apply only minor upgrades to throughout the game. The only real joy that I got out of any of the weapons was with the Wingstick, which to be honest never got old.
Location wise the world is a lot smaller than it initially seems. That being said the two main cities that you spend your time in are very cool and unique, each with their own flavor and each with a lot of hand crafted detail. I was incredibly frustrated though hat I could not enter more doors. There were doors everywhere in this world and they all had a white exclamation point on them not allowing me to enter. There were also all sorts of invisible walls in the world blocking my path. Sometimes I could jump over something, sometimes I could not.
The other biggest frustration for the game was the driving premise. I, as a player was thrown into this world and tasked with doing endless side quests for people to seemingly no end. I was constantly warned about the "Authority" and at no point were they really explained as to why they were a threat. Late in the game it is explained they are trying to build a mutant army, but the question begs to "why"? Even after completing the game I have no idea who the Authority is, who most of the bandits are and why I chose to help anyone at all. I, as the player had no stake in the happenings that occurred.
in the end it is a great tech demo and a world that has some amazing set pieces, but the gameplay is just "OK" and the story is pretty much non-existent.
