Rage review

The irony of Bethesda’s acquisition of id is that it has made Rage and Fallout cousins when, in all honesty, it’s hard to imagine them getting along. There’s a resemblance, certainly – you can see it in the junkyard aesthetic of the rickety shanty towns that the inhabitants of both wastelands have thrown together, you can hear it in the snarls of the mutated monsters lurking in the hideouts beneath both game’s surfaces, and you can feel it in the similarly black-humoured approach to the end of civilisation. But the likeness only goes skin deep. Where Fallout is freeform, Rage is focused; where Fallout’s execution is shonky, Rage is technically flawless; and where Fallout is abstract and statistical, Rage is upfront and personal.

And, visually, id’s game blows Bethesda’s in-house title out of the water – and not just because it’s running at an unbroken 60fps or packing id’s much-vaunted MegaTexture tech. Beneath the brown, rugged surface there’s real character here – in the lined and weathered faces of NPCs, for instance, or in the way a shaft of sunlight has been angled to hit a pile of artfully aligned rubble just so. It’s an artistry that comes at the cost of environments that react to your bullets in only the most superficial of ways, but nonetheless, the world of Rage shows that id’s artists are capable of much more than gruesome cyber-horror.

Less of a departure from Doom and Quake is what you actually do. Rage is about shooting things, mostly, and it does shooting things well. Enemies have a hint of bullet sponge about them even on the lower difficulties, which, coupled with their tendency to move quickly and unpredictably about the environment, develops a sense of urgency about putting them down before you get overwhelmed. Even the unarmoured, unsubtle mutants, who will charge the moment they clap their glowing green eyes upon you, have a habit of swerving sideways or leaping to the ceiling as you settle your crosshair upon them. Your health recharges (making health-restoring bandages seem superfluous), but die and you’ll get a chance to respawn on the spot by successfully completing a minigame that sparks off the defibrillator in your technically-not-a-space-marine’s chest. It needs to recharge between uses, but it provides a safety net that minimises the danger of experimental – or just plain foolhardy – assaults.

Your armoury is disappointingly unflashy, offering the usual selection of short-to-long-range shooters, though special mention must go to a crossbow capable of firing barbs that turn enemies into walking bombs controlled directly by the player. Mostly, however, the game relies on its engineering system to deliver tactical nuance. Components can be bought from vendors in the game’s city hubs, or found scattered around, and the products of this system include the bladed wingsticks (capable of stealth kills as well as slicing through necks), turrets, mobile spider bots and explosive RC cars. We rarely found ourselves in a situation we couldn’t shoot our way out of, but sending in a sentry bot to soak up bullets before wiping out the distracted bandits was more entertaining.