Having someone by your side, even if it's only a dog-like spider bot, helps to give you a bit of companionship in your wanderings across the game's surprisingly broad settings.

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The Xbox 360 version of the game comes on three discs. The first two contain the campaign, the third the game's multiplayer. The first disc of the two is the half of the world that includes Wellspring, the second includes the world of Subway Town. Both areas feature one major town, a wide mix of hang-outs and enemy dens and plenty of places to drive around and explore. Rage does an amazing job of delivering an eclectic mix of settings that provide gamers a chance to shoot their way through a variety of crumbling set pieces.

You will fight through collapsing hospitals and malls, shoot it out in an old garage, in bunkers, through a future military fort and an old prison. Most of my favorite backdrops, though, are on that second disc. My favorite of the lot is one of the end-game settings, a place that stretches its route through the teetering tin structures of cliff dwellings. It's one of the only places where you'll feel like you're not pushing your way through nearly always claustrophobic settings.

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While id typically does a solid job of obscuring the required invisible walls found in these sorts of games, channeling players down set paths filled with enemies and objectives, they never really make use of their expansive world.

The game's biggest missed opportunity is that while there are massive outdoor settings packed with hostile vehicles and intricately detailed interior levels loaded with scrambling enemies, the two rarely meet.

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When you're sent on a mission you nearly always find yourself driving to a door, getting out of your car and then entering a level. I would have loved to experience a more seamless transition from outdoor to indoor, one that allowed me to hop in and out of my vehicle, pick off enemies, approach the objective the way I wanted to.

It's one of the few design decisions I'm unhappy about in Rage, though overall I relished the experience of separately shooting and driving my way through this new id world.

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The game also does have some technical issues, problems that may or may not bother you depending both on your willingness to put up with visual imperfections and which platform you're playing the game on.

Played on PC, the launch version of Rage was plagued with issues for some. Many of those problems are fixed or are being fixed, but even fully repaired, the computer version of id's latest title will be, at its best, the equal of the console version.

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I was hoping for a game that would push my gaming rig to its full potential, but instead found a game that took some odd shortcuts in arriving on the computer.

The game's defibrillator is a the most obvious example of this. In Rage, when you die you get a second chance: A defibrillator hard-wired into your character kicks in, shocking you back to life and killing or stunning nearby enemies. On console the percentage of health restored and the amount of damage inflicted is determined by how well you match up thumbstick movements on your controller with what's on screen and then the timing of twin trigger pulls. On PC you just have to press a single button at the right time. It's a watered down equivalent, one that could be used as a metaphor for id's approach to the PC version of the game. The graphics and settings all seem like echoes of what you experience on the console.

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Initially, I would have put the game's multiplayer in that category too. I was surprised and disappointed after wrapping up the game to be reminded that it doesn't include the sort of multiplayer I like to play most: Deathmatch.

It seemed a weird choice for the people who pioneered the mode, who coined the term, to not include it in their latest game. But after talking with some of the id folk about why they decided to bypass the typical multiplayer modes for a different take on multiplayer, I decided to spend a chunk of the day checking it out.

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I found a game that took some odd shortcuts in arriving on the computer.

There are two types of multiplayer in Rage. Wasteland Legends is a batch of cooperative missions apart from Rage's single-player campaign that can be played and replayed locally and with folks online for high scores and leaderboard placement. They're solid, challenging shooter fare that have you working your way through a level with a buddy, shooting up everyone in sight.

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Road Rage drops players is the game's only competitive multiplayer and, as the name implies, it takes place completely behind the wheel of a vehicle.

Initially, I wasn't a fan of the game's armed races and chases. But then I started playing around with the game's fourth mode, Carnage. Carnage is essentially deathmatch in cars. Once you get used to the peculiarities of the game's physics and odd assortment of gadgets and weapons, I loved it.

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I discovered, while leveling up and unlocking new armor, cars, skins and weapons, that you can drastically alter the course of your airborne vehicle with a turbo boost simply by swiveling your car about in midair and hitting the thrusters. Suddenly, I found myself boosting through in-air bootleg turns, bunny-hopping over approaching enemies, blasting away at dune buggies with in-car nailguns. It's a much more nuanced car combat game then I'm used to, and also a much more rewarding one.

The fact that there's just the one weapons-centric mode may start to tax my interest, but Road Rage is no throw-away addition, it's an engaging, different sort of online experience, exactly what id seemed to be aiming for when they decided to skip traditional deathmatch.

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***

What I wasn't as happy with was the game's conclusion. Rage's story isn't bad, it's just light. It feels like the prelude to something much bigger, a table-setter for future games set in a world with a rich fiction and eclectic environments. You are, as I mentioned earlier, not the hero of this game.

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That doesn't bother me that much, just like the sometimes rough finish of the game's technical presentation doesn't bother me. Sure there are issues, but there is so much to fall into and examine that the fact that the game isn't constantly stroking my ego isn't a big deal.

In Rage you are a guy, one of many people, buried in the ground in preparation for a world-ending comet strike. When you pop free of the stasis you've been placed in for years, you're not the only one to make it out alive, just the only one who survived in your particular pod.

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Early on, the survivors of Rage's world make it clear that you have special powers, but they also almost immediately get busy taking advantage of you and those powers.

It's a vastly different experience than what you'll normally find in a shooter. There are several times in Rage when you show up to play the role of the hero only to discover your just the latest hero, sent in to fix a problem. More than once, I found myself searching through the pockets of the last hero, hoping to find a little extra cash or ammo.

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The game's first mission makes it clear you're just the new guy, not "the guy." If you die, things don't end, they just find a new person to send. And that message never wavers. When it finally sinks in that I'm just an armed messenger, it didn't really bother me.

But the developers could have done so much more with that decision. While it frees them from the need to build up a story around you as world saver, it shouldn't preclude any sort of character development. Not being a hero doesn't also mean not having a backstory or motivation to do anything other than be a messenger boy.

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The ending, while a perfect fit for the notion of player as useful tool, misses a wonderful opportunity to highlight id's interesting narrative decision. They could have used the ending to shock a player into the realization that they're a nobody in a dying world, ultimately expendable now that things are nicely in motion.

It's not a terrible misstep, just a missed opportunity that could have nicely strengthened the game's final moments.

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That said, I loved Rage. It's rare when I set aside a bit of time in my hectic schedule to relish the final moments of a game I've spent a dozen hours playing through.


You can contact Brian Crecente, the author of this post, at brian@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.