Steam is going nuts with sales right now. I snatched up Shogun 2 and Deus Ex. So, would this be a must-play-asap when you've already got a selection of games not played yet?

From what I understand, RAGE is a Fallout 3 in style but not content. But it has good combat.

What I call a good game satisfies these requirements:

Controls 8/10
Story 7/10
Dialogue 7/10
Graphics 7/10
Sound 6/10
Gameplay 8/10
Combat 8/10
Replayable 7/10

Would you say that RAGE passes these checks?

Rage is like this:

Controls 10/10
Story 3/10
Dialogue 4/10
Graphics 8/10
Sound 10/10
Gameplay 9/10
Combat 8/10 (but it's run n' gun, it's solid and basic, like Doom/Quake/ etc)
Replayable 6/10 (with multiplayer, that is)

Just my view.

The world also doesn't feel like Fallout, actually. Rage is more of an ol' western movie mixed with Mad Max, and then changes to something else in the second wasteland, that I can't quite describe.

Edit: Oh also, it's not a "must play asap" game, no, but at $10 you should get it before the price goes back up.

All 30$+ games should be bought when they're at 10$, the question is which one. I haven't played it but I think you can find better games than just another shooter, unless you like shooters.

As I always said (and always will) Rage is a mess. A lovable mess, mind you, a mess that I have a degree of affection to, but a mess nonetheless. It doesn't quite know what it's trying to do. The animations are beautiful and some of textures are not bad, but they (animations) are a bit too exaggerated and the textures take their sweet time to load. The gunplay is nice, but all the best stuff comes near the endgame and there is only one boss. The vehicular combat, while not bad, feels kinda lacking. The racing aspect is kinda WTF. All those minigames are cool, but why are they even in there? And, considering what happens to cities, they are blink-and-you-miss-it. The locations are nice, a pity the side missions reuse them. The music in combat is not bad. The music in racing lacks variety. The story takes its sweet time to appear and when it does, it's not really pretty.

For 10$ - pick it up right now.

My view:

Controls 10/10
Story 5/10
Dialogue 5/10
Graphics 10/10
Sound 8/10
Gameplay 8/10
Combat 9/10
Replayable 5/10

It's really difficult to answer this one because everybody will have their own personal opinions and preferences which will inevitably be different. You mentioned Deus Ex in your original post, and if that indicates your own preferred gameplay style then you'll probably do best to keep away from Rage. It's nothing like that at all, being much more of a very traditional shooter. There's not much in it that will challenge your brain (get a mission from person X to pickup item Y from place Z and bring it to other-person W is about as far as it goes), gameplay doesn't offer variety in terms of catering for alternate styles. "Fallout 3 in style" isn't much true and you shouldn't go to that kind of game looking for comparisons. Think Doom or Quake but with some very mild, very light extra bits added on instead.

On the other hand, the style of gameplay it does offer may well be a welcome change. So ultimately it's up to you, really.