Rage, what is this game?  Dystopian future shooter?  Arcade-y driving al-la "Twisted Metal"?  Dungeon crawling slaughter?

Yes. all of that.

First off, the visuals.  This game is so pretty it hurts.  You emerge blinking into the wasteland at the start of the game and you completely feel like your there; the harsh sun glaring down on you, throwing the quarry you are surrounded by into stark contrast, the dry desert air blowing sand against the rusted metal walkway you stand on...  This attention to detail and depth extends to the characters you encounter, from the singular plot characters to the basic mutant that you will be shotgunning by the dozens, all are meticulously detailed and rendered, with tattoos, scars, dirty fingernails, dangling fetishes on their clothing... the list goes on and on.

On the bare face of it, some will say "yea, but whats the difference, this is just Fallout or Borderlands, but more linear."  In response to this, I will first smack you upside the head, and then say the following: The setting does not make the game.  I would liken this game more to Halflife 2 ...only now your car has miniguns on it  

So, gameplay.  over the first 6 hours of gameplay, I received almost all of the guns (pistol, shotgun, 2 automatic rifles, a sniper rifle, a crossbow, and a bladed boomerang thingy called a "wingstick" which is very good a removing heads from torsos (there is also a rocket launcher, but i haven't gotten there yet).  There is a fair degree of customization to be found, with each weapon having at least 2 ammo types that can do anything from turning your shotgun into a grenade launcher to using your crossbow as a remote electro-shock therapy applicator     there are also a number of permanent upgrades that can be bought from the vendors scattered in the various towns throughout the wasteland.  This brings me on to the economy.  There is literally TONS of stuff to scavenge in the wasteland, half of it worthless (to you) but still sale-able, and the other half of it...  lets just say it vindicated the packrat and jury-rigger in me.  There are a huge variety of schematics you can collect from all over the place, and each of these schematics allows you to combine some of the junk you have collected into all sorts of gadgets.

Say you come up against a locked door.  Dig around in your pack, and combine some gears, a battery and a wiring kit, and you have yourself a one time lock grinder, ready to shred that lock to dust.  Or you poke your head out and realize that the 15 mutants are just too much for your 11 remaining pistol rounds.  Another dive into your bag of tricks, a bit of soldering, and out comes a mechanical spider, complete with its own machine gun, ready to bring the lead rain to your foes.  

This is very much a game of details, the Guns feel real, both in the sounds that they make, and in the reactions of enemies when they are hit, shoot a foe in the leg, and it jerks back, causing the enemy to stumble, cursing.  fire a hail of gunfire in the general area of the enemy, and they will go scrambling for cover, ducking and covering their heads.  the movements of enemies are real and unpredictable, melee foes in particular never come at you in a straight line, preferring to dive and weave, juking around to throw your aim off.  Vehicle combat is a hilarious diversion, with armored and armed buggies blasting across offroad landscape and thumping away at each other with miniguns, rockets and mines.  

The weak points:  The graphics are SO detailed, that currently there is a degree of flickering and late texture pop-in whenever you turn you camera sharply, but I'm sure this will be patched out soon.  I am also experiencing occational crashes on loading screens, but its not enough to stop me coming back for more.  

There is a problem with the save system, the auto saves are soooo far apart that you can go 45 minutes of play without seeing one, but as long as you train yourself to compulsively hit "f5" (particularly before loading screens in my case) you will have very little problem with this.  

Now we come to the controversial one.  The dialogue.  There are no Dialogue trees, as a matter of fact, your character is mute, as far as i can tell.  But you have to keep hitting the action key to progress the dialogue.  Some say that this breaks flow immersion, but I'm not so sure.  I think it keeps you engaged, giving you a degree of interaction in the dialogue while still maintain the linearity of the game.  (yes there are sidequests, and a kind of open world aspect to the driving, but its largely linear and story driven)

Overall, I really like this game so far, its varied enough to keep me interested, and it has some very VERY solid gameplay mechanics.  The visuals are just eye-watering (making me look very enviously at the large 3d tv's at best buy) and the story is engaging and interesting.  Plus its like halflife 2 ...but in the desert... with boomerangs...

SSG.Braxis*BK*

output generated using printer-friendly topic mod. All times are GMT