RAGE Reviews

A potentially excellent 360-era corridor FPS that is trapped inside a empty, bland, forgettable and unfinished open world game. RAGE was suppose to show off the id Tech 5 engine with large beautifully rendered environments but the actual game is at its best when you're partaking in the linear corridor shootouts. The gunplay here is *chef's kiss* good stuff. Aiming feels natural. Enemy animations especially when they get shoot is incredibly detailed. The guns are enjoyable to use with fun alternative ammo types. If RAGE was a 10 hour linear campaign it could have been as well remembered as other similar FPSs of that era like Metro 2033, Metro Last Light, The Bioshock Trilogy, or DOOM 3. It's a shame it tried to an open world experience. As an open world wasteland experience it's nowhere near as deep, rich, or atmospheric as the Fallout or STALKER games. As a FPS with RPG elements it struggles to have the satisfying systems found in games like Borderlands. RAGE still gets a thumbs up from me for how good the gunplay is but it could have been an all time classic if id software quite literally "stuck to their guns". The RAGE series will forever be the series that has amazing gunplay in forgettable open worlds with car combat plus a pseudo Mad Max post apocalyptic setting that feel especially redundant now with the well received Mad Max game.

Y'know what...its not as bad as people make it out to be, bit weird and jarring at times, but it is most certainly not the worst. 7/10 tbh, I like the Idea behind the game

If you buy this game and just press "play" its the worst game ever and should be buried next to E.T cartridges, but with Idtweaker and reshade and some mods and experimenting with cfg files and textures still gonna pop and the sound still gonna bug out... its actually a fun 7.5/10 game, reminded me of metro exodus, but 8 years too soon. Oh and for me it only took 14 years to finally stop crashing! Runs at stable 144fps on 5800x3d with 4070super.

Not bad. I got this after beating Rage 2 and wanted to play the first one again. The world and characters are amazing and some insane animations. The rest of the game feels outdated. Im not a huge fan of the controls. Rage 2 controls were a lot better. I would give this game a big thumbs up except it reminds me of the Jak and Daxer series and they mightve did it better. I will say Rage 1 and Rage 2 feel completly different. In 1, every bullet counts and you have to take cover. In 2, You quickly become overpowered and lightning fast. I will say the quests in Rage are pretty lame but the wonderful world makes up for it. I would love to give it a high score but it is way too outdated and slow. Once thing I notice thats only in Rage, is the bad guys limp if you hit them in certain areas. They also take cover and have good teamwork. In Rage 2, they would slide on the ground and do a fake death thing. There is a lot to do in Rage but Im not sure if its worth the current price. It just feels like a lot of work to make it fun.

I played this when it first came out on Xbox 360. It was fun replaying on steam in 2025. The graphics held up well, the story is good, the combat is really good. You can tell the developers put a lot of care into it. Now this does play like a classic ID tech demo, with lots of hand holding during the story, but I still loved it!

Still looks great for its age. The textures are low res though. Had around 10 hours of good fun shooting bandits, mutants and the authority. Definitely worth it if you can get it for cheap.

its a little too easy and the world is empty but I think its a solid mid game some of the mini games are goated as well.

Still one of the best id shooters despite the flaws, mainly technical in nature. I love that staple Doom³ gameplay flow left generally untouched. Driving is fine and adds up to the worldbuilding, even though the locations are relatively small, especially compared to the sequel. Crafting is almost up to the point in every aspect. However it is the gunplay that has certain issues, like formally the best weapon having the worst feedback and some ammo types being generally unused. Still a nice debut! Completed the game on Ultra-Nightmare multiple times, finally purchased the game to collect as much achievements as possible with the worst armor lol. Pity that the game (and the engine version itself) was optimised with ridiculously weak 7th gen consoles in mind. As Carmack stated soon after the release, 'the consoles were a mistake'. Tinkering with id5Tweaker and launch options is quite educational tho. PS: Damn Abbott, round 5 is too tough!

[code]More than a decade after its initial release, Rage unfortunately hasn’t aged too well – technical difficulties, mediocre gameplay and a forgettable story make this game only recommendable to players who have run out of other first-person-shooter campaigns to play[/code] There have been plenty of videogame series that – most likely inspired by the popular [i]Mad Max[/i] movie franchise – are set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland: Popular ones like [i]Fallout[/i] and [i]Borderlands[/i] or more niche titles, like [i]Fuel[/i]. However, one game was seemingly especially fond of the movies, not counting the official [i]Mad Max[/i] 2015 videogame by Avalanche Studious of course: [i]Rage[/i]. Incorporating a wasteland with roaming bandit clans, highly weaponized cars and weird characters, this 2011 game was also the first AAA release to be built on the id Tech 5 engine – which resulted in the graphics being particularly praised back in the day. But more than a decade later, [i]Rage[/i] naturally cannot rely on its visuals being similarly impressive anymore – and what’s left is a game that, played for the first time in 2025, is – at best – extremely mediocre. First, let’s talk about the technical state of the game however, as [i]Rage[/i] exhibits numerous problems such as crashes or performance issues that sour the experience even before actually getting to play the game. Most notably, even on more than capable PCs, [i]Rage[/i] won’t run smoothly unless you apply some of the fixes advised in the [url=https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Rage]PcGamingWiki[/url]: This includes manually creating a texture cache (!) for the game, as it’s unable to automatically do so by itself (!!). In my case, even with the fixes applied, [i]Rage[/i] still didn’t run smoothly in certain locations – but while noticeable, it wasn’t distracting enough for me to consider it even anywhere near unplayable. What’s more infuriating, however, is that the 64-bit version of the game disables Steam achievements for some reason – which means you’re stuck with the 32-bit version, if you care about them. In short, expect to spend some time on technical workarounds before playing [i]Rage[/i]. Moving on to the actual game, I feel like there’s little reason to play [i]Rage[/i] unless you really want to play a game in a [i]Max Max[/i]-like setting – or have ran out of other first-person-shooters campaigns to play. While [i]Rage[/i] isn’t a bad game per se, it simply doesn't offer anything outstanding enough to choose it over other contenders for your time. On the bright side, while the graphics obviously aren’t as cutting-edge as they used to be – the last decade hasn’t been devoid of technical advancements after all – the art direction is still decent enough to provide some generally nice views – even if most of the game is obviously stone, dust and scrap. This extends to the enemies as well as the guns in your arsenal as well – they all fit well together in this vision of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. So at least it’s not the graphics that have aged terribly, some low-quality textures aside – unfortunately the same thing can’t be said about the rest of the game. In terms of gameplay, [i]Rage[/i] offers a world made up of different levels – a few big but empty zones to use your car in and a few small “dungeons” filled with enemy encounters you go through as part of the main story. As such, you’ll spend most of your time on foot, engaging in typical first-person shootouts, with automatically regenerating health and conveniently placed obstacles to use as cover from enemy fire. You’ll only really use your car during (simple) races or to get to the various “dungeons” – while the game offers numerous car customisation options, you’ll never really need them unless you plan to engage with the racing side-content a lot. [i]Rage[/i] also offers you various new cars over the course of the 10-12h story, which makes investing into “older” cars quite pointless. To expand upon the shootouts, [i]Rage[/i] features a surprisingly large amount of guns, as well as different ammunition types – you might also use the shotgun as a tool for launching mini-grenades, for example. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop enemy encounters from becoming incredibly repetitive, as the combat areas are boringly designed – mostly corridors or large rooms with similar architecture – and the various enemy types not behaving much different in practice. As the game goes on, the only way that combat gets more difficult is by enemies using armour and thus gaining more health – instead of encountering smarter enemies or types that require you to change your strategy. As it is, every [i]Rage[/i] fight simply is about staying in cover, picking off enemies one by one and occasionally switching to close-combat weapons if a melee fighter appears. It doesn’t help that the AI isn’t particularly smart then, mostly staying in cover at one place and occasionally firing at you. Especially players with a lot of first-person-shooter experience are thus quickly going to realise that [i]Rage[/i] doesn’t bring anything new or exciting to the table, which different the game from other titles. It’s solid enough to still be entertaining but honestly, there is not much of a reason to play [i]Rage[/i] these days unless you’ve ran out of other first-person-shooter campaigns to play. This is only emphasized by the story of [i]Rage[/i], which was already criticised back in the day – flat characters, no proper villain and a cookie-cutter plot as well as a quite basic presentation make [i]Rage[/i] a narrative experience you’ve immediately forgotten about as soon as you closed the game. The plot only really serves as a red line to guide you through the various areas of the game, it might as well be replaced by a marker that tells you what enemies to shoot next – this does extend to the only story DLC of the game, [i]The Scorchers[/i] as well, of course. A shame, considering the art direction of the game could’ve easily served as a backdrop for a more intriguing tale. Concluding, the technical state of [i]Rage[/i] unfortunately makes applying fixes more mandatory than optional – and even when it runs, the 2011 game unfortunately isn’t much more than yet another first-person-shooter, although set in a post-apocalyptic world. While the game isn’t actively bad, it’s simply too mediocre to recommend a playthrough these days, as there are much better alternatives to play – like the aforementioned [i]Fallout[/i] or [i]Borderlands[/i] franchise, for example. If you’ve “experienced them all” however or simply are quite interested in [i]Rage[/i]’s particular vibe – there’s definitely worse games to play too. In that case, at least wait for a sale however – while not an expensive game to begin with, it does get even cheaper quite often.

This is a weird one. It's not really that great of a game, far from it. It's got clunky combat, despite being presented as an open world it's essentially on-rails, the quests and especially side content are about as barebones as it gets, the story is pure, flat cardboard. So why a positive review? It's got a unique charm I've really yet to see replicated. There's a sort of artistry to its world that brings to mind standalone painted pieces, with every area and perhaps every vista uniquely its own visual language. The character designs are creative and appealing, with emotive stylized animation to fit them. Ultimately though, what really saves this game is it doesn't overstay its welcome. Without running you back and forth through recycled content, these other appeals get their chance to shine without wearing you down and making you resent that less-than-spectacular game design. As such a distinct and charming experience, I think this game deserves a go. Just one. Heck, you don't even have to finish it.