RAGE

  If amount of time trying to get something to run were indicative of the level of enjoyment garnered, I would hope for the amount of problems I've had with RAGE to be the standard. I got the game at 1am, brought it home, and let it install overnight. When I woke up, I was greeted by horrible texture problems. (See Fig. A) The steam page said to update to the latest AMD/ATI drivers, so I did. This caused the game to completely freeze, no matter what I did. I was literally getting one frame every nine seconds. I rolled back my drivers a bit, and the game was able to run. I still had some insane texture problems, but I didn't care at this point: I just wanted to play.

  All technical problems aside, the game is fucking great. Its not quite an RPG, and not quite open-world. What it reminds me of the most is actually Metroid Prime, though without the abundance of exploration. Sure, there are hidden caches all over the place, and even some ultra-secret places that pay tribute to iD's other games, (See Fig. B) but its more about taking missions, and going through a pretty linear area until you reach your goal, a boss, or both. If I could be coy, I would call it a "Hub-and-spoke first-person shooter/adventure game with racing elements."

  My game crashes nearly everytime I die, and I just reload again. I don't mind. Sure, it will be awesome when the patch comes out, but for now its all good. I'm having a lot of fun with it.

Man, that's fucking brilliant. I wish I could play it.

So it's kind of like a mix of Metroid Prime and Quake 2? That thought pretty much boosted it from "when it drops to $30" to "next paycheck." Luckily tomorrow is my next paycheck. WOOHOO.

I don't know how I feel about 25GB install, though, especially on my IDE optical drive. :|

The game is worth playing, even with the technological issues.