RAGE review

RAGE ends the seven year slumber of sleeping giant id Software; they were the king of 1990s shooters and they are awake to take back their crown.

The silent protagonist, a survivor of an asteroid collision apocalypse on Earth, awakens 108 years into the future to find that humanity has rebuilt itself into a twisted futuristic/western world filled with killer mutants, bandits and robots. It's a hell of a place to deal with a century-old sleep hangover, but our guy does it with great aplomb and copes by killing everything that looks at him sideways.

RAGE is an incredible shooter. A grit-your-teeth, hold the triggers down and murder everything shooter that is captivating and entertaining over its 12-15 hour campaign. But it doesn't just do the shooter genre well, it does multiple other genres well too. Outside of questing across the destroyed new world and murdering mutants, you'll also be racing and surviving in car combat, and competing in a plethora of well-developed and fun and campaign-distracting minigames. The true story is that Rage is a solid mix of different game types, not just another fine example of id Software's stellar shooter pedigree.

The action sequences in the game's many dank and destroyed tunnels, old labs and secret bases are better than anything I've played in some time. Action is ferocious, loud and satisfying. Enemies in RAGE don't fall into the zombie category of ever-plodding, mindless drones; no, they are fast, tactical and vary up their attacks to keep you on your toes. You will rarely feel safe in Rage and you will never drop your controller out of boredom.

The game is downright beautiful. Not only in the fidelity of the graphics and textures, but in the colors, design and art that makes up its world. I don't know how many how many people worked on the artwork on this game, but the team at id Software should be lauded for their hard efforts. While modern games often fall prey to copy and pasting environments and textures, RAGE sidestepped the trend and went overboard by making unique and varied environments at nearly every turn. You will never think that the new place you are in looks anything like the last place you visited.

RAGE doesn't handle everything perfectly however. The game's story might be a bit too thin for its own good and it stutters towards anticlimax in its last third - which involves a setting change, and a quick march to the story's end. The story starts slowly and churns and builds over the course of dozens of side missions and campaign missions, but quickly wraps up over the course of a half dozen missions after the setting change from the game's major city, Wellspring, to its second major city Subway City. The end may be anticlimactic and screaming for additional DLC missions, but it doesn't mar the overall experience.

Version Tested: Xbox 360