Rage

I gotta to figure out how to get back to that part of ghost hideout
I think there is other entrance in the wastelands somewhere if I recall

God, I love how id threw in so many easter eggs and references to past games. Hell, I was surprised to see a Half-life reference.

Continuing my trend of summarizing my experience of the new game I played:

I stand by what I mentioned before, which is that this is the best FPS I've ever played. As much as I love Deus Ex, which is an FPS (technically), I don't think of it as an FPS game. Half-life 2 is also another favorite of mine, but it just doesn't do FPS as well as Rage. What makes this game an epic FPS is the sheer amount of detail put into its shooter experience. All the guns feel like guns, that is, the way they look, the way they shoot and the way they sound feels right. (I also noticed that the Authority MG is a copypasta of the SMG from Doom 3 based on the way that it reloads and sounds. They changed the look a bit, of course.) The weapons also feel like they actually shoot something lethal and not just miniature pillows that you can suffocate the enemy to death with.

The power of the weapons is shown through the reactions of the enemies. id made a shitload of different animations showing either injury, disruption, or death. For example, one time I had a guy limp from cover to cover and when I came up to him he looked like he could barely lift his gun to shoot me. All I could say at that point was, "Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow." Some other time, when some fuckwit with a boomerang shaped blade started running at me, I shot him in the arm and he actually put his hand on that spot as if he was suffering from a wound. Another plus is that when an enemy is caught within a grenade's kill radius (and their HP is low enough; there are elite enemies that won't die from a single explosion), they end up just a bunch of blood and guts splattered all over the floor.

Another reason this game wins as a shooter is the awesome AI. The enemies react to what the player does. For example, if I throw a wingstick and the enemy is far enough away, they will try to dodge it. If I throw an uncooked grenade, they will try to avoid it. If they're out in the open and they see the player, they will run for cover. They are made more realistic by fact that they also speak during a firefight and talk shit. When it comes to realistic reactions of the AI, the most awesome thing I've seen the enemies do is tactically retreat (i.e., run away like the little bitches they are) after seeing that I effortlessly killed a bunch of their comrades. They then take new positions as they await my arrival.

Since just going around shooting things with the same weapons over and over is very repetitive, id added variety by throwing in items to be picked up in the environment. Some of these items act as ingredients for the schematics/recipes that make secondary weapons/usable items. This is awesome because I love robot minions and the ability to make a little spider bot or a sentry turret using the schematics I have just made game way more fun. There's also a good variety of ammo types which call for abuse when faced with tougher enemies. (e.g., explosive bolts.) id made the cars function so well (and look so good) that as I did the races and rode around the wasteland just to blow up bandit cars, I was starting to forget that I was playing an FPS game. That could be taken as a pro or a con.

This brings me to how the game looks. There are breathtaking environments and the little details that were put into the areas the player could travel made the places look realistic. For example:

It doesn't take long to notice that whatever I'm not looking at gets less focus from the game, so if I turn around I see blurry textures that have to load in about a second or less.

Whatever story this game has, it's just an excuse to get the player to the next area. I'll summarize the entire plot of this game in three words: fuck the police. I can forgive the shit story, because just like in Fallout 3 and Borderlands, the journey to the end is the main reason the game is awesome. What really fucked this game up was the ending. Let's say you're playing Borderlands and you're on the last level. Before you can progress to the final area (that has the vault), you have to kill all the regular enemies. Once the objective says you're all clear, you transition to the next area, all the vault pieces come together, the vault opens, you see a bright light and then the game ends. That is how Rage ends. Let's take a hentai as another example. So you're watching a 30 min. hentai and you're on the 24 min. mark, so you know it's almost over, and at this moment the characters are going at it. The dude is pounding the shit out of that pussy and she's loving it. He then starts to pick up his pace, humping faster and faster until finally the credits roll. That is how Rage ends. (i.e., there's no "cum all over the place" moment.)

I give this game an 8.7. It would've gotten a 9 if the ending wasn't such a fuck up.

Edit (just some things I forgot to mention): It's nice how "action" music starts up when shit hits the fan and fades out when everything is chill. It's also worth mentioning that the voice acting and lip sync are superb.

Yeah, the ending was kinda disappointing. Being an id game, I was expecting a major boss fight at the end just like at the end of all of the Wolfenstein, DOOM, and Quake games. That's not to say that the mid-game boss fights weren't completely awesome. It's just that fact that I just tore through the final mission with an overabundance of fat mammas and constant escort of spider-bots made beating the game far easier than I had originally planned for. The game throwing BFG ammo my way every couple of minutes only made me anticipate a major boss fight even more.

Honestly, it seemed that the power of the Authority was horribly exaggerated as I had far more trouble dealing with the Gearhead (i.e. armored Ruskies) and Jackal (i.e. berserkers) bandits than I did with any of the high-tech, trained, armed, and armored Authority soldiers. Not even the Authority Mutants put up much of a fight, given that they had some build-up of being part of some sort of super-soldier program for the Authority. In reality, however, they couldn't even take a single fat mamma without dropping like a rock. Hell, I've even managed to kill two of said mutants with a single shot. In comparison, a lot of the Gearhead and Jackal bandits that I mentioned earlier could take a double-dose of the double-barrel shotgun at point blank range and still have enough fight in them to try to get back up.

Well i got the game and played it alil, so far it seems pretty good just need to play more.

Just started playing on Nightmare difficulty and thought I'd post a few of my thoughts so far. I don't see too much of a change other than the enemies getting occasional one hit killshots on me every once in a while. They also seem to take a bit more damage, but nothing that'd make you go out of your way to change your playing style if you don't want to. Nonetheless, the increased rate of me dying has influenced me to start taking different approaches and use different weapons. On normal mode, I rarely used the crossbow, finding the wingsticks much more practical at the time. However on Nightmare, the crossbow allows you to systematically take out 2-3 targets before the firefight gets started, taking away some of the threat of one of the aforementioned killshots.

I think I found that one of the reasons why the game isn't that difficult is that you're rarely outnumbered by more than 4 guys at a time, even when dealing with mutants. To add to that, they seem to spawn one (occasionally two) at a time, making them piss-easy to take out after you've already dealt with the bulk of the enemies, allowing you to focus on the incoming targets while they're completely vulnerable. Then again, I've only just gotten past the Mutant Bash TV section. Who knows, maybe I'll have a hell of a time trying to fight through the Dead City. I already know the Gearheads and Jackals are gonna be a bitch, though. That much would go without saying.

Sounds about right.

I actually started the game on hard mode just because some reviewer recommended it. From the sound of things I won't have to change the way I play at all; I'm a stealthfag, so starting shit with crossbow/sniper kills was my MO. The best part is that even if you mindfuck them with the crossbow and blow a few of them up in the process, you'll be a ghost as far as they're concerned, or does nightmare make them more aware?

Well, my orignal battleplans on my first playthrough were usually pretty similar to that of the police station scene from the Terminator, so it's hard for me to really compare playing on Normal and then jumping straight into Nightmare. Like I said before, the enemies take and deal more damage, but I don't think they're any more aware of you while you're sneaking than they would be on lower difficulties.

Quite frankly, I found the sniper rifle to be borderline useless compared to the pistol and the crossbow. Or is there some sort of hidden weapon mod or ammo type not sold in stores that I may have missed?

I would like to know the amount of the missions for the coop mode.
Same amount like playing the single player?

There are only about 9 co-op missions on Rage and they're set up with a sorta point-based competitive scoring system where it shows who did the best based off of how many points they've gained through the mission.

Awwww too bad, I thought you can play with a friend the whole missions.

Yeah, the co-op on Rage is similar to that of Battlefield 3. They're both essentially a series of missions that aren't a part of the single player, but are still intertwined with each game's story. While I would've liked to play Rage's story all the way with co-op, id's always preferred to keep players all by their lonesome whilst playing through the campaign.