I read some comments for those Unskippable videos and some people prayed/pretended that Other M was some sort of Space Pirate propaganda movie and the next game will open up with ending of Other M and the camera would pan back to reveal a bunch of Space Pirates sitting in a theater watching it.
Sadly, that's too clever to prove true and as bad as the game was it would be a really **** thing to pull on the developers of the previous game. Especially when at some point Nintendo had to look at what they were given and gone, "Yes. Perfect. Thank you."
On a separate note, Rage isn't living up to the hype. I for one am not shocked. I kept looking at videos of video game press people going, "DUDE! This game looks so ****ing great! I can't wait to play it!" And me scratching my head and asking.... why? What about Rage seems so great to you?
Well, I've played a bit of it and I'm pretty unimpressed. So many baffling design decisions. For instance, you know how in Oblivion/Fallout 3/New Vegas the game auto saves whenever you fast travel, sleep, wait, enter/exit a building/dungeon? Well, not only does Rage have linear levels, but it ONLY auto saves upon entering/exiting said levels or when you enter/exit the first big town you come to and presumably any future ones that may or may not exist. That's it. It's up to YOU the player save the game yourself. Frequently. Not only that, but you're limited in the number of saves you can have. It's like twenty-ish or so, but I find that to be pretty stupid considering that I have to save myself every five minutes or so. And yes, there are cut scenes where it could auto save in the middle of it. Yes, there are plenty of opportunities for the game to pause the action between planned battles against enemies to save. But no. It wont save.
Additionally, when I got to the first big town I was told to go to the local tailor and get some new clothes so "the Authority" doesn't recognize me as the protagonist. Okay, where is it? In the back of the town. Cool. Can I have my minimap back and you just show me where it is like you were doing earlier, game?... Hello? Yes, for some bass ackwards reason you don't have your trusty minimap to show you the way in the first large town you come to. That small one you started in just down the road? Yeah, sure, you can have it
then but not now when it'd be far more useful.
... Anyway, I wander around for a bit, played of bit of the in game TCG that's actually way more fun than Rage itself when I finally found the place. Okay. I go in and look at my selection of armors and then I found out about another baffling feature. See, once you choose an armor here, you're stuck with it for the rest of the game. I guess they graft it directly to your skin or some non-sense. I don't know. Not only
that, but each armor offers different bonuses... that are vaguely hinted at in the descriptions...
You also don't have a health bar. Well, you do, but you can only see it when you go to your stats tab in your inventory screen. But this is offset both by the fact that your health regens quite quickly and you can't take more than a couple shots from the enemy before dieing most of the time.
It's also "one of those" games where everyone else in the world got their kevlar skin enhancements, but you didn't. It takes 2-3 head shots to kill with the starting pistol.
Additionally, the first time you die you'll get told about a little mini game you have to do that will let you revive. The better you do when you complete it, the more health you'll have when you revive. As you might have guessed from my mention of the speedy health regen, how much life you revive with is pretty meaningless. Not only that, but you kill nearby enemies when you revive. It's pretty much exactly like what happens when you "die" in Fable, just with a mini game attached. You do however have to wait for the ability to revive to recharge before you can do it again and the fact that the game has a value in your stats for the number of charges you have and don't have I have to assume you get more later some how. More importantly, the bar that tells you when it's recharged can, I'm not kidding here, be measured in number of pixels and I could count to that number using just my hands. It is SO ****ing tiny. And this is on the MASSIVE screen my room mate has. I have no idea how he saw it and I can't imagine anyone with even a slightly smaller TV seeing it.
Okay, so besides looking pretty ****ty (great graphics wasted on a post apocalyptic waste land) and those things I mentioned above, is the gameplay any good?
Ehhhhhhhh...... as I said, the levels are very linear and while it's not just a canvas for a chest high wall painting and you don't glue yourself to cover like so many other shooters, this ends being a problem for the enemies who
do have and use a cover mechanic, almost like they're from a different game actually, and there in lies the problem. On one occasion I was able to easly dispatch of the enemies because they were in cover mode a couple feet from the cover and for some reason when they lean out of cover they do it in the form of leg stretches that leans them out so far they might as well be on the ground. Where I was standing it created the odd paradox I could easily see and shoot them while they were IN cover but not when they were leaning OUT of cover.
The rest of the time they just rush at you and while they do take roughly the same amount of bullets to bring down that it took to bring down officer Murphy in the beginning of Robocop and then some, as long as you back up and keep shooting you will eventually bring them down. No worries there.
tl;dr: Rage looks good; seems pretty uninspired; and has many, small, baffling design flaws. It does nothing that a number of other games don't do better. And since a portion of the game is blocked off if you didn't buy it new, there's no reason to even rent it, let alone purchase it.
EDIT: You see this image?
You see that tiny white bar under the large one with the 172 next to it? Guess what that is...
