Rage (2011)
Rage is a 2011 shooter video game made by id Software and Aspyr Media.
Rage is set in the American Southwest a century after the asteroid Apophis hit Earth. The player emerges from an underground Ark facility into a sun-bleached wasteland run by raider gangs, mutant factions, and the Authority, a militarized government with a particular interest in Ark survivors. id Software's 2011 game sits at the junction of corridor shooter and open-world driving game, with vehicle combat connecting hubs and on-foot missions handled through tight, well-animated gunplay. The wasteland has a specific look: warm dust, rusted corrugated iron, and improvised weapons.
Quick answers
What is Rage about?
Rage is set in the American Southwest a century after the asteroid Apophis hit Earth. The player emerges from an underground Ark facility into a sun-bleached wasteland run by raider gangs, mutant factions, and the Authority, a militarized government with a particular interest in Ark survivors. id Software's 2011 game sits at the junction of corridor shooter and open-world driving game, with vehicle combat connecting hubs and on-foot missions handled through tight, well-animated gunplay. The wasteland has a specific look: warm dust, rusted corrugated iron, and improvised weapons.
When was Rage released?
Rage was released on 3 October 2011.
Who made Rage?
Rage was made by id Software, Aspyr Media and Bethesda Softworks.
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Explore Rage guides
Rage in our writing
- Companion guide: id Software: Doom, Quake and the Birth of the Shooter
A few thoughts on Rage
Mad Max: Fury Road covers the same visual and tonal territory, a post-impact wasteland controlled by violent factions, with vehicle culture at its center. The DOOM: Original Game Soundtrack is stylistically distant but shows what id Software's audio ambitions looked like in the same era.
Wasteland worlds where the only rule is survive
Rage's Southwest is sun-bleached, raider-run and a century removed from the asteroid that ended everything, and these tell the same kind of story. Mad Max: Fury Road turns wasteland survival into pure vehicular chase, The Last of Us and Half-Life 2 both put a fragile human up against a militarized power, and The Scorch Trials scorches its own desert survivors the same way.
Soundtracks built for driving through a dead world
Rage runs on dust, rust and improvised weapons, and this music matches that grime. id Software's own Doom score sets the tone directly, Repo! The Genetic Opera and Blade Runner add decaying-future atmosphere, and The Prodigy's Fat of the Land and Neil Young's Living With War bring the aggression and defiance the Authority keeps trying to stamp out.
Comics about rebuilding a world a ruling power broke
The Authority in Rage runs the wasteland with a fist, and these comics center on people surviving under a similar boot. Ghost in the Shell's cyberpunk state control, Galaxy Express 999's dying, class-divided worlds, Phoenix's cycle of destruction and rebirth, and Fullmetal Alchemist's militarized, war-ravaged nation all wrestle with power structures that outgun everyone underneath them.