Steam Sales Review #58: RAGE

Well I thought with my new AMD video card and it now having been 2 years they’ve probably had times to fix the graphics card problems.

RAGE went on a Steam Sale no less than one month after launch.  The game was given poor reviews all around.  This love child of Id Software (makers of Doom and Quake) was seen as uninspiring by the Quake and Unreal Tournament crowd.

It turned out for them to be, just a crappy average game.  And the game got average reviews, roughly 80s. An amazing game gets 90s.  So it wasn’t received poorly, but not nearly hitting the expectations of Id Software’s core fans.

If you have an AMD card made before 2011 don’t even try this game.  For you this game is a 0 stars and a thumbs down.

But for the rest of you who have mustered up the cash to buy a video card created post 2011 this review is for you.

RAGE is a post-apocalyptic first person shooter.  You know, like Borderlands.  It seems to be the sort of in-flavour right now to make post-apocalyptic wasteland games.  I guess that could also be like Fallout 3 too… which is also from Bethesda.

So a group of people are sent off into space to re-populate the Earth after the asteroid is about to destroy the planet.  They’re set in a time pod for 100 years until the potential radiation has worn off the face of the Earth.

Of course like these stories go when you land there are in fact people on the ground civilization seems to have continued… in a manner of such.

You run into this guy first

He sounds a lot like John Goodman.  Wait a minute… holy shit… HE IS JOHN GOODMAN.  Could be the most overpaid voice acting of all time right there.  Some of the hype for the game was around the fact that this was John Goodman doing voice acting.

John Goodman starts explaining about what is happening and what the civilization’s justice system is like… when he decides not to explain anything about it at all.

He just jumps around the fact that things had gone to all hell.

But he informs you that you are some sort of special person who is in fact a superman type.

So he sends you off to do some chores.  So off you go on your bike.

So off you go to fight the same sort of people who always show up in this game.

Note my scope.  It’s not actually a scope.  I bought half a binocular from a vendor to look through and use as a scope.  I thought it said monocle and I was going to be a futuristic badass pimp with a monocle.  Actually it read monocular and so I was sorrowly disappointed.

After I finish about 10 quests for John Goodman I’m introduced to Scooter.

I’m sorry it’s not Scooter it’s this guy

Scoot’s fat cousin.

And here’s Scooter:

Yeah to say that there was an inspiration here… is a little bit of an overstatement.

Unlike Borderlands and Fallout which has tech trees you can invest in this is a straight out action game.

So Scooter Jr sends you off to do some quests.

And that’s the whole game.  You travel around empty zones into dungeons to gather quest materials and the game never seems to go anywhere.

But there’s a little more to this game of course.

The game features a crafting system in which you combine three items together to make something useful.

The problem is it becomes hard to tell what is useful and what isn’t when it comes time to go to the vendor and sell for cash.

Honestly that sounds useful… but I just don’t know.

As well you can also do mini games.

The first is a gambling game.

It looks kind of neat until you realize how it works.  YOu put a bet down for money and roll dice.  You get four rolls and three turns.  Each time you get crosshairs it kills a mutant, every time it doesn’t the mutants step forward.  If the mutants reach the guy in the middle, you lose all your money.  You get paid a multiplier based on when you kill the mutants, 10x for first round, 4x for second round and 1x for third round.

Yeah it’s a pretty boring mini-game.

Also feeling like Rockstar Games here because we get a….

RACING MINI GAME!

This will be hit or miss for people.  I’m personally not a fan of racing games, mostly because I suck at them.  To me this sort of mini game can be fun, but only for the right people.  For me it’s just easy to generate content that doesn’t really add anything to the game.

This mini-game ends up being particularly annoying because without it you cannot upgrade your vehicle for actual game content.  On the plus side there is more variety in their races than in most actual racing games, so it doesn’t entirely get stale too fast.

What game would be complete without a random… card game.

This one plays like Pokemon or Magic the Gathering.  Just like them each card has health and attack you use cards to attack and some cards have a functionality.  Winner is the person with cards left over.

It’s the super simplified version of it all though so don’t expect something very exciting.  Of course the game forces you to buy good cards from people so you have another gold sync.

Then there is your delivery mini game.

I think it all begins with the Pony Express from Gun.  It was the best part of the game.  Now they’ve included it in every game.

Yep just like in Borderlands it’s a race against time to get to a red drop box.

Normally it’s not a mini game as it’s an active part of the world.  But in this game it is completely 100% scripted and instanced, so it’s a mini game.

They also have specialized missions which are in themselves mini games.

Some include the sniping mini games, the arena style games, and the scavenger mini games.

I’ll be honest the packaging of non-story related things is much better than Borderlands.  If you’re into all of those little extra non-game things in the game… this is really the game for you.  There is about 1.5 hours of racing alone.

The main problem with the game is that it is really missing story.  A lot of games try to keep you in the dark as part of its story telling element and then blow you away with an epic ending explaining everything that has been held in mystery.

By comparison this game dangles some story in your face and then makes you do your paper route for a few hours until you finally come home in order for them to tell you a little itty bitty bit of information.

If you are going to purchase this game make sure you buy the DLC.  The game was clearly designed to have DLC as it is very short, however the one DLC package doubles the length of the game.

The core game is 10 hours in length, the DLC will add about another 6 hours.

Big thumbs up on this game, very good value.

Steam Sales Review #49: Brink

At the discount price of $9.99 it’s time to jump into Bethesda’s Brink!

So what’s Brink?

In a nut shell Brink is a co-op time based objective based shooter with an open world and non-linear maps.  The game can be played solo, online (drop in games), and against other players.

The game features a 10-mission campaign in which you can play as either side.

If you’re thinking of a game that this is like, think of PAYDAY: The Heist…. with more maps… and better graphics.

Actually that’s not fair, they’re not exactly better graphics.  They’re different graphics.  PAYDAY went for realistic graphics and hit the yonder side of the uncanny valley.  BRINK went for goofy big heads and odd shaped bodies which are just a little more cartoony.

You have four classes in the game.  Out of the four there are only two you will want to play as, soldier and medics.  Pretty well every other class is functionally useless.

It’s not that they are useless, more that the computer plays them better.  I stress this because it is almost impossible to fully populate a game with people.  At best you will get 2 people.  The game unfortunately never took off and just doesn’t have a lot of people playing it.

It’s possible when this goes on sale against you might get some games in with people… but honestly it’s rare.

It seems like a game that you have to play with friends in order for it to be fun.  But I’ll be honest, even then it won’t be REALLY fun.

One of the big problems I had was the non-linearity of map designs with linear objectives.  Now I’m not asking for narrow corridors but dear god some of these maps are so retardedly hard to figure out.

I was playing on a map in which your opponents spawn point and your spawn point are within seconds of each other.  In between is a giant area you have to get to in which the only entrances are small vent ducts you have to duck into and find out exactly where they are.

From a map design perspective defense just need to camp out these entry points to win.  It’s so retardedly dumb.  But that’s if you can find it.  In one scenario I spent all of my 15 minutes trying to find a vent.

The hard difficulty is barely accomplishable in a fresh game.  You have to grind out your levels to get upgrades in order to make your avatar strong enough to beat these missions.

Now it’s not all doom and gloom.  It’s not a game I will be recommending but in the least Bethesda showed they cared a little.  Every single mission has a fully voiced fully animated introduction and two closings indicating a story basis and some sort of characters that you might like.

This can be compared to games like Killing Floor, Left 4 Dead, and The Heist in which you just start off in the middle of a scenario.

The game concept has promise as an alternative to the Call of Duty model, but this game simply does not execute it right.

No matter how on sale this game is, don’t get it.  It will simply be a waste of time and money.