First of all, I'd like to mention that the mission was brought to my attention by the conversation of Tatrashka and Lord Taffer below. Overall, I can't agree with them, but I found studying where and what went wrong in the mission quite intriguing (thus the long and wordy review).

Something I'd like to specifically address from the conversation is that I recurringly see people connecing the immersive (sim) design with good quality gameplay. While what's good and bad is completely subjective, this mission is one of the best examples of how something isn't automatically good regardless of falling into the design philosophy this well. There is almost zero handholding in the mission, and it's absolutely up to you how you complete the two objectives (seriously, the mission does not limit you in any of the usual ways) - so, on paper, Rage of a Man is truly a heaven for imsim lovers...

This is where a speculation of mine comes into the picture: I think this map was originally supposed to be a completely normal city mission, but at some point, Spoonman got bored of it, came up with this strange story - and call it a day. I couldn't help, but was feeling a very strong vibe of creative abandonment throughout the mission. The map is relatively big, but feels incredibly empty. There are multiple buildings we can enter (our target's mansion, among others), but the streets make a confusing mess of a needlessly over-complicated and empty maze with many dead ends and pointless locations. The implementation is competent though, it's very obvious that the map was created by an experienced DromEd user. Visually, on the other hand, the whole layout blends together, and it's way too easy to unintentionally run in circles while you are trying to find... well, what you're even supposed to do. Every time I finally stumbled upon a location I was supposed to be at, it was completely accidental. I can't remember experiencing it in any other mission I've ever played.

Remember, I said there is almost zero handholding. While the readables at some point >kinda< explain some aspects of what's going on, the first time you're playing the mission, you're painfully deep in maximum uncertainty. You start the mission with no tools, not even a compass. No map, no compass, and you are thrown into a mazelike city district with zero guidance - it's hard to describe how frustrating this feels. You can collect basically everything from shops, a night club and the armory of the mansion later on, but you have no idea you can do that, nothing suggest you can, and meanwhile oddly placed random Hammerites, homeless zombie people(?) and patrolling rouges try to constantly get you on the streets. Interestingly, guards usually leave you alone. The AI can often go weird and as you progress, the chaotic nature of who tries to kill you only increases.

In the context of how vague the mission is, the first objective is pretty straightforward, by the way. The second one (that becomes active as you complete the first) is something that made me scratching my head a lot though. I found the twist intriguing, and it's connected to the overall story in an interesting way, but no idea if I could jave figured out what to do without checking the only playthrough on youtube out, and browsing through the TTLG forums for clues.

I think that whenever a game leans into a madness like we can observe here, its intentions potentionally fall into some kind of weird superposition: nothing makes sense, so everything might make sense - and instead of being unconsciously guided by a carefully constructed design, you end up doing nonsense that leads to nowhere. The city district was so confusing at first, I started to speculate how insanely and out-of-the-box wise I should interpret the "kill" objective. Maybe it's truly a joke mission and I should start a rampage and kill everyone until I accidentally murder the target? Maybe I play a mentally unstable man, and the final twist is that I have to somehow kill myself? None of these are the case, but the two guesses would have explained the low ratings to me pretty well.

Finally, I haven't mentioned the nature of the readables yet - because while some of them were written in an immature and, tone wise, out of place way, I don't think they've played a major role in the overall judgement of the mission.

Rage of a Man is a very peculiar mission that I'm not sure whether I can, or cannot recommend. The story is pretty insane (and can make you speculate a bit), but it feels like an afterthought, no aspect of the competent, but overcomplicated and seemingly abandoned level design supports it. The zero handholding, dead ends, vague objectives and random little things that connect to nothing make the overall experience frustrating - the way mission has divided the players makes it somewhat interesting to study though.

Ultimately, I think that the overall rating (5.04 at the time of writing this review) represents it pretty well.

I agree the city is very maze-like. I usually play larger FMs during multiple days and this way I think I can adapt and recall the layout a bit better. But yeah, still I can't say that I really learnt the layout. So, it was maybe just some kind of a intuition that led me there in the streets. I kinda always liked maze-like missions and the challenge that it creates for moving around. In this mission player has been left alone in this madness and I liked this setting because it's so different than most of other FMs. Into the Odd has a bit similar start setting, you don't have that much start gear and you are vulnerable, but the FM layout is of course very different and not to mention the story.

Actually, multiple Spoonman's missions have had this labyrinthine/confusing layout, like D00M and some missions in Reminiscences. One example of maze-like layout is TBP - Death's Dominion. In this mission we had an interesting map that didn't reveal everything and the player had to work in order to really understand the map. A simple map would have been cool in Rage of a Man.

I think the architecture is where Spoonman shines the most. Rage of a Man has interesting architecture in many places. D00M mission is maybe the best example from the author when talking about the architecture. I just hoped again that in D00M there would have been some 'ordinary objectives', like at least a loot objective.