Cleared: Rage

Well, I must admit, I wasn't expecting to knock something off the list quite that quickly! As it turns out, I'd played up until pretty close to the end of Rage before I got around to adding it to the list. The game took me about 14 hours to complete, according to Steam. With a duration that short, I'm glad I got it on sale. That's not to say I didn't like it, though - far from it. In fact, I'd say it's one of the best shooters I've played in a long time. The controls are nice and tight, the weapons are very satisfying (particularly the wingsticks - oh how I love those things) and there's just enough RPG stirred in to enhance the game without bogging it down too much. Even the driving portions are fun. One of the things I also find myself liking was how optimistic the setting was for a post-apocalyptic world. Unlike the Fallout games, it really feels like people are not only trying to rebuild, but enjoying some measure of real success - there are a number of small settlements that seem to be doing fairly well in a small area, and three of them seem like decent places to live. The story itself is also fairly optimistic, which I enjoyed. My biggest gripe was that Id did some technical stuff to lock the frame rate at 60FPS, and my PC didn't always like that. I experienced weird freezes and some tearing (and turning v-synch on fixed the problem, but it wasn't sticky between play sessions - I had to re-enable it every time I fired up the game) but it's worth noting that the game never crashed, and most of the time, it was buttery-smooth.

RPG notes: Rage's setting is a good place to start if you want to make a post-apocalyptic game that isn't too bleak. There are also some fun ideas for weapons and gadgets in the game. Lock grinders, RC bomb cars, and of course, wingsticks could all be dropped into  multitude of modern and/or near-future settings.

Monthly list replacement: since I polished the game off on day 2, I'm going to drop Homefront into the other short game slot.