My review of RAGE

Ok, so I just completed the single player campaign (on hard) of RAGE for the 360. Since there are varying reviews on the game, I thought I would post my review in case any of you are debating picking this game up.

***possible spoiler alert..if you're really anal, but I'm not giving anything big away***

First off, this is a game with no personality of it's own. It's a direct ripoff of Borderlands. I don't know how ANYONE with eyeballs can suggest it isn't. Roaming the desert, picking up odd jobs from the job board in each town and upgrading your guns and vehicles. Now having said that, it is NOWHERE as good as borderlands. You can upgrade only certain guns and the upgrades are minor. Frankly, I don't know why they even bothered to put them in there. The car has a bit more, but you're not really modding the car so much as you're upgrading certain parts from REGULAR to SUPER. Once. Then they're maxed out. Did I mention you race your cars to earn upgrade tickets. A la borderlands...

Remember Moxie? Well, RAGE has Bash TV run by RJ Stiles (?) which is the same thing. Waves of baddies.

Now that stuff was fairly fun in Borderlands, not as much in RAGE. Playing through bash tv isn't to make money or points, but it's part of the campaign. As such, I felt no need or desire to go back and "improve" my score.

The races were ok. They were needed to get upgrades for my car so I could get through the baddie cars in the wasteland. Again, once I had my 3 or 4 upgrades. I pretty much stopped the car races. If you want the achievement for doing them all or you REALLY like the car races, you might do more...but they are too easy. So it's not even really fun. (remember, I played on hard)

The graphics? Suck. Like the cast of Jersey Shore...they're good from far but far from good.

Up close, most of the graphics are pixelated or just not rendered. This game comes on 3 discs too! I found it very similar to borderlands quality for graphics, but they seemed to load faster in borderlands. (yes, I installed all three discs onto my HD)

Gameplay....was good. Nothing mind blowing, but good. I'm glad I didn't play on normal because I would have been bored instantly.It feels a little horde-ish. getting into certain areas and then the baddies will come in waves. You find cover or a decent spot to pick them off and you wait until you've killed them all and then advance. The exception is the mutants. These pricks come out of everywhere and they jump around. A lot. So I think I used the shotgun for 80% of the game. Just waited until they were close and BOOM.

Bosses. K, this is the really messed up part. There are bosses or super baddies throughout the game, but the mostly appear at bizzar times. At first I thought this was nice. As an experienced gamer, I was truly caught off guard by some of them and that adds to the experience. Then again, some of the missions/challenges were so ridiculous easy, I couldn't beleive there weren't any bosses. Which brings me to my biggest gripe.

The ending was completely anticlimatic. I mean it was the Sopranos of endings. Right before the final mission...you know the usual get into the enemy stronghold and upload the virus or insert the magic key kind of mission. You expect a boss. The mother of all bosses. Nope. Plus...they give you a MASSIVE BFG right before the mission and there is tons of ammo for in the stronghold. There are a couple waves of SLIGHTLY stronger mutants...and the usual insert somethign here, then run over then, move up and repeat kind of procedure. At every step there is a wave of these super mutants. 4 or 5 steps into the procedure, you do the final "thing" and I'm waiting for armagedon. Nope.

bing, bing, bing. 3 acheivements..and the credits. Are you f*cking kidding me?!!

That's it.

So overall I'd say it was a decent game but it lets you down in some places. However, where borderlands makes up for its shortcomings with fabulous gameplay and customization, RAGE has none of that. I feel it's got no re-playability.

I completed the game in 13 hours playing on Hard. Spend $8 to rent it for the weekend and you're good. I would NOT recommend dropping $70 on it.