RAGE
Great first person shooter, but also a really subpar open world action adventure game and a very mediocre combat racing game.
It's kinda sad because the FPS part is so good. The guns feel great to shoot, there's an huge variety of weapons and ammo types. The enemy AI is dynamic and varied, different enemy types feel really different thanks to the way they move around. The level design is linear but the levels are fun to play and look amazing.
But then they make you walk around in lifeless towns filled with signpost NPCs. And then they make you compete in combat races that just suck. And before they let you go back to shooting stuff, they make you listen to boring characters with no real personality delivering the most uneventful, inconsequential story exposition.
The way the story is told in this game makes no sense. There is no conflict. You have no reason to do anything. There is no twist. In fact, to say this game has a plot would be very generous. BUT nonetheless there is tons of voice acting. It's the strangest thing. They probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in actors, recording studio hours, etc., but nobody was able to point out the fact the story was nonexistent.
Not only that, but it feels like whomever wrote those dialogue lines never watched a Mad Max or any other relevant post apocalyptic wasteland movie. In RAGE, almost all the characters are nice, true to their word, good, reliable people. Among non-hostile NPCs, there is one who could be described as evil. In the entire game. Set in a post apocalyptic wasteland where everybody is scrounging to survive.
And let me say something about the racing. There are four modes: time trial, no guns racing, combat racing and rally points. So yeah, it's a combat racing game with no deathmatch mode in the single-player campaign. That should be indicative of the fact the developers didn't know what they were doing. Now get this: the best strategy to win the combat racing challenges is exactly the same as time trial and no guns racing. Ignore the guns, race as fast as you can abusing the boost and you'll quickly build enough of an advantage that enemy guns won't even target you. Rally points is different, but it's the worst of the bunch. Because every level is wide open and it's so easy to be faster than the other cars, it makes no sense to go after all the rally points. Instead, just sticking to a "circuit" in which you can reliably get two or three points in a row is enough to get you the win every time.
I feel like the game would've been better with everything but the FPS levels removed. If it was just a series of FPS levels with a store menu in between. It's a 8 or 9/10 FPS bogged down by a bunch of poorly designed garbage.
