quood

i) hit paywall ii) go to settings iii) go to date and time iv) turn off "set automatically" v) scroll forward N hours / days. Et voila. This is a very enjoyable, rendered more enjoyable by the complete avoidability of the paywall. I'm now running out of enjoyment, but I've had a good >25hrs of play, far more than I get out of most iOS titles. I've now hit the point where there's nowt left to explore, and not much to do bar harvest resources to sculpt more plateaux to build more b*stard huge resource producers. Which is fine, like. But begins to get a bit samey. Controls, as others detail in greater depth, are also a bit wonky.

The absence of gamepad support for Mac owners is a critical flaw. Why TF am I driving around trying to negotiate space (handbrake) c (turbo) z (rapid shift) and alt (ram charge) with my left hand, whilst my darned 360 controller is sitting in front of my keyboard doing the square root of naff all? I ploughed through Assassin's Creed Brotherhood using keyboard only. And, tbh, it kinda worked. But driving games without gamepad support? It's a total mess, and borderline unforgivable.

On Mac, it's impossible to set the mouse to anything other than 'obscenely twitchy and sensitive,' thereby rendering a game that retires entirely on carefully-judged mouse movements 400% pointless. The presentation might be kinda dinky, if that bakes your biscuit. It really is a very basic take on Pong, with a shocking UI, though. Avoid (unless bundled and essentially free.)

Mac version... I DLed this from the App Store (£27) having heard it's similar to Borderlands. OMG what a mistake. Filled with technical glitches, which meant it took 2hrs to even get playing. Driver support for controllers is a nightmare; I lost count of the number of times I went through various processes, restarted my iMac, etc, etc, before finally getting the blasted thing to work. The game itself is filled with dire, dull, excruciatingly bland cut-scenes which cannot be skipped. Replete with characters it's tremendously hard to give a monkey's about, and who spiel out the most unutterably bland dialogue. "I'm a mechanic. You can fix your car here. Press Y to have me fix your car. You can also call me by radio..." Bluergh. I've taken to checking my emails / cutting away from Rage whilst the dull-as-ditchwater cutscenes play out. Gameplay is uninspiring. The RPG / upgradeable element is almost non-existent. 'Choose one of four armour suits, which'll give you a static benefit throughout the game.' Great. Firing weapons is remarkably tedious: all weapons have 100% predictable stats (unlike Borderlands), with crosshairs that *do not waver one inch*, even in hyper-zoomed sniper rifle mode. There's no element of chance, either; every weapon (even the pistol) hits 100% if your entirely stable crosshairs are 100% on the target. Bleurgh. Silent weapons - afaict, and having completed the single campaign - are utterly pointless, bringing no benefits whatsoever. Even the potentially interesting weapons - like mind control bolts - turn out to be futile 95% of the time, and only marginally less useful than usual bullets the other 5%. AI is dull. Everyone behaves the same. Everyone seeks exactly the same cover points: keep throwing grenades until everything's obliterated. Things only get remotely interesting in the later levels, with LARGE hordes of melee fighters. Penultimately, the racing rapidly switches between ridiculously easy and a matter of raw luck; the 'driving' aspect of the game only brings 4 cars with it, each of which have a very finite number of worthwhile upgrades. Finally, the campaign is chuffing tiny. Like, 11hrs and 20 minutes in - and I thought I was taking things slowly - I've finished a 'normal' campaign. Replay value feels minimal, though I'm trying to gather the inspiration to have a go at 'hard' or 'nightmare.' Compare that with Borderlands - the best part of a year on, I've got 2 characters running the various campaigns, with well over 60hrs of gameplay between them. I was kinda stunned when I realised I'd finished Rage, in a very much 'is that ACTUALLY it?!' kinda way. On any replays, I'll look for a bit more in the way of side missions / exploring... but I get the feeling there isn't much there. All in all, vapid, dull, characterless, bland. Beautiful scenery. But - good grief - I really can't understand why anyone would choose this over Borderlands. Or even Bioshock (or Bioshock 2, soon to be released). Particularly on a Mac, at the moment, Rage is nowhere near worth it.