Rage. I think there have been maybe a handful of games in my life where I was fully stoked going in and came out with an utter hatred for said game. Rage is the newest entry into that handful. Sure, it’s gorgeous. The gunplay is solid once you get used to it. Sinking a Wingstick into a mutant’s head is immensely satisfying. It’s the back end that killed it for me. *Spoilers Ahead*
When I say back end, I mean things like story and level mechanics. Fetch quests aren’t annoying to me unless they are pretty blatantly spelled out that way. Nearly (maybe all?) every major mission in Rage is structured in a similar way, and every character essentially tells you the same exact thing, only with a slightly different phrasing. Go here, get this. Okay you’re here, but before I give it to you, I’m gonna need you to get this other thing first and bring it back to me, or go do this while you wait for object A to be ready. Rinse, repeat. By the end of the game I felt more like a glorified errand boy than any kind of hero, and I actively questioned why these lazy sods couldn’t get off their asses and help. Poor excuse for mission design.
Maybe I’m just burnt on FPS’s in general, because I really hate the current trend of using mini-hoard modes as a substitute for boss battles. So many times was I trapped in an area while forced to defend against several waves of mutants/authority/gearheads who were thrown at me. Once or twice, fine, I can deal. In every major mission there is at least one of these sections, more than likely revolving around the object you’re in there to retrieve (while you’re waiting for object A to be ready of course). The end of the game is a freaking three-tiered hoard mode for crying out loud.
Oh, and if you’re going to make the major story levels essentially 30-40(+/-) minute ordeals (if you back out you lose progress), you’d better have a decent checkpoint system in place. Rage does not, and I overcompensated with my manual saves to the point where immersion wasn’t even possible.
I did not get into the driving aspects at all. I know I probably did myself a disservice by not being more active in the races and such, but I really disliked everything about the driving in Rage.
I really tried to like Rage. It had a good enough premise. I love Borderlands and would like to play Fallout, eventually. I knew it was a mix of both, maybe a diet version of said games, but that’s why I was so excited for it. The end result though, gah. I can’t trade Rage in fast enough.
