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15 YEARS OF AWESOME
It's hard to believe it's been 15 years since the first Rage Expo. Back then it was little more than a glorified flea market with a cute little LAN event for the sad souls who still lacked broadband at home. Today, Rage is a platform where world leaders in the industry showcase state-of-the-art technology and the latest AAA gaming titles. That cute LAN has also grown into an impressive network that supports over 2000 players.
Additionally, this year's Rage featured live CS:GO tournaments hosted by V/S Gaming and Kwesa e-Sports. South Africa's elite CS:GO players put on quite a show and had the fans on the edge of their seats for 3 straight days.
We also shouldn't forget the mountains of prize giveaways, a massive cosplay stage and an endless supply of geeky stuff that will reduce your bank account to tears.
Keep reading for a more in-depth look at this year's event.
THE TECH
Despite being part of the third world, Rage was visited by some of the most respected tech companies on the planet. Most notably was Hewlett Packard, who also happened to be one of the main sponsors of the event. One of the largest stands at the event was dedicated to showing off HP's latest contribution to the gaming world, the Omen performance laptop range. I managed to get an up-close look at these monstrosities and was surprised by how incredibly thin HP have managed to get their new flagships. We all know performance laptops to be big, bulky things. They need to be large to allow for better airflow to aid heat distribution but HP claims to have found a new way to deal with this issue which allowed them to keep their Omen range sleek, beautiful and above all, lightweight. If they can pull this off then it means those hefty hippo-sized gaming rigs might soon be a thing of the past. Skinny gaming folk, rejoice!
Another big name to mention is MSI. They unveiled their new high-end performance motherboards which included the Z370 and Tomahawk. They gave us a quick rundown of what to expect from these boards in the year to come and while I can bore you with some of the more technical details, what got me excited is the potential of adding up to 6 (you read that right) video cards onto a single motherboard and achieving up to 4,000 mbps download speeds with the variety of onboard network ports that come as standard. Why would you have 6 video cards in your PC you may ask? Well, bragging rights of course... and perhaps digital currency mining.
If you're picky about who manufactures your hardware, then Rage would not have disappointed. Among the numerous names I came across were Razer, Steel Series, Logitech, Red Dragon, Astrum and Coolermaster, all with a wide range of products and some fantastic special offers, specifically for the expo.
THE GAMES
Those who were willing to wait in line could get their sweaty palms on some of the most eagerly awaited games of the year and see if they were worth all the hype. There were countless test rigs spread out all over the arena giving players access to the most anticipated titles on PC, XBox One and PS4.
One of the highlights for me personally was being treated to a presentation of South-African developers Robot-Wizard's game Jengo. Since this is a local product, which is pretty rare as far as game development goes, I've heard of this game and spent all of 2 minutes checking it out online. Upon finding a point-and-click adventure, a genre I never appreciated, I speedily headed for the nearest exit. However, one of the developers, Louis Du Pisani, made me fall head over heels in love with this game, after seeing him present only a few short minutes of it. He describes Jengo as being a "Retro fallback to the point-and-click golden era that enveloped our childhoods when we were aspiring to be rockstars". These types of games have a habit of boring me to the point of plugging my ears to prevent my grey matter from leaking but Jengo features so much personality that I honestly can't wait to get my hands on it and do an in-depth review.
CS:GO
Two large sections of the floor were dedicated to hosting professional CS:GO matches between the best players in the country. With so much else to see, I was only able to catch a portion of one match that featured MSI's Aperture Gaming and Corsair's Veneration E-Sports, but they made sure I got my money's worth.
Aperture Gaming was my favorite to win the series, but Veneration E-Sports proved that they would not go quietly into that good night. In fact, Veneration didn't just beat Aperture, they gave them a proper spanking, and went on to finish third in the series.
THE LAN
One of the biggest attractions at Rage each year is the massive LAN. Unfortunately for us locals, the high-speed Internet connections most first-world countries now take for granted are still either unobtainable or unaffordable here and thus LAN parties are still a thing. Rage reportedly had over 2000 gamers eat, sleep and kick ass in front of their PCs on this massive network sponsored by NAG Magazine. I hope they all had their anti-viruses up to date.
WRAPPING UP
Rage's 15th anniversary was, pardon the pun, a raging success. I constantly felt pulled in several directions, and after an entire day, there was still a lot to be seen.
After attending the expo a few years ago and having an awful experience because of hopeless overcrowding, I vowed not to return until they moved to a larger venue. The venue has not changed but the organizers opened up some additional areas to ease the traffic with phenomenal results. Things were still busy but this year I could actually take my time and browse through some of the paraphernalia on display, something I was entirely unable to do last time around.
Had I not been afraid of my wife banishing me from my bedroom to sleep next to my dogs outside for the foreseeable future, I might have spent all my savings on some of the amazing gadgetry on show. One of those MSI Godlike Gaming Motherboards would look oh so pretty standing on my desk in a newly built rig with an ultra-wide UHD monitor, and just imagine the six-pack I'd have after spending all that cash and having to give up eating for a couple of weeks.
The LAN was highly alluring but I realize that my age is catching up to me when I cringe at the thought of being caged in with 2000 caffeine fueled-geeks for nearly 3 full days. Once you have kids, you realize the true value of a good night's sleep and thus I had to leave this part of the event to those with the dreadful fashion sense who listen to Taylor Swift.
There was also a constant stream of cosplayers running amok at the TicketPro Dome. With no official media section at the stage to allow the capturing of proper pictures, I wasn't able to present much of this, but I can report that some of those costumes were absolutely amazing.
Despite some minor annoyances, I highly suspect that I'll be back next year. My biggest complaint still involves the size of the venue but this wasn't nearly as much of an issue as before. Soon, my son will be old enough to appreciate his daddy's obsessions and he too can be baptized in the rivers of geekdom at Rage. See you then!