First Looks// Rage

The second bit of the demo takes us to an earlier point in the game when we only have a gun and a few shotgun shells and need to find/build our selves some sort of transportation. There is a place where a group of bandits who specialise in vehicle creation are known to hang out. So, we show up and begin to do a little shopping.

Guns work better than money with this particular crew. During the fire fight that follows we bust out another little toy, a walking turret that serves the important roles of shooting bad things in the face and distracting bad things from shooting us in the face. These items can be built at any time and any where and do not need special work station for you to create them - if you've got the parts and plans on hand then you can make one.

We then jump ahead to the third and final section of the woefully short 25 minute demonstration: a large dilapidated city with tumbled sky scrapers littering the horizon. Wave after wave of mutants begin pouring out of a manhole and other nooks and crannies around you.

As we manage to dispatch probably 20 of the little sods a loud groan can be heard and a mutant, not to dissimilar in size form those in Fallout 3 or the Berserker in GoW comes around the corner and begins launching rockets at us like Tony Stark showing off a new toy.

A few grenades and some rockets of our own, not to mention a plentiful supply of ammo, later and it finally goes down. That must have been the thing Crazy Joe had been talking about – oh, if only! A growling bellow, somewhere between the T-Rex from Jurassic Park and Godzilla, is heard followed by a series of loud booms.

A hand, probably bigger than the entire mutant we just barely managed to kill reaches out around the corner of a building and out peeks a beast that would give a Rancor reason to run. It is, of course, at this time that the screen fades to black. Demo over. Damn! 30 minutes already?

I can't wait for more. I've played a fair bit of Fallout 3 and watched my girlfriend clock over a hundred hours on it; while there's a lot to love, for me, I like a more focused affair. Less exploring, fewer stats, less inventory, more using my skills to shoot things in the face myself.

For me Rage looks as if it takes everything I love about Fallout 3 (except those fantastic illustrations and 50-60s motifs) and wraps it in a much prettier, cleaner, tighter package. Win, win, win really. Rage is supposedly due out this Holiday season, though we were reminded that id is a “When it's done, it's done” kind of place so don't be to disappointed if this doesn't end up in our eager hands until this time next year. Fingers crossed that it's sooner.