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Tag: Rage

RAGE Review: Still Just a Rat in a Cage

My relationship with first-person shooters has been a somewhat tumultuous one.

If pressed to come up with a list of my favorite video games of all time, titles like Quake, Perfect Dark and Half-Life 2 would probably be on it.  I’m one of those weird people who actually buys the Halo and Call of Duty games so I can play through the campaigns.

Over the last year or so, my taste for the genre has soured, though.  Chalk it up to evolving interests or a lack of developer innovation but my recent attempts to play Crysis 2, Killzone 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops were aborted after only a few hours.  It was with a fair amount of trepidation then that I approached RAGE, the first new game from id Software (makers of the aforementioned Quake) in almost 7 years.  Would this long-in-development shooter be another victim of my changing tastes?  Or could id, a developer who more or less invented the modern FPS, successfully renew my love for the genre?

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Play More Games: The One and Only Punch of a Stupendous Badass

UNLEASH THE GODHAND

So this week I was getting ready to be all, ooh, Dark Souls. Oooooh, Rage, etc., etc. And then Sony went and announced their new “Only on PSN” initiative yesterday, through which they’ll launch one or two exclusive games every week in October, including recently announced, Pub-Fund-backed games, Eufloria and Okabu.

But wait, there’s more! Not content with releasing seven PSN exclusives over the next four weeks, they also casually mentioned that they’re kicking off the month by pulling a handful of classics out of the PlayStation 2’s back catalog and putting them up for sale on the PSN. That’s right–PlayStation 2 games on the PS3! Cue the floodgates of gamers begging for re-releases of their favorite discs, or the cynics saying that this was Sony’s plan all along when they phased out backwards compatibility. Personally, I’m happy to see Sony making this surprisingly tasteful lineup of obscure games available to a new generation of gamers.

So what PlayStation 2 games will you be playing in October of 2011?

First, my personal favorite: God Hand, the outrageous 3D brawler from now-shuttered Clover Studio that’s famous for its litany of martial arts moves, an insane sense of humor as only Japan can deliver (absolutely don’t miss the trailer), and for having no illusions that it’s “ball-bustingly hard.” Here’s what I had to say about it back in 2006:

God Hand is the greatest baseball batting, face stomping, button mashing, uppercutting, crotch kicking, drunken boxing, rocket launching, kick-me signing, arm chopping, gay bashing[1], barrel rolling, demon spawning, haymaking, clown crushing, wall clipping, poker playing, repeatedly continuing, mach speed pummeling, woman spanking, mighty morphing, Devo singing, massive damaging, chihuahua racing, Clover closing, double-or-nothing, surf rocking, gorilla suplexing game I’ve played this year. STRONGLY ENDORSE.

[1] LITERALLY

Five years later, I still strongly recommend you show your support for God Hand. Maybe Capcom will listen up and put Gene into Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Arcade Edition.

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