Calm impressions of Rage

Having gotten the 360 version of Rage in the mail yesterday I have now had a chance to spend some time with it.

The game does look really really good (if you can disregard the rather pronounced texture pop-in that happens every time you do a quick 180 turn) and while the setting does make you instantly think of Fallout and Borderlands, it actually manages to have a distinct enough vibe to make it stand apart from these two post-apocalyptic romps.

You can't say Rage doesn't look great

I really did not care much for the driving bits.
The driving physics do not feel very good and this is definitely not something I'd play to enjoy some 4 wheeled wasteland madness.
As it turns, out the driving sections are pretty much only there to carry you from one linear shooting level to the next anyway, so if you don't like it then at least the game doesn't force you into it too much.

Shooting feels good, as you would expect from a company that pretty much gave birth to the FPS genre.
Your enemies react appropriately when shot in the leg, limping around for a bit while loudly yelling "He got me!" (perceptive, these post-apocalyptic thugs) and gunning down opponents feels very satisfying.

I also quite like the guns that you get.
They feel like there is a lot of weight to them and sound appropriately deadly when fired.
Even the starting revolver feels satisfying to use, instead of just making you yearn for more firepower.

The gunplay is actually really satisfying in Rage

Being an ID game you won't find much of a story in Rage.
There are some vague excuses presented to you as to why you need to be shooting all of these bad guys, but it's not really anything that is going to grip you and make you go "I just gotta see how this ends!".
Deus Ex this is not.

I think I can pretty much sum up this game like this:

The good news is that it's pretty much what you'd expect from an ID game, great graphics, very good shooting mechanics and weapons that feel fairly "chunky" and deadly.

The bad news is that it's pretty much what you'd expect from an ID game (wait what!?), paper thin storyline, quite linear gameplay (yes, you do have kinda a hub world, but don't mistake this for GTA or Deus Ex style open world games) and pretty much no character progression (unless you count "nice, now I haver a bigger gun/different kind of ammo/new grenade" as character progression).

After this time I've spent with Rage I feel that I've played about all the Rage that I care to.

That is not to say the game is *bad*, but I really need some story to keep my interest for a game going, and I simply don't really care where the story in Rage goes from where I'm at.

"Alright guys, I'm off to look for a story. I think I saw one over those hills!"

If you like shooters and want to play a quality one, and you can live without strong motivations for shooting bad guys (they are shooting at you. They need to die. What more do you want?), then I can recommend Rage to you.

If you loved Deus Ex because it gave you a deep universe to explore, had an intriguing story and allowed you to custom build your character in the way that you wanted... well... probably give this one a miss!