Resident gamer Alex Wharton gets his hands on id Software’s
post-apocalyptic shooter Rage and delivers his verdict, no holds barred…
P
erseverance – probably the most
qualified word to describe my
play through of Rage. Without it
I don’t think I’d have got further
than 30 minutes in. It’s not that
Rage is a bad game – it’s decidedly average
– but serious flaws in plot, structure and level
design make the experience quite frustrating.
The game opens with your character
emerging from an Ark, a cryogenic safe-house
that allowed the best minds to survive an
apocalyptic asteroid. Ok, with you so far.
090
Xmas 2011
You meet a local who takes you to the nearest
town and explains some of the fundamentals
of the future. There’s an oppressive force
called ‘The Authority’ (scary!) as well as
mutants and bandits, all of which you’re going
to have to deal with on your travels.
So far it’s all gravy – not the most
imaginative of scenarios but it’ll do. But at
this point, as I was being tasked with all sorts
of combat missions, I got confused. Wasn’t I
one of the great minds, frozen to survive the
apocalypse? Couldn’t they have got someone
more suited to battling mutants?
And this is Rage’s number one flaw: I
don’t have the first inkling why I’m doing the
things I’m doing. Surely when the writers sat
down to flesh out the storyline they noticed
this gaping hole in the players’ knowledge? It
wouldn’t have taken much to sort out – just
a few lines about me being a security officer
would have at least given me something solid,
and not left me on the look out for some sort
of plot.
Rage is the newest first-person shooter
(FPS) from id Software, ‘the father of FPS’ and
the company behind some of the great classic
shooters: Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein 3D
– the latter of which has long been considered
the game that popularised the FPS genre of
PC gaming. So where did id go wrong?
Well in a sense it hasn’t – those familiar
with Wolfenstein 3D won’t remember
spending hours contemplating the game’s
vastly complex storyline. Because the game
didn’t have one, and the players didn’t care.
Videogames have come a long way since the
early 1990s though: today gamers expect
story structure to rival the best of Jane
Austen, character development that renders
Shakespeare’s Hamlet a whimsical cartoon
and graphics so realistic they make the
outside world look pixelated. On all points but