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First person shooters have never been accused of being big or clever, but soon that accusation may well be an accurate one, especially as Rage, the upcoming shooter from Bethesda and the creators of Quake and Doom, id Games is just around the corner. I got to play it at Gamefest last weekend, and now a week later I can’t seem to get what could be one of the most exciting games out of my brain. For more on Rage click below and find out just what the fuss is all about.
Many moons ago, when Kurt Cobain was still alive, Metallica still knew how to write a good tune and we were all worrying about planes dropping out of the sky come the millennium, a couple of games were wowing gaming audiences with their violent, first person perspectives and cementing a new path in gaming forever.
Yes, Doom and Quake were all the rage, and now as archaic, dated and primitive they look by today’s standards they were cutting edge technology, cutting edge gaming and future classics in the making. People now revere these games like they do classic albums, books or films and the influence they’ve left is as indelible as that bloodstain left behind from a real shotgun blast. And to think the same guys have gone and done it again all these years later would seem preposterous, it would be like Pink Floyd rewriting the rules of rock ‘n’ roll 38 years after Dark Side of the Moon, except it has happened. Seriously, the creators of these gaming classics have returned, with a vengeance and more importantly have returned with something very, very special indeed.
Rage is a game we’ve all seen advertised in gaming press over the last couple of months and now that I played the game I can honestly say that calling it a true evolution and progression in the FPS genre is not an exaggeration, but more a statement of brutal accuracy almost as brutal as the game itself.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world Rage puts you in the shoes of the admittedly atypical shoes of the rescued loner, fresh from the vault out for revenge against those who wronged him, and there the similarities with Fallout end and similarities with Borderlands begin but in a totally different way.
This game focuses on run and gun gameplay, there is no cover system, just solid action with weapons that really feel like they do damage, characters that feel like real people you might actually like and also feels like a Mad Max movie that you star in. So much so, I was even envisaging Tina Turner being a must in the soundtrack. It certainly sets an atmosphere and does it very, very well.
In the game I managed to find out what battling mutants is like with a variety of weapons, this was fun, felt believable and had all those hallmarks you’d expect from an id game. The enemies felt like Doom or Quake, controls felt like Doom or Quake and combined, it all felt like Doom or Quake…from the future…and better…and oh so delicious with incredibly pretty graphics and a wonderful non-linear feel that potentially could make many a sandbox game blush.
It isn’t all about the shooting, there are many other aspects to the game that bring to it it’s own qualities. Rage has RPG qualities in that you have to speak to quest givers, perform tasks, get rewards and recipes to help you on your way. Hardly original as game mechanics, but put together in a nice, seamless way that make a game that could have so easily fallen into being yet another “me too” shooter something that truly is unique and pleasurable to play.
Added to the game was something I found to be surprisingly well implemented and essential to the game rather than a tacked on gimmick, driving.
We’ve all seen driving and other vehicle control in FPS games that haven’t been implemented in the best of ways, feeling more like an extension of walking rather than control of a vehicle. Rage handles driving in such a way that when you are in control of the little buggy I played with that it felt like a diving game, yes it was only getting me from point A to point B but the physics, handling and little bumps and jolts from the terrain really did make things that little bit more enjoyable. And if that wasn’t enough, another nice travel mechanism I came across was zip-lines, again these have been used before but this time around they have a viable purpose in being a tiny bit of fun that saves you the drudgery and tediousness of backtracking to get to your vehicle that so many games before have used in a dirty tactic to make you think a game is bigger than it actually is.
And on the subject of size, it’s just been announced that Rage will span three discs on XBOX360 or require an 8 gig install on PS3. Bethesda and id have said that they are aware that some people out there who want to install to hard drive still have the older model 360 which only has 20gig of space (which is actually less than an entire 360 install would be) and there is an option to install a disc at a time as there will be no need for disc swapping once you’re done with a particular disc.
So, all in all Rage is a solid competent FPS/Driving/RPG influenced/action…hell, just fun game that really deserves a look by all. It’s certainly big, it’s certainly clever and for those who say it’s not the size it’s what you do with it that counts, well, id have both angles more than covered.
Rage is released in North America on October 4th and in Europe and the UK on October 7th and you can visit the official site below.
