So I just finished this and with all the complaining about the final level and ending in this thread, I was expecting it to end abruptly and not follow a standard movie ending. But the last level and ending were....fine? I mean about 80% into the plot I got that the game was meant to be "Part 1" in a trilogy that will never happen because the game didn't sell that great, and for a "part 1" conclusion I thought it was fine.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
The story progression was: Wake up in Wasteland, get your bearings and learn the situation, find out about the authority who are hunting for ark survivors like you, take safeguard in the resistance, learn the truth about what happened, work with the resistance to unleash a plan to infiltrate the motherbase of the enemy and wake up your rebel army to began the war in game 2. The end. Seems fine for what it is.
I think the only "non-ending" part that I felt was having the final room be a mass of enemies challenge rather than one GIANT SUPER BOSS, but since the story had yet to introduce a singular figure behind the authority, there wasn't anyone to fight!
One thing that surprised me was how short the credits were (not counting Bethesda publishing ones, I mean the actual ID developer credits). Seems like the game was made with a fairly small team by modern standards. You would think that would keep the game profitable even with lower sales, but who knows.
The gunplay was really quite good. All the weapons looked and felt just right, the way the 2ndary weapons worked into the combat was excellent and fun. The various ammo types were cool.
The only downside of having all these combat options is that there's SO MANY BUTTONS. Whether on a keyboard, having to use the F1-F4s + Q and double tapping or triple tapping weapon button to change ammo types or on a X360 controller where there REALLY SHOULD HAVE BEEN A WEAPON CIRCLE with every weapon because having only 4 quick select when there are so many useful guns and ammo can be scarce is silly. I think they could have streamlined the controls a bit while still keeping the options.
Visually there's not much to say, the game is freaking gorgeous. One of the most impressive looking games ever on the right PC. I never had any weird texture pop-in or any super low res textures. Played it post-patches and it looked like that 8k textures cfg the entire time. Very impressive art direction and technology and never dropped a frame from 60fps. There was good variety in the different levels, except for the optional backtracking and the time you had to go through Dead City again. A good range of dead buildings, nature, and machinery. The character models are probably up there with Crysis as the best out there and the animation is ridiculously fluid and good for an FPS.
The hub stuff was really pointless. I liked the two cities because of how cool they looked, but they didn't really serve a purpose. Was not a fan of picking up random junk all throughout the levels to sell and then buy ammo and stuff. I think the game would have been better without an economy and you just get ammo pickups in levels. Driving controlled well enough and looked nice, but was ultimately pointless as the world was VERY tiny and you'd get from the hub to the next mission in like 60 seconds. Might as well just have warped to it.
The level design was alright. There weren't many GREAT levels (Jackal Canyon was GREAT), but they weren't copy & paste boring level designs that you see in a lot of FPS either. I'd say the level design was at least acceptable.
Overall as someone who prefers FPS games in interesting settings rather than military shooter #452525 and enjoys games with good gun combat, RAGE was a solid play. It's missing that level design and creativity to put it with the best FPS games, but the combat and visuals definitely put it up a lot of the pack. For the $15 I paid at the steam sale and the 10 hours of my life it took up, it was worth the experience. I'd love to play a RAGE 2 with improvements but I don't see it happening. Oh well. Game is the definition of a B game.
I did like it MUCH more than Doom 3 though, so that is something. Doom 3 got boring really quickly fighting in the same corridor environments over and over and over for 20 hours. The location variety in RAGE and the more varied combat options (plus being a shorter length and straight to the point) made RAGE a much more entertaining experience. I hope they take some of the things they learned from RAGE and stick it into Doom 4.
