Basically here's the gist of it. You've woken up 106 years after the asteroid Apophis turned the planet earth into an apocalyptic wasteland in a military bunker referred to as an Ark. As part of the Eden Project, you and a whole bunch of other volunteers around the world are part of an essential plan to repopulate and re-civilize the earth for future generations. Unfortunately you are the only one to survive the impact in your ark and due to the damage it has sustained none of the relative information about your mission can be given and unsure about what to do you do the only logical thing... Go outside. After your eyes adjust to the light, you will be greeted with an awesome view of the cliffs and for the first time you get to see why the graphics in this game are so great. Don't hang around too long though, bandits are aware that somethings going on in their territory and they aren't interested in taking any prisoners.
Without giving too much of the storyline away, I will only go through it roughly as I found this game to be very quest orientated with little free roam options. After emerging from the ark you meet up with a wastelander named Dan Hager who takes you back to his small little village just around the way and helps you to get onto your feet. With a few missions down, and a nice little inventory of weapons, he sets you off on an adventure to Wellsprings. This being the first of 2 major towns in the wasteland it can come across to some as difficult to maneuver around as there is no source of mini-map in the town or way-point markers. Stick to shop signs and have a good walk around to get the feel for the place. Towards the end of your time in Wellsprings it will be easy to know where to go and you will soon find some form of shortcut to where you need to be. Similar to Dan Hagers` village, it's time to help out the people of Wellsprings in whatever troubles them on their day to day lives. There is a job board packed with missions and look around because there's always someone that needs something done. Be prepared though as each mission will require alot of firepower either in the heart of it or on the roads to the destination.
Once you have got a fair distance through helping people out, you will meet up with a member of the resistance. She needs you to travel to the Authority prison to rescue their leader, Captain Marshall. Once this is all finished its time to move along to the next major town, Subway Town. This town I found to be slightly smaller than Wellspring but can become confusing due the the many different levels in it. Here is the heart of the Resistance, kept secret underground with the Authority kept at bay with help from the Mayor, Redstone. Completing his missions will help to earn his trust and also send you through the storyline quicker but for those that love to take their time there's plenty of other jobs to do and for the fuel junkies there's another raceway to earn all the certificates needed to deck out your ride. As this is the only other town in the game, it is noticeable that the game will be ending soon. Some people report that if you just hammer through the main storyline of the game it can take you around 9 hours to complete the game. For me, I tended to screw around a little bit and it took me just a little over the 14 hour mark which i deemed reasonable. Although I did not venture into all the side missions or explore the wasteland as vastly as possible I would believe that to completely finish this game to the 100% mark it would easily take 24+ Hours for the people that like to take in the scenery which in modern games is not something that can be done often.
Being that RAGE uses dune buggies between missions and you get payment for destroying bandits on the road this game is ultimatly a First person shooter with the slight Role Playing thrown into it. Much like popular games of today you can loot many of your enemies for items that are seemingly uselesss but once banked up can fetch a pretty penny at the local shop. Along with that you also require items to engineer everything from a Lock grinder to a Sentry Gun, and the carrying capabilities you have are somewhat astronomical as the basic Assault Rifle can hold up to 1039 Rounds and the Combat Shotgun get get as high as 999 slugs waiting to create a slimy red mist of your enemies.
Ultimately I found myself slightly unimpressed with RAGE. Though the graphics are astounding and the level of detail that has gone into everything is amazing, some of my PC playing companions disliked how much room it took to install, not many people in the Xbox360 realm where accustomed to the 2 disc campaign and people with a PS3 could obtain the game on a Blue-Ray disc so they weren't really fazed with the inconvenience. Apart from that I found it to be too quest hungry as everyone always needed something to be done and provided I had my buggy loaded to the nines with gadgets and weapons the only free roam abilities I was met with was killing bandits on the roads. Some quests came across as time wasters in some parts, for example you may spend 30 minutes blasting your way to an objective and once you get it, the wall next to you explodes and there you have it, the area you started the quest in. All I can think of at this time is :why didn't I just blow a hole in the wall in the first place ?" But non the less I always do enjoy pointlessly killing inferior beings that throw themselves at me. The campaign didn't seem to be much of a challenge as it was clearly detailed with the current objectives and was very to the point about what needed to be done. This combined with the arsenal you can carry around meant that not alot of enemies pose a threat and boss fights are seamlessly predictable.
The multi player is somewhat non-existent. I put this down to the time of year the game was released as it is put in direct competition with most anticipated games of the year. It features 2 play modes. Road Rage and Legends of the Wasteland. Road rage plants you in buggies in a 4 player free for all in different arenas found in the general wasteland competing against other players for rally points and killing them to reduce their scores which results in alot of fun and alot of car parts flying through the air. Legends of the wasteland is more of a coop version of the game and takes you through stories heard throughout the main campaign and explains alot of things that remain unexplained in the Single Player mode. There are a total of 9 missions to complete with friends or randoms found online. The multiplayer can be fun the only problem I found was the waiting time in lobbies to find games which as mentioned earlier would be a direct result of the timing. Had this game been released at another time, either earlier or later, I believe would have been more suited to peoples personal priorities. I do recommend checking out the multiplayer because when I did, I didn't want to turn it off.
Altogether RAGE is a game recommended for people that dont like to rush through games and enjoy sitting back and chilling their way through a good storyline. Once the game has been played once I see no reason to do a replay if you completed everything in the first run as nothing would have changed unless you really enjoyed it and wanted to amp things up for more of a challenge. Its slightly disappointing as I believe the game could have been better but perhaps id Software are planning the best for last. I would like to think there will be a RAGE 2 and if there is I will definitely play it just to know what happens!
Overall rating for RAGE is 2/5
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