Rage

Oh, the legendary id Software, how much have you done for all of us...
The creators of Doom, Quake and um... Quake 2. While the studio's past has made a huge impact on today's gaming, they haven't been up to much lately. Mainly they're outsourcing their intellectual property to other - almost competent - studios to make games like Quake 4 or Wolfenstein. The people working there nowadays probably didn't have much to do with Doom (except for that annoying geek John Carmack) and to justify their existence they have been working for years on some game that would maybe have been a little bit original when it first came out.
It's called Rage - a post apocalyptical shooter/racer game that's trying to be a blend between Borderlands, Fallout 3 and Grand Theft Auto and does really nothing better than these games. It's a fairly linear game where you run around completing quests by shooting mutants and winning races with cars that shoot rockets. So you can add Mario Kart to the mix. No wait, Borderlands already did that. GTA too actually. Anyways...
Despite it's complete lack of originality (the bad authority guys are called Authority, the resistance movement is called Resistance. Seriously.), Rage does some things pretty well. First, it looks pretty good, especially landscapes. Apparently the game uses some sort of new technology that wraps the whole level into one huge texture to get better results while using less resources. Unfortunately this pays back with smaller items which look bloody awful at times. Secondly, the characters are well designed and animated, with unique looking NPCs gesturing wildly while giving out quests and mutants are jumping, crawling, climbing around the locations and stumbling onto walls when being shot. However, neither the shooting mechanics or driving offer anything above the average.
This all said, it's not a bad game. You can shoot mutants and drive buggys that shoot, graphics and sound are good enough, so what's there to complain about? Yeah, it's too easy and casual but after a hard day it can be nice and relaxing, just dumb fun. If only it wouldn't have been terribly overhyped for the past years but then again, would I even have touched it then?

Saiko