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Holy shit a new id Software game. Fuck, is it 2011 already? Doom 3 was SEVEN years ago? I could have sworn that... no, Quake 4 was by Raven Software, and Quake Wars by Splash Damage, and then Raven again for Wolfenstein but I was through caring about second-rate imitations by that point. Alrighty then, it's been a long-ass time. I'm ready to shoot some dudes and feel my heart in my ears. "Nightmare" difficulty of course, but I may need to switch a notch lower, at least until my virgin hands develop their calluses (so I hope!).
So let's start the adventure. Cool exposition even if it's long and unskippable; I could listen to John Goodman bitch about his shit all day. There's a big bad "Authority" hogging all the awesome stuff and rumors of a "Resistance" aiming to topple them. The environments and actors look AWESOME, even if the textures aren't extremely high-resolution and nothing's slathered in neat effects. Orchestral music covers the standard range of backdrops, from spookiness to uptempo fighting. No tracks are memorable, but grandiose scores a la Halo wouldn't be suitable here anyways. id should have picked a more funky music genre but this'll do. Hey, I can strafe-jump like in Quake! That's a brilliant game right? Now I've completed lots of levels on the main plotline, driven to lots of cool-looking places, played lots of cute minigames, and done lots of short tasks for lots of colorful characters. And you know what? I was half-smiling. But... why is my heart not violently thumping? Where has the excitement gone? Where is the face-tightening challenge to elevate this above a simple walk in the park, albeit if parks were post-apocalyptic wastelands ripped from Mad Max? The answer: Too little, too late, and then only if you refrain from playing your best. Rage is a bastardized id Software game, only this time ruined by the father himself.
The weapons and ammo types are quite diverse and feel good to shoot, with some exceptions. The basic pistol and shotgun ammunition quickly become obsolete save for combining into more powerful shots via a crafting process labeled "engineering", and the high-tier pistol ammo eclipses other big bullets like the sniper rounds. The hyped mind control bolt would be exactly like the dynamite bolt but for a crappy "mind-o-cam" sequence. You are invulnerable through the entire event, which amounts to SLOWWWLY jerking the victim half a meter forward AND THEN pushing a button to detonate. The "wingsticks", basically homing boomerangs, are pretty neat mook decapitators. You have sentry bots, explosive RC cars and a couple types of grenade to play with. All in all this is the most comprehensive assortment of toys yet seen in an id game, even if a few suck too much to see major use.
The enemies are quite excellent to behold. They maneuver, show pain and die extremely fluidly without use of cheap, floppy ragdolling (as seen in Doom 3, Team Fortress 2, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2). Melee attackers scale damn near everything to close in. Gravely wounded enemies may drop to the floor, crawling and still resisting before they finally give out. Their tactics are a significant step above the typical FPS fare, rivaling if not surpassing those in FEAR. In other words they're not glaringly retarded and exhibit some nice touches like good evasion and animation. The Authority soldiers and tougher mutant varieties are especially noteworthy: The soldiers approach with a vicegrip, and shotgun-armed shield troopers lead the guard. Their high damage, high health and high bullet resistance combined with heavy, metallic footsteps and stranglehold approach makes them menacing indeed even in few numbers. The larger mutants provide a much-needed durable source of ranged attacks to the swarms, and the later mooks with increased health aren't complete slouches when in good numbers.
So what the fuck am I complaining about? The eyecandy is sweet, and many of the weapons and enemies are superbly designed. What more could I ask for? Well for one I miss the classic Doom-style labyrinthine levels with keys spread out and bursting with secrets, but linearity is not implicitly inferior. Rage's problems are many and absolutely CRIPPLE the experience. The agonizingly flat difficulty curve suddenly BOTTOMS OUT on the last mission (!!), the slow buildup prior to that is made EVEN WORSE by copious chunks of mindless filler, and there exists an abundance of items which can render you pretty much invincible, destroy the vast majority of enemies in one hit, and even provide resurrection... more on that later. And that's all BEFORE you realize your character is actually quite durable -- the red tunnel-vision so common these days goes a long way before reaching 0% health.
NIGHTMARE? This fails to qualify as "Hurt me plenty". But wait a minute, I thought you said the enemies were "menacing indeed", or at least "[not] complete slouches". So how is the game so easy? Well yes, those specific units whose levels are all too few, all too brief, and all too far towards the end. Even when they do appear their potential is mostly squandered. For example, the Authority troops frequently arrive via jetpack. Neat right? However they're slow to land, and the tiniest ding is enough to send them careening to their death. The wide array of mooks, while still lively and well-animated, are fucking pissants. Running straight up and punching everything in the face is much more viable than it should be, "it should be" evaluating to "not at all".
Then comes the filler, also known as driving sequences. As if the missions weren't lukewarm enough on their own, there are many instances where progressing means completing a few races, or shooting up some buggies, or driving across the wasteland and talking to someone... and you almost always have to drive a ways just to start a level proper. This would be fine if it were remotely exciting. Winning races is trivially easy. Destroying other cars is trivially easy, and very tedious if you want to kill more than a handful. Ramping off various surfaces into Authority drones earns you awesome, fulfilling rewards like a message saying "YOU DID THIS JUMP!" and an "electrical wire kit" which you already own a hundred of. Only a couple jumps take more than one try anyways.
But the real icing on the cake, the coup de grâce which seals Rage's failure, is the neverending stream of instant heals, one-hit kills and resurrection safety nets. Let's start with the primary healing item, bandages. You may pop one at any time your health is below 100%. It fully heals you. There is no cooldown or penalty for using it. You may purchase as many as you like, or collect the items which combine into as many as you like. Every level is positively littered with the bastards. Is that "red-o-vision" and heavy breathing too much for comfort? Just mash bandages until you feel all better. What the fuck? Okay okay, I just won't use them. I'll tie my pinkies down. That fixes everything right?
Well, at least until you can craft "Fat Mammas" -- a pistol bullet which one-shots most enemies in the head, two-shots most of the rest, and pierces bodies in a line. You can also acquire a scope for your pistol, which then replaces your weaker and more awkward sniper rifle. Next comes "Pop Rockets", a shotgun grenade with 1-shot damage and spammability. And then regular old rocket launcher rockets, dynamite and mind control bolts, pulse slugs, wingsticks, hand grenades, sentries and turrets which fight for you, etc. ALL OF WHICH are purchaseable in arbitrary amounts and strewn across levels. The fucking Big Fucking Gun is less powerful because its ammo is rare and there are never enough enemies to make the damage radius worthwhile. Oh, and you only have it for the last level, which is simple enough even without the fist of God in your pocket.
But wait, THERE'S MORE! If your health somehow reaches 0%, you enter a resurrection minigame which kills adjacent enemies and restores health! You can go through TWO of them, and then only when you "die" a THIRD time will you need to reload a save! At least there's a cooldown, even if it's just a few minutes. I might have had a stroke if id fucking Software implemented unlimited lives outright. But look at me, being thankful that failure is only practically impossible in an id Software game. Foolishness. Rage is an okay challenge if you tie both hands behind your back, hop on one foot and slap the keyboard with your face. On "Nightmare" difficulty. Players should not need to hold back just to get a decent fight.
Any one of these flaws would be inexcusable, but still bearable on its own. Rage compounds them. And you know what? It's not the items' fault for being strong. We've had rocket launchers, high-damage piercing shots, grenades and BFGs before. We've had invulnerability, on-demand health boosts and even damage amplifiers. And they were good. The problem with Rage is that they're vastly overabundant, and that most enemies are weak AND homogenous. If the supply of items were strictly controlled, then exploring their maximum utility per-use suddenly becomes relevant. The item crafting system might turn out interesting if you couldn't acquire ingredients en-masse. If enemies presented a genuinely lethal hazard, and required different tactics to efficiently dispatch then the exercise becomes essential and exciting. A particularly daring game designer might even decide to respawn dead enemies -- a true "Nightmare!". Hahaha, like anyone would ever do that.
I was really hoping, blindly, that Rage would be id Software's return to form. I liked Doom 3 even if it wasn't on par with their best games. But this... this is too much to bear. Calling Rage Xboxified would be an insult to good Xbox games. Never before have I seen so much wasted potential. At least it's mildly amusing, enough so I can half-smile. Hearing news of Tim Willits' resignation or spontaneous combustion might make that full.