Like Quake and Doom before it, id’s newest game seems more and more like the kind of old-style action romp we miss sometimes: all guns and fun and not too serious. In a recent demo, our nameless protagonist was warned of danger in the wasteland; moments later, he was decapitating a mutant trying to jack his ride, then racing around in said vehicle, mowing down more mutants with the twin machineguns clamped to its roof. The future’s looking pretty killer…

And it looks sensational, too, as these screenshots proudly display. With its chiseled cliffs and sparkling streams, Rage’s landscapes are marvelously detailed, but for us, the real wonder lay in the ramshackle town of Wellspring. There, our guide went on a mission (“Hijacked Well”) to keep bandits from releasing a toxin into the local water supply, and the pace never let up. Firing electrobolts from his crossbow, he shocked mutants standing waist-deep in water; then he drove an R/C car into a room and detonated it, obliterating the enemy inside. Attacking Ghosts, one of the more acrobatic clans, moved with alarming realism — doing front-flips and bouncing off walls…right into our gunfire. In another area, our character finished foes using spider-like sentry bots and Fatboy pistol ammo that enables one-shot kills. Beauty…bullets...will the next word be “bravo"?