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'Rage' can't bring action, story to the level of its stunning visuals

06.10.11

So this is what Earth looks like after the apocalypse.

The destroyed desert landscape of id Software’s first-person shooter/racing hybrid “Rage” crackles with ravaged detail at a silken 60 frames per second. Sewer walls frame the mad chalk ramblings of cults and crazies as swaths of green-black grime and mildew coat the surface. Half-clotted blood curtains the walls of a battered hospital amid a cityscape where toppled buildings and torn streets form a funhouse path to your next objective. Occasional texture pop-ins notwithstanding, the game simply looks better than any of its kind.

But looks only take you so far. And in the case of “Rage,” they may have actually limited the depth of the game. After escaping the mass extinction of a colossal asteroid slamming into Earth, you’re plucked from the cryo-pod in your underground vessel, the Ark, and welcomed into a clan of fellow survivors by its leader (voiced by an oddly comforting John Goodman). He tasks you with repelling bandit gangs, securing supplies and assisting other peaceable survivors, and hooks you up with the guns and wheels to do it. Eventually you’re swept into the service of the mayor and sheriff of a local town, Wellspring, then recruited by a resistance group fighting the militaristic overlords of all remaining human civilization, The Authority. The story is far from compelling — derivative at times — and there’s little about your cipher of a character to solicit your concern.

Source: Auburn Citizen