I like Rage, with a few gripes. The release on the PC was a huge bugfest, to the point of having broken rendering geometry on Windows XP (didn't encounter that on Windows 7). The texture popping wasn't a big deal to me, but to some people it was a huge annoyance. The driving wasn't so horrible as some people said, expecially going back and playing Half-Life 2. The only real difference is boost and third-person perspective. Otherwise the controls are pretty much the same. I really wish they had a first-person driving option in Rage as that's always more immersive. What I didn't like was that your own vehicle was pretty much indestructible most of the time unless in a combat race, and drop mines were completely useless. They did almost zero damage. Once I realized this I just started running over the damned things. Also... the ending. That was a huge letdown. I expected to fight through a high-tech city ala Quake 2, only to find it was an extremely short hallway crawl with an anti-climactic final battle. It felt like that part of the game was rushed and should have been longer.
The really good parts? The first-person combat was awesome, a lot of the weapons were interesting, and being able to shoot a dynamite arrow into someone is just sick fun. Visually the game is gorgeous if you tweak it properly on a high-end system. The wasteland itself was fun to explore. I just wish it had been a bit larger.
I can't comment on any similarities to the Fallout series as I've not played any of those. If they're similar, oh well. Duke 3D and Doom were similar. A lot of games in the same genre have similarities, so I'm not usually one to gripe on that.
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