They said that the wasteland is a dangerous place. With Bandits, The Authority, Jackals, and Mutants. It's dangerous, but if you plan right and do your best to survive, it's a good way to kill a couple of days. ID Software the Legendary developer that created the First Person Shooter genre returns with a brand new game, RAGE. It starts out promising enough and by the end of it I wonder if it was worth it at the end. Not even a minute after you step out of the Ark, you are attacked by a Bandit. He pins you down and before he and his buddy kills you, a bullet pierces through his head as the body falls so does his partner. With the two bandits dead you meet the first character.

ID OF THE NEXT GENERATION

What follows is an adventure with a near plotless narrative. You meet with people that has very little impact of the world around you. All you do is do jobs for them. It's pretty much the same either kill this or retrieve that. Even if you don't know what to do next during a mission, just keep walking and shooting. Eventually you will do or get what you need to complete the mission.

Just when you think the story is getting somewhere, it ends. That last cutscene is all you get. What makes matters worse is that when you beat the game, you can't come back to the world to do many of the side missions. This game requires you to do all the side jobs, racing, minigames, collectibles before finishing the last mission.

It's not all bad, this is ID software and if there is one thing they are known for, it's gameplay. The gameplay is the best part. For being a developer that's known for FPS games this should come to no surprise. However, unlike past games they did a few various things they never did before.

SPICE OF LIFE

First, they put in a LIGHT RPG element in the game. I use that term loosely. There is no dialogue trees Bioware style. What does pass as an RPG is the store. You go in and restock in supplies or upgrade your armor. You get money by doing quests, minigames, and looting dead bodies. The price of ammo and health packs does not change between difficulty. So if you get or sell a $1000 you can get quite a lot of ammo on most of your weapons of choice. On a normal AK for $1000 can get you 999 rounds, basically maxing out the ammo count. I still got enough to get hundreds of shells for my shotgun. Besides a gun, which you can also buy the most expensive thing is a wingstick. A wingstick is a boomerang weapon. If it survives the hit or doesn't hit anything else it will come back to you. You can kill up to five enemies before it breaks. Even if it get stuck on a body you can still use it again. It's the most dynamic weapon of the game and it's a lot of fun to use along with an AK.

Next, is the side quests. It seems like everyone wants you do do something for them. There is also races. This is where the car combat begins. Both outside the cities and inside a race track someone wants you dead. Driving is easy enough, it's more archaic than in recent years. In a time where everyone wants to make cares feel as real as possible, Grand Theft Auto IV being the worst, it's happy to see that if someone wanted to play a game with real car physics they can play a racing game. No, this is leaning towards Twisted Metal and I'm thankful for that. You have your weapons on the car that is ready for combat. The minigun, rockets, and mine traps. What I think is the best part about the car combat is that it's all auto aimed. You don't need to worry about lining your shots. Just drive and shoot. It's immensely satisfying to drive past a car that has exploded.

Lastly, is the building of supplies. Through out the world you will find parts to make various stuff. From bandages to RC cars. If you have the parts, you can build it.

SHOOTING THINGS LIKE A PRO

Weapons is a lot of fun to play with. While this is not a lot of variation of the weapons. It's the ammo that makes up for it. One shotgun shell makes the enemy explode into red dust, be careful though, doing that will not result of you getting their loot. It's a lot of fun to use different ammo in situations. The best weapon is the Wingstick. The Wingstick can buy you that extra time to reload. This generation has given the rise to the rise of Iron Sights. Just push the aim button and you are good to go, I don't have a problem with it, but with this game it's actually more fun NOT to use it. Run and shoot old school style. If your enemy is in that cross hair there is a good chance that is where that bullet is going. It reminded me of the last generation of games.

WHAT YOU SEE AND WHAT YOU HEAR

The Sound is all pretty standard. You got the decent voice acting, ambient sounds, music, sound effects. It's nothing that really stands out, but it's not terrible. Despite having decent voice work and great animation, it's does not include one thing that is important. Life. Yes, they move. Yes, they speak, but they all have that dead look. The sounds of the guns feels weaker than it should be. Shooting is fun in RAGE, but they don't have that punch that most games have like Call Of Duty. When firing your vehical weapon the sound don't register sometimes.

The graphics can range from amazing to mediocre. When driving around you will notice that you are in a boxed canyon. It's extremely leaner of where to go. It may seem that it's big, but that is because of the scope ID gave the environment. Unless you are at The Dead City, it's disappointingly narrow. The only time you see any flat land is near the end of the game, there is also texture pop in that will happen quite often. The most amazing thing in all of this is that the framerate never drops. It hits 60 FPS and it never faulters. There is some minor screen tearing though. Even so, it's hardly noticeable unless you look for it.

SOMEBODY UP THERE STILL LIKES YOU

The AI is quite smart, they know what you are doing, using and plan accordingly. Some will run away in fear and some will call in for more reinforcements. They are fast and they will use their surrounding accordingly. The enemy can take a lot of damage. Sometimes it takes three to four shotgun shells point blank to take the down. The authority takes much more. Just keep moving and use different tactics to keep them on their toes. If you just stand behind cover they will come after you and gang up beating you to death. This is where it's defibrillator minigame comes in. Complete the minigame and any enemy that is nearby dies. This even works in nightmare mode. It does have a long recharge time though.

ID software have a modest hit with this game. There is a few things to like about it. overall though, it's not amazing as they tried out to be. Sound glitches, Inconsistent graphics and, and story downplays this game. This story feels like a prolong to an even bigger story. If ID makes RAGE 2 I hope they learn from the past mistakes and build from there. Everything is here, now all they have to do is to make it better. And no, I did not find the Breaking Bad Easter Egg.