I’m in a cluttered hut, squeezing between piles of detritus of a life lived on the edge. I’m navigating a twisted canyon, the dusky tones of the walls reflecting harsh desert light. I’m racing across a saltpan, wincing against the light. I’m striding through a crowded saloon in a town that looks like a spaghetti western exploded on the set of a kung fu film, browsing a general store, and descending into the dank underbelly of the town’s waterworks. Every single one of these environments – no, every room, every corridor – has its own particular flavour, fore-grounded by an unrivalled level of detail and variety.

This is Rage, id’s first new intellectual property in a decade, and the first chance I’ve had to see the id Tech 5 engine show off its incredible propensity for unique texturing. I think I’m in love.

In the claustrophobic confines of an underground facility, you start to take all this loveliness for granted, and it’s when you step out into Rage’s open world that the gobsmack hits. Peering out across the desert, your view to the horizon is hampered only by whatever structures dot the intervening space; the draw point may as well not exist. Even blasting through the landscape at high speed, you won’t notice it and don’t forget that you’re experiencing all this at a seemingly rock-steady 60 frames per second.

Download Rage 'QuakeCon 2009' Trailer

Loading the player ...

Not even a year old, and already this trailer doesn't do the current build justice.
Rage tells a familiar tale; in the distant future, a lone survivor surfaces from a bunker to face a world changed beyond recognition by apocalyptic disaster, peopled by mutants and a militant government, and unmoved by a failed, long-laid plan to rebuild civilisation as it once was.

The comparisons to a certain other post-apocalyptic title are inevitable, but once you’re past the initial set-up, the similarities end. For one thing, you only have to take a single, eye-scorching look at Rage to see we’re dealing with a world of much greater variety and detail, not just graphically (although that’s impressive enough; every location is hand-crafted rather than procedurally generated), but also in terms of what you can do.

I was expecting some kind of Mad Max-esque racing game, but what I’m seeing is a true first-person shooter, with value added. A plethora of side missions (including, yes, vehicle racing) expand the experience, but really, it’s just the icing on the cake. After all, Rage is set in an enormous, non-linear environment that you could wander for days and not see everything – so why not take it all in from the comfort of a tricked-out buggy, pausing only to gun down any bandit resistance you meet along the way? These segments make up as much or as little of the game as you choose, and while entertaining enough, take a back seat (ha!) to the true business: shooting things, face-to-face.



Early PR from EA overplayed the role of racing and vehicles.
And there are a lot of ways to shoot things. Rage features a wide range of weaponry, and should you find the selection too narrow for your taste, it also permits a startling array of customisation and ammo types, all of which feature highly individual and exquisitely detailed models. As well as providing hours of entertainment, your arsenal provides certain tactical advantages. My favourite was the crossbow – silent, but deadly – which can fire electro-bolts. Pair of mutants chatting away while foolishly standing in a puddle? Possibly the best silent kill ever. Bzzzzzt!

The gadgetry doesn’t end with new and interesting ways to put holes in people. If you intend to open doors and use devices, you’ll need to construct the required tools from bits and pieces scavenged from the environment – lock grinders, for example. Put a bit more effort in, and you’ll find yourself able to construct more complex contraptions, like remote control car bombs, or mobile turrets, which potter around like spindly and baffled elderly dogs, firing wildly and distracting enemies. When you’ve cleared an area, they look up at you in an incredibly endearing way, as if seeking a pat on the head for their efforts; in return they're dismembered, broken into tasty chunks of salvage.

Thankfully, Rage resists the “RPG elements” path by forsaking an encumbrance system. You can pick up anything and everything you find, without fear of becoming so loaded down that you unwittingly pass over real loot in favour of twenty-seven pieces of vendor trash.

This is particularly important because you never know what you might need in the next battle; even amongst enemies of the same kind (bandits, or mutants, for example), abilities and behaviour differ considerably. The various bandit clans approach combat in entirely different ways; the Ghosts are capable of acrobatic evasions and attacks, demonstrating fluid and creative animations in the process, while the Wasted keep their feet on the ground in favour of overpowering you with numbers. They’re also distinguished visually, with intricately detailed character models, which put paid to the old tradition of hordes of identical enemies. One thing they all have in common is teamwork; the AI enemies “communicate” your position and tactics among themselves and adapt accordingly, meaning you can never be sure what they’ll do or where they’ll come from in each play through.

The astounding amount of variety packed into this game – environments, enemies, equipment, gameplay, characters, sound – leaves me unsurprised to learn that Rage will run to two discs on Xbox 360. It couldn’t be packed into less, and you wouldn’t want it to be. Don’t be put off by the “Doom with cars” chestnut being thrown around; Rage is something much more interesting, an FPS with personality, replayability, and polish.

Keep an eye out over the next few days as we bring you more exclusive content from the Bethesdays event, including previews of Brink, Fallout: New Vegas, and Hunted: The Demon's Forge!