Even before it was released, my relationship with Rage had been a tumultuous one. Long ago, I concluded that id software were a spent force. Not to say they had somehow become a bad developer, merely a creatively bankrupt one. Though others were quick to link that decline with the departure of John Romero, designer and hair volumizer extraordinaire, his absence was not to blame. In fact, id were the same company they’d always been. Rather, it was the world that had changed, and id software that had not changed with it.

Accordingly, a somewhat muted reception greeted Rage upon its unveiling in the summer of 2007. A new generation of gamers looked on and wondered what relevance id – by then the games developer of their parents – could possibly have in a post-Call of Duty world; the company’s proud legacy as redundant to their generation as Pong once was to mine. For the rest of us, any hopes the game might recapture former glories were offset by precious little evidence that the Texan developer had ever taken notice of prevailing winds. When pioneering releases from Valve and Ion Storm were blazing a trail in the first half of the decade, Doom 3′s monster-in-the-closet gameplay looked tired and narratively inert. Lacklustre sequels to Quake and Wolfenstein only further diluted the brand, leaving all the but the most ardent of fans to consider Rage as little more than an illuminating tech demo.

Then came word we were wrong.

It was only a whisper at first, but, one by one, journalists reached a consensus that Rage was far better than they’d expected. In place of the bland corridors of old came a lush, open-world that hinted at plot and setting far beyond anything id had attempted before. Combat, they claimed, was fierce and relentless. There was talk of a driving element that was not only thoughtfully executed, but central to the whole experience. Moreover, they made the game sound fun. From humble beginnings, through uninspiring teasers and widespread talk of a neutered PC port, gamers began to ask themselves: was it possible that Rage might be – gulp – amazing?

No. No it was not possible. But hear this: Rage is good. Sometimes very.

The world of Rage comes at you all at once, which is never a bad thing. You awaken in a damaged Ark pod, the survivor of an asteroid impact that devastated the planet. Earth is now but a barren wasteland, home to a few scattered settlements and the bandits who maraud in-between. Scrambling from the wreckage, you emerge blinking into the light, only to come under a hail of bullets from across the ridge. As you break for cover, a Ben Kenobi figure arrives to ward off the encroaching Sandpeople with the aid of a trusty blaster by his side. He pulls up next to you in a battered vehicle. John Goodman is here, and he’s offering you a ride. Fuckin’ Walter, man.

The journey to Dan Haagar’s enclave is your first chance to take in the magnificence of Rage. Truly, this is an ugly world made beautiful. John Carmack’s innovative megatexturing lends desert passes such as these a rich, detailed appearance, with each cliff face and road now accorded a unique texture. Gone are the days of repeated joins along badly aligned angles, for The Wasteland is a distinct, achingly reproduced stretch of nothingness. The sun crests over mountain tops to cast deep shadows across the road, as your ride comes to a stop under a makeshift bridge. Up ahead, two bandit patrols are looking for the sentries your new friend gunned down back at the Ark. If they don’t yet know you’re here, they soon will. “Damn”, Haggard sighs, hitting the throttle “now we’ve both got a problem.”

Shooters have always been of a carrot and stick construction. That is, the player is only rewarded with [plot advancement] by completing [minor objective] first. Time was, that bargain took the form of collecting coloured keycards, and while Rage faithfully continues that tradition, it does so by exposing the arbitrary nature of the process. An hour into the game and you arrive at the settlement of Wellspring, looking for spare parts. Your first call in this shanty town is the portly Mayor’s office, where you’re informed that your clothes are stupid and your mother dresses you funny. One humiliating visit to the tailor later, and the Mayor laments your haphazard parking at the city’s gates. Fix that, and you’re directed to Rusty’s autoshop to upgrade your weapons. Only HE won’t part with them until you secure a bundle of racing certificates. And how do you get racing certificates? From the race official opposite, of course, who you’ll find standing aloft his soapbox like motorsport’s own Harvey Milk. Naturally, by this point you’ve forgotten what you were even chasing down the rabbit hole in the first place.

Happily, the driving itself is surprisingly accomplished. You first choose between races, time trails, and full-on Death Race spectacles, before heading out to one of the Wasteland’s many dirt track arenas. Assorted Mario Kart power-ups line the route, further boosting cars that already encourage reckless hooliganism despite handbrakes being more emergency stop than anything you’d power slide with. You only need to win a couple of races before you can continue on your way, but with events as well-crafted and challenging as these, it would be a waste not to return; if not to Wellspring, then the neon drenched Subway Town, whose own raceway will seem like an idilic paradise compared to the wanton carnage elsewhere.

The ‘elsewhere’ is a problem, and not just for the reasons you might think. You see, even a cursory exploration of Rage will reveal an incredibly detailed world, awash in a sea of discarded artefacts that suggest street sweepers being something of a rare commodity in the End Times. The resulting impediment – invisible walls that buffet you into taking a strictly linear path – can make simply getting around a remarkable chore. From railings that can’t be jumped, to infernal roadside curbs and oddly insurmountable staircases; Rage plays like a game on rails within rails, and id have succumb so completely to the perceived wisdom of Infinity Ward that they now dictate not where you can’t go, but where you explicitly can.

Sometimes that matters and sometimes it doesn’t; a lot of the time you’re too blinded by panic to care. Many of the game’s environments would be at home in Left for Dead, evoking that familiar sense of dank, suburban dread. Heading into abandoned cities and war-torn hospitals, you’re shadowed by the kind of gruesome, blood-curdling fog you’d expect from the creators of Doom. In the ominously christened Dead City, the enemy come with explosives and knives; mutants that scuttle along the walls before launching themselves over fence and barricade to get at you. These feral creatures push back in relentless waves, massing until you’re firing at nothing but a swarming hive. It’s in such moments – never less than thrilling – that the game betrays itself once more, thanks to the frequent (ab)use of mysteriously locked doors that unlock only when trigged to do so. Other games at least maintain the pretence of needing to wait for an NPC to perform some off-screen voodoo; id just tells you to shut up and wait your turn.

What they taketh with one hand, id giveth with the other. For all its frustrations, Rage still serves up some of the most satisfying gunplay of the last five years. The key is not just in the able development of a fearsome enemy, but in a broad weapon selection and environments that suit particular approaches. Some levels might suggest a sniper rifle, just as others – the sewers, notably – are best tackled with electro bolts that stun anyone caught knee-deep. Through it all, the shotgun remains the quintessential fallback, still packing that same meaty punch from way back in Doom 2. You’ll still a lot of time backpedalling while frantically pumping fresh rounds into your rifle, though, so it’s a shame id didn’t make more of the meleeing feature; heavy weapons or no, there are just times when nothing but a well-placed stock to the face will do.

The many zip-lines that appear throughout the Wasteland may not compete with those of Bioshock Infinite, but they’re a welcome touch of Indy adventure nonetheless. They even help Jackal Canyon to play like a Nintendo platformer, albeit one soaked in the blood of a thousand torch-bearing Neanderthals. Struggling to ascend a series of wooden drawbridges high above the canyon floor, you dart perilously between mortar fire and explosives that float by on large, colourful balloons. Simultaneously, screeching bandits zip down from above, while more immediate threats emerge in the dehumanised Authority, whose booted soldiers owe their look and air of entitlement to City 17′s Combine. You can only admire id for resisting the temptation to conclude such an inspired creation with a rudimentary boss fight. True, they settle for one elsewhere in the game, but man – what kind of fucked up world is it where Deus Ex is the one encumbered by bosses?

Rage is two different games. In one, its sketchy plot is relayed through excursions that adhere rigidly to an exposition -> drive -> mission -> drive -> debrief formula. In the other, you explore settlements as you please, taking jobs from either a Wanted Board (running the gammit from missing persons to escort missions) or one of the many interested townsfolk: Sally at the Second Chance saloon, for instance, who’ll pay handsomely for destroyed bandit patrols, or the gultonous J.K. Stiles who needs a star for his lucrative Mutant Bash TV show. You can even while away the hours betting not just on games of Five-Finger-Fillet, but a somehow even more impenetrable variation on Magic: The Gathering.

Your travels between those settlements provide a sense of momentum that is largely absent from the plot itself, in which your function as survivor and saviour is understood only in generalities. The characters talk as though you already know everything, and no one much cares to assume otherwise. You are never witness to the heel from which the Authority commands such cowering obedience, which leaves you to fight on and wonder just how much worse it could be than an already Mad Max world full of armed bandits and unaccountable resistance fighters.

Such ambiguity is crystallised in the game’s concluding chapter, whose fight through a warmed-over Citadel offers neither the weaponised ingenuity nor heightened stakes of its dystopian forefather. No moment of triumph is awarded your struggle; instead, the ending is a brief rendering that completely undermines 8 hours of plot, vision and creative ambition. Perhaps most galling of all are the numerous technical problems that plague the release. Numerous crashes, for one, or an autosave system that’s either broken by design or implementation, and I don’t know which is worse – unless you remember to quick save, you can easily be thrown back half an hour or more to the last inexplicably placed auto save. Then there are the graphics, frequently marred by ugly texture pop-ins amidst a world that shifts unpredictably depending on where you happen to look. Even Carmack seems to share in our exasperation, posting online that “the driver issues have been a real clusterfuck”, as if unaware of his own culpability.

It’s interesting that the two remaining stewards of 90s shooters should release such similarly retro titles in the same year. Duke Nukem Forever and now Rage offer a window into a time of more visceral thrills, in which players were satisfied by a minigun and a room full of pixelated ghouls to expend it upon. For all the innovations in design since, it is that element that remains key to the genre’s success, and few know the fundamentals of action like id. That, unlike 3D Realms, they also strove to build a more substantive experience is commendable, even if it doesn’t meet the standards hinted at by those early, optimistic previews. Rage remains an unfulfilled promise but, as far as accomplished shooters go, few are more satisfying.