Hmmm, honestly I think there is a slightly more intense smell wafting from this review than usual.
Due to my playing of SWG addictively before it ends, I haven't been playing or finishing a lot of the games I've purchused (heck this is the usual state of affairs for me it seems), I did however give RAGE a shot since I'm a big post-apocolypic fanboy.
I wonder if Yahtzee even played the game because the very first thing that happens when your "yanked into a vehicle by a passing NPC" is that he talks about The Authority and how it's been hunting down those who awoke from the ARKS. The guys in the ARKS unlike what Yahtzee said, or Fallout, have been augemented into super soldiers, which explains why your character can do the FPS stuff, recover rapidly from injuries, and even revive from the dead. Your character has a substantial amount of implants. This is ALSO why awakening all of your characters buddies would bring doom to The Authority, since it would be like an army of versions of your character who have been wiping all of this stuff out knocking on their door (of course I haven't gotten that far).
Yahtzee talks about the lack of any real motivation involved in this game, but your given one from square one. The bad guys are trying to kill you on general principle as you represent a threat to them through your very existance.
As far as the name "The Authority" goes, I kind of thought they were trying to score some name recognition off the super hero team, especially looking at Wildstorm's post apocolyptic phase, even if there is no real connection thematically, but that could just be me.
What really gives this installment of ZP a bit of a reek though is that Yahtzee is praising the visuals for this game, which sounds a lot like the promotional release hype. By all accounts the game has been getting slammed due to problems with the visuals. especially on the PC (which is what I play, even though it's not terrible). I mean when "New Vegas" was released with 40 gajillion bugs that became a criticism, and really Rage is a giant- bug fest, that also has kind of failed to deliver in the visual department due to the problems that have been occuring even on consoles, the whole new engine that is supposed to render everything as one texture has delivered a lot of commentary, as have the lack of a lot of little details people expect in terms of supporting graphics and pop in. I know many people have commented on issues with proper shadows, and even their lack.
Hey, I'm probably wrong, but I almost suspect Yahtzee totally winged this one without actually having put in any time with the game. Either that, or he might even have been
paid to toss this one out there, sure it includes some insults and commentary, but it's not as biting as I'd expect his review of this game to be given all of it's reported problems, and really I see little indication from what he's actually said that he played this game.
Just a suspician, nothing I know for sure. It might just be an off week.
