RAGE

We're straight to action as Authority troops in power armour with cool blue electric shields drop in from the sky on ziplines and attack with lasers and grenades. They try to coordinate, using recharge stations and sharing natural and artificial cover, but you fend them off with a gun that fires little lightning bolts, an RC bomb car and of course the shotgun. Always the shotgun.

The next section involves evading security turret guns. You try to move across the room in-between bursts of fire so you can aim EMP grenades at the power sources.

By the time you reach the cell block where your prize is located, the Authority are patrolling in numbers, but you spy a number of shambling mutants locked up in the cells, so you pull a lever to release them and they leap the railings and attack the Authority for you. You just mop up the stragglers, using pulse shots to freeze them so you can smack 'em around.

You meet the resistance leader in the last cell and he says he has a way out - he just needs a couple of minutes to liberate a power cell from a nearby column. Predictably enough, this is not an opportunity for you to sit around and cool your heels - it's a prompt for Authority to steam in and receive a few more shells to the face.

You then move together through a dishevelled courtyard past abandoned, rusting trucks, amidst graffiti on the walls and under a baking sun. The Authority is everywhere though, so you use the striker crossbow, which allows you to take mind control of one of your enemies and stomp around gormlessly slapping former colleagues until you're put down.

When you reach the other end, the Authority reinforce with a three-pronged dropship, but you have access to a turret gun, which makes short work of them.

That's the end of the hands-off stuff, but we also get to play five (five!) sections of the game, some of which we've heard from before.

One of these is Mutant Bash TV, which is a bit like a cross between Smash TV and Gears of War's Horde mode. You fend off waves of enemies in increasingly and amusingly contrived scenarios - like mutants attacking as a giant monkey statue moves around the room spinning blades to chop you and them up - while a fat man on a potty commentates on your endeavours.

RAGE overall will be quite a diverse mixture of game styles and id is adamant that it will be well-paced, giving you downtime to upgrade and explore, either in the hub towns or out on the road, but these sections are more traditional and intensive action affairs, sending you through underground tunnels and dead cities as you assert yourself against various factions of mutants and bandits you encounter.

The action is fast and brutal and the weaponry is heavy. The most interesting thing though is the emphasis on using tools, gadgets and alternative ammo types.

Your combat toolbox is actually pretty interesting - you can send little robot helpers like the RC bomb car and spider bots to do your bidding, and the shiny items you find everywhere can be engineered into things like lock-grinders, used to crack your way into ammo caches and side rooms.

In many respects this is vintage id, of course - low-brain, high-velocity first-person shooting in a science-fiction setting, with plenty of monsters and soldiers to blast as you move between functional objectives (restore the water supply, rendezvous with the resistance).

In others though, RAGE is shaping up to be an interesting departure, and the balance the developers appear to have struck defies obvious comparisons. You certainly can't fault it for depth and variety.

And hey, we even know when it's done in advance for once. Who would have expected that just a few short years ago?