RAGE is one of those games that just slipped under my radar this year for some reason but after seeing more and more info about the game, it has sparked my interest. I was able to get some hands-on time with RAGE at PAX and I was really impressed with what I saw.

The game starts off from a first person view inside a hybernation pod on a spaceship.  The pod opens and I step out analyzing my environment and before I know it, I’m being shipped off to a wasteland Earth that was hit by an Asteroid.  Once there, I run into a rebel who picks me up and takes me to a  hideout where other humans live surviving off of very limited items.

I was given a gun and my first mission was to go to the hideout of mutant-like bandits and eliminate them.  To get there, I’m given the option to ride a dune buggy across the plains of this wasteland.  As I was riding in third person veiw, the environment looked incredible and very detailed.

Once I got to the hideout of these bandits, my first encounter with them was pretty crazy.  Some of these bandits shot at me while others swung from the ceiling doing acrobatic type moves that made it hard for me to shoot them.  The best way to kill them was to get up close and personal with them and blast them in the face because these guys are hard to kill.

During the battle, I got caught and hung upside down!  It was a sticky situation especially seeing as how the bandits were about to gut me like a fish.  I got knocked out and the view went into a defibrillator mode where I had to shock myself back to life.  I thought this was pretty cool.  I came back to life and broke free from my captors and continued the fight.  Of course I survived … how does the hero die in the first few minutes duh!?

Along the way I was told by one of the developers it was important to loot because you can cash in such items as radios, flashlights, books, etc. for cash that you can use to upgrade and buy new weapons.  Once I was done exterminating the bandits, I returned to the rebel hideout for my next mission.  I stopped at this point otherwise I would have been playing a lot longer.

The game was insane!  It looked beautiful and the enemy AI was probably some of the most advanced I had played against.  I mean seriously .. these damn bandits just would not die easily.  They jumped, dodged, scaled walls … did iD Software invest in some parkour training?

Playing RAGE has made me add this game to my already long list of games this fall.  RAGE will be released on October 4th.  If you can’t wait until then, there is a RAGE  mobile game in the App Store that’s pretty cool too.

[Update] – Bethesda just released a new Uprising trailer for the game!