This being a Rage game, the first thing you'll notice is, of course, the visuals. To say they're pretty damn spiffy indeed is an understatement and practically an insult to the talented coders, artists, modellers et al at Rage. You'll find yourself blowing up any innocuous fuel tanks or buildings you come across just to trigger another over-the-top explosion (something of a trademark in Rage games) and accompanying shower of debris. The day/night cycles are incredibly beautiful - I can't imagine how long it took them to get the lighting for different times of day just right. The landscapes are also quite a beautiful sight to behold, and the first time you see waves crashing on a beach you'll almost swear they're real, they're that impressive. Some poor code monkey was no doubt locked away in a cupboard for months coding the gorgeous wave effects until his skin glowed with a healthy CRT tan and his eyeballs were 90% pupil from lack of daylight.

However, unlike the briefly entertaining Incoming or Expendable, there is actually a rather engrossing narrative underneath all those layers of pixel prettiness. The setting is a Utopian future where war is but a memory and true equality is more reality than dream. However, despite the efforts of the good guys, they missed bumping off quite all of the bad guy dictator bastard types, and so they have on their hands what the US military might deem in typically sterile terms "a situation". From a series of artificial islands they're building up an army in an effort to, what else, take over the world. Of course, the current world order is having none of this, and so the Anteus project is resurfaced (literally - they salvage the Anteus cruiser from its resting place on the ocean floor). The Anteus itself is an "Adaptive Cruiser" that can churn out an assortment of vehicles built by nanobots housed within a Creation Engine and crewed by Soul Catcher chips containing the minds of dead veteran soldiers.

For a story that from the outset is already pretty original it gets much, much better too. When I first heard that the story was written by one Warren Ellis I thought "OK, who's he?" (no doubt a few comics aficionados just spat out their coffee in horror at that statement - so sue me, I honestly hadn't heard of him before). By the time I'd finished the game, who he was didn't matter, the fact that he clearly knows how to create cracking stories did, and I'm now on the hunt for more of his work. Hell, even the ending is excellent, a rare thing in games. Of course, quality voice acting always helps a story too and that's exactly what you'll find here. Paul Darrow and Glynis Barber (remember the classic BBC sci-fi Blake's 7?) voice Walker and Church, the pair who brief and debrief you for each mission, and Tom Baker (who previously played Dr. Who) proves the perfect narrator for the numerous cut scenes too. Even the soldiers whos personalities are stored on Soul Catcher chips are well voiced and varied - there's a gruff American tank Sergeant, a bad-ass helicopter pilot, a grumpy Frenchman, a no-nonsense Russian and even an Aussie in there. As if I haven't already lumped enough praise on the voice acting already, some clever coder at Rage came up with the simple idea of making the canned mid-battle banter of the pilots a bit more interesting and dynamic by using brief random exchanges such as "You're incredible" "Tell it to someone who gives a f***" "You won't get big headed will you?". Granted, as evidenced by that slightly odd final reply it doesn't always work perfectly, but having the pilots talk to each other in a manner that at least tries to be convincing is just yet another nice touch to the game. And yes, as I'm sure you noticed there's the odd bit of swearing that could well upset any sensitive types out there, but once you get to know the hard-case aviator called Ransom a bit better I doubt you'll be surprised.