Why? Because prior to falling asleep in your Ark with your future sperm-bank buddies, you’ve been modified by scientists so you can survive the ordeal – and that means the ability to regenerate, obviously. There will be health and performance boosting pick-ups, even during races, and you’ll never be lost, because if it’s one thing id hates it’s games that confuse the player. You’ll always know where you should be going, and what you should be doing, because they’ve taken their FPS ideology and have expanded it across a gargantuan landscape littered with settlements and the residue of a smashed civilization.
Even the game’s title is meant to suggest classic FPS intensity. Anyone who has played Half-Life 2 knows that there’s nothing new in adding an armed buggy to a proven FPS formula. Still, the vehicles in Rage really are pretty special and work as an extension of your on-screen presence rather than just as a method to quickly devour distance, and there is a lot of distance to cover. Money earned on missions and races can be spent on customization, where you can alter your ride’s components and weaponry to dramatically change its handling and performance. You’ll learn to handle its idiosyncrasies and love it just as you would a car you’ve cared for in the real world. There’s a Mad Max wild-west feel to the game, and a vehicle will become your trusted mechanical workhorse in this brutal and unforgiving environment.
Starting off in your cracked cryo-chamber (that may as well be a space station for all you can initially see around you), Rage knows what you expect from an id game, but swiftly flips it on its head to reveal something that we’re sure has nothing to do with id having been bought by the owners of Bethesda Softworks, Zenimax Media.
Both Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV begin in claustrophobic settings only to produce a massive reveal the moment you step out of your vault/dungeon and witness a seemingly unending landscape of nuclear destruction or, in Oblivion’s case, a fair depiction of south Wales. Similarities are coincidental, we’re sure, but then we spotted some subtle RPG touches that made us wonder. Blueprints for weapon designs, for example, can be found, won, or bought, and if you’ve found the right bits and bobs you can even build your own weaponry. Yep, just like you can do in Fallout.
Even standard weapons and ammo can be altered to encompass explosive rounds, silencers, and telescopic sights, which tells us what the developers famed for creating some of the most beloved weaponry in the genre are doing with their guns. They’re not sticking to them: that’s what, although the actual act of aiming and pulling a trigger will feel every bit as enthralling as we’ve all come to expect from the people who solidified the concept of multiplayer FPS deathmatching. Rage is going to be a higher echelon shooter, and a tightly physical racer, and you are always going to be encompassed in a bubble of gameplay that means even when you’re on your way somewhere else, you can stop off and get involved in local, violent, arguments.
Celestial bodies do smash into planets without any chance of a warning but we know all about Rage’s potential killer impact. The game is set 80 years after a comet collision that, until recently, had true potential to hit the Earth in 2029. Going by the name 99942 Apophis, this very real comet is 390 meters wide and will pass within 6 Earth radii of the Earth’s center in 20 years time. Scientists now predict that chances of impact are zero, but there’s a possibility that, on its return orbit in 2036, Apophis (the ancient Egyptian demon of destruction) could smash into our world – but as we went to press, no scientist was available to state whether or not the multi-megaton explosion would create mutants and a healthy fuel supply.
Aug 21, 2009
