Firstly, any game that lets you have a walking sentry turret that swiss-cheeses bad guys and then returns to you and looks up at you like a dog asking if he was a good boy is, at the very least, a decent game, but beyond that, this is a really, really tough game to recommend. I will warn people that I recommend games just as much for being historical curiosities or notable artistic works as for being must-play titles, and as far as game history is concerned, the game that nearly killed a legendary studio like id software is worth a look-around.
In many ways, Rage is a bizarre step back from the technology in Doom 3: with id Tech 4 in the rear view mirror, Carmack came to believe that real-time lighting was a mistake, and baked lighting was, in fact, the only way to get a visually appealing experience in a gaming landscape that was seeking out more open spaces. I feel his heart was in the right place in that megatextures were intended to give artists a kind of freedom they'd never had in developing games before: every surface in a virtual world being unique, every pixel placed with intentionality. Sadly, Carmack doesn't understand artists, and speaking as an artist, I feel this is partly responsible for dev time ballooning to an absurd degree, leading to the studio's eventual buy-out by Zenimax/Bethesda.
Don't get me wrong, the game does look good, but you start to see the sacrifices along the way: the world is far more static, and despite being an "open" world, it feels even more claustrophobic than wandering around demon-infested bases on Mars. Invisible collision meshes abound throughout hide-outs and in the Wastes preventing you from leaping into places you were never intended to be, but they are installed to such an extreme degree that it feels like you're getting stuck on everything. It even affects gunplay, as certain obstacles you would think you can squeeze a shot through will instead block the shot.
Mirrors and transparent surfaces have also been discarded, which one could argue does not add significantly to gameplay, but with Doom 3 offering mirrors in every restroom, dust-blasted windows, and even video feeds from security cameras, one can't help but feel opportunities were lost, especially in a story with an over-arching "Authority" that has deployed surveillance throughout the Wastes.
As a shooter, Rage is passable, but suffers from common missteps in many other shooters, with enemies being bullet sponges for no real reason at all. While the start of the game is thin on resources, the player will quickly amass enough cash and pick-ups in what should be a desolate, resource-starved future to be no significant obstacle to progress, which goes hand-in-hand with the bullet sponge problem. Having instead enemy encounters be quick, but with calculated consideration of the expenditure of precious resources would have been a better move, but I feel there was pressure due to the studio's history to let the player go full-ham on the trigger to fulfill a power fantasy that doesn't actually exist.
And I feel therein lies the core problem with Rage: what are the thoughts and emotions this game is meant to invoke? Every game prior to Rage has a fairly solid idea of what role the player should fill, but Rage itself offers ammo and weapons aplenty (many of which are simply handed to you by individuals you've only known for twenty minutes), but over-tanked enemies who leap and roll and duck behind pillars, resulting in an excessive expenditure of bullets or rockets.
You don't feel powerful. You just feel incompetent for the task at hand. Clearing out hide-outs and bases is tedious, with enemies having greater accuracy than you by simply holding their guns over or around obstacles to fire blindly at you. You are clearly an elite individual in a population that does not have defibrillators installed inside their bodies to revive them, but you're not a superhero; you're an errand boy and nothing more, progressing through a series of missions that offer no clear benefit to you, a random survivor from the past who literally just got there.
In that sense, the overarching story with the Authority was a mistake, and Wasteland errands are not compelling enough to warrant an on-foot experience. Frankly, this game would have been better as a post-apocalyptic racer, as one of the selling points was players being able to customize and become attached to a buggy, though as it turns out it's only to a very limited degree. It should have been something they leaned into, but again, id's reputation as "the shooter studio" compelled them to create a middling experience that took far too long to kick out the door. The racing feels like the most polished aspect of this game. This should have been a pure racing game, damn the expectations.
Ah well. It still looks great, and as a game artist, there's still plenty of imagery to admire. If only you could pet the sentry bots and feed them a little oil, I could recommend this game beyond being a piece of gorgeous historical folly.
