I played this about 6 months ago and I've been meaning to post this for a long time, having notes I wrote about it on my desk for months. Seems like a small deal, but this game was so bad imo, it was scary how backwards some of the game elements were. This negative view is due mainly to Rage's lack of believability and immersion enhancing elements, so if your the type of play who plays games for the points/challenge/competition/achievements, etc, you could probably ignore this.

Because im pretty much 3D-only these days, i played Rage awhile after it was released. However, since i respected so much what i was seeing in the screenshots and short preview clips, i decided to by buy the game at release at full price....woops. Just an FYI...

Anyways, loaded up the game and was first pretty excited by the graphics. Once outside, I was greeted with an epic view of the type of graphics i had hoped to see in a game for the longest time. Riven [the game] its beautiful static graphics meets real time rendering, minus that odd look of nothing moving. I had a grin from ear to ear. That was the end of any smiling right there, to put it mildly. Enter the crudest, shallowest, immersion breaking game elements i've seen in a long time. Two deformed humanoids attack and are unrealistically blown aside [with unexplained momentum] by bullets as if boulders hit them. A car then comes down the road using horrible scripting and your savior begins the game's onslaught of sparce, unrealistic, non-believable, unimmersive dialogue. Get in the car, and the car starts moving along an invisible series of scripted lines jerking you instantly to the left and right while the engine sound effect is right out of 1982. Get to the destination and the first mission, which is delivered within what must have been the first two sentences of dialogue i think: Murder every last sole in a hideout belonging to the folks i just murdered, heres a gun, enjoy... That is the start of a whole series of utterly unrealistic human choices, dialogue and actions, amidst a beautiful, hyper-realistic looking world [though one that is as still as a picture on the wall].

Wellspring feels empty. I remember the preview video showing the guy with the weird hat and thinking, this is going to be like traveling to another world!....but no, hes got like 2 lines of dialogue, geared toward letting you know his function, done, thats it! With most games i enjoy, im usually immersed enough that the scanning robots that are looking for you would be something i would avoid, even if i thought they might not do anything, it wouldn't matter, in another game i would be immersed in the world. In Rage, i knew....hell, i would have jumped at the chance to bet all my possession that they were just for looks. They didn't do anything! I couldn't care less and at that point in the game, i just wanted to get through it, hoping there might be an ounce of something interesting further in the game. The world just felt so empty, the NPC's virtually pointless and despite the average age of gamers supposedly being 32, this game seemed design to satisfy only children for who even the lowest bars are still new and shinny.

A huge source of frustration was the reversed mouse controls for panning when in vehicles. It was just too backwards from the experience i've become accustomed to for the last 20 years...... and I simply couldn't look around. I basically had to get it centered and just leave it. I've been playing PC games since Doom [well thats ironic for many reasons isn't it...] and i've never encountered such a self-centered, one size must fit all [and who gives a rats if it doesn't] frustrating design decision. I felt i really missed out not being able to look at the sights of the game while driving, because thats all this game had, sights. Gameplay you say? Well, that brings me to the next paragraph...

I've played all Dooms, all Ghost Recons, all Rainbow Six/Rouge Spear,Urban Operations, etc, Tribes, all Unreals and Tournaments, Thiefs, Half-lifes, Metro 2033, Mass Effects, Battlefield 2, 2142, 3, Bad Company 2, Call of Duty (stopped at Modern Warfare, thank you). What in Rage offers anything new or interesting combat-wise that an older gamers hasn't done a million time already.

Story wise, its laughable, seriously. At what point did the story make ANY case for the "Authority" group to be "bad guys"?????? And yet i mass murder 100's of them. Still don't know why... The "story" is sooooooo incredibly non-existent, so mind bogglingly absent that halfway through the game, just before you take a one way ticket to the second land area two NPCs say this: "The Ark drives [were seeking and murdering 100 for] are key to the puzzle"...my response is WHAT PUZZLE!?! The other says "Do you understand how important this is?"....my response is NOPE! Perhaps the dialogue is so pointless and "Hi, im Jim, this is my problem, go do this to help me" oriented that i missed it while not paying attention?

The texturing was pretty nice aas long as you stand back from everything and don't stare too long, but something horrible occurred. The devs locked out the highest level of texturing for a given level of memory they said it wouldn't work without. They were wrong, it worked fine via an .ini edit explained on some lonely corner of the internet. This sounds vague because its been so long and i can't be bothered look it up, but it was just another indication imo of how little the devs cared about the game and about the time you spent earning the money you pulled out of your wallet and handed to them. The awesome pre-release media somehow hid the the fact that in the game the blandness of the textures was clear as day. The awesome city views in-game turned out to be just ok, zoom in and wow, hello low resolution office building and thank you for breaking my immersion!

To top it all off, the developers of the worst game experience i've ever had, are the only developers EVER, to LOCK ME INTO THE CREDITS. Unbelievable!! There are so many games that make me sigh with memories that i wish i could go play again for the first time and this pile of... is the only one that choose to lock me into watching the credits.

Theres lots, lots, LOTS, LOTS more where this came from, I've got a page of notes i took to prove it, mainly concerning lack of immersion and believability, but i think anyone who reads this will get the gist, so i think im done.

Bottom line, this game could have been amazing, captivating experience of a wasteland environment. It reminds me of Prometheus, they had the audience on a another planet, we were there, experiencing it for ourselves, fully immersed, but then we were fed script elements taken from "Planet of the Busty lisbians".

Devs [and future game designers], heres an example of interesting, believable, compelling dialogue i hope to see in your next game.

From Mass Effect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfKCbNSfqxw

Please guys, hire some good writers/authors for your next game, some of them create worlds for the brain.......err......man.

Heres some amazing [believable, immersion enhancing, VR] facial animation tech to go along with that great writing (L.a. Noire):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8bL0z-vMHw&feature=related

Rage was exactly the kind of game idSoftware would make in terms of gameplay and story (lack of story, that is).

You know what would really help you is if you did a bit of "research" before buying a game, or play at a friend's house or play a demo. That way you wouldn't get false expectations and end up complaining at the forums about the game not being what you want it to be. You know? I mean for starters this game wasn't mean to feel "realistic," which throws your argument out the window...

That said, just take it as future advice. Don't just strut into a store and buy a game thinking "oh this looks nice" or after hearing someone say it was cool. Watch some gameplay vids, see what people complained about it in negative reviews, and if you see the "problems" as indeed big problems, simply don't buy the game. And who knows, you might end up saving alot of money after a while!

Bottom line: id games are for people who don't care so much about dialogue but about run-n-gun instead. id games are also about crazy artistic insane worlds, they are not meant to feel "realistic." If you dislike these two things, just don't buy any more id games

Nuff said vynzent, and i believe that a lot of the things mentioned from libertine4 can be fulfilled in a sequel. I like Rage, and hope to see more of the game in the future (sequel, DLC) If the developers build on this game and follow through with more answers to the story in either dlc or a sequel, that would make me happy.

"Bottom line: id games are for people who don't care so much about dialogue but about run-n-gun instead. id games are also about crazy artistic insane worlds, they are not meant to feel "realistic." If you dislike these two things, just don't buy any more id games "

Oh sure. This is the new standard defense of Rage.

The point of all that advertizing was to make Rage seem like a game that Fallout 3 players might like. id is just about money now and Fallout 3 sold way more than any id game. I knew it was likely BS and said so but very many people including me hoped for an id game with some substance.

Funny, seeing all the marketing and such never made me think Rage would be like Fallout.

How did you interpret the advertising?

We'll do this slowly.

Dude there are Fallout 3 bobbleheads in Rage.

And somehow that "proves" that Rage was marketed as a Fallout-like game?

Or is it more likely to prove that you're now reaching the bottom of a large empty barrel for when it comes to excuses for hating on it?

This is 100% correct and this is the reason for me to buy id games.

These pseudo real characters and their "life like" feelings and emotions portrayed in some games, the OP made the comparison with Mass Effect2, totally put me off.

I hate the Mass Effect series for their total boredom.
It's all talk with some ultra guided and ultra scripted "action" sequences.

I want exaggerated comic book characters and no more talk than absolutely necessary.
I want my games focused on controls, gun play and enemy tactics.
This is where Rage delivers perfectly.

If i want to see people talking, i watch talk shows or visit forums.

Agreed, Rage's ending is too short in terms of dramatization.
But turning a game into a movie or a talk show is exactly what i don't want.

Oh I am so past hating it.

Next. They advertized it as having car racing as an RPG element. Loosely "Show what a great driver you are. " win upgrades to your car etc. Not only that but you cannot progress without winning sveral races.

Not quite run and gun. BTW I still get a good laugh out of new Stalker players who complain about how they die so easy when they try that. Uh huh stick your head up fool, someone will put a bullet in it.

And Quake was originally advertised as a medieval RPG with hand-to-hand combat. Next!

well lads i enjoyed the game....did i voice my opinion well there!.

You know Pengun, you're only stating your interpretation, you can't go "Next" when you have yet to prove your first point

Rage advertised as being like Fallout? Didn't happen.

From today:

"I bought the game expecting an SP FPS like the Fall Outs or the Borderlands or the latter Mass Effects, there was no mention of the racing."

There are many more like him.

Does it not strike you that this just might be a case of PEBKAC?

It's an id Software game so you know it's going to be an FPS and you know it's going to have fairly unimaginative gameplay.
There has been plenty of mention of racing since the very first reveal of the game.

If someone sees the word "Bethesda" on a box and makes false assumptions based on that about what kind of game they're going to be getting then I'm really sorry for them, but it remains their own personal screw-up. A simple 1 minute on Google would have blown away all such assumptions and enabled them to actually make an informed decision. Hell, they could even read the Steam Store description: http://store.steampowered.com/app/9200/ - it's all there. The game is rated M after all, so anyone buying it should be an advlt capable of making such informed decisions, and also capable of taking responsibility for the consequences of their own actions.

It's really stretching credibility to cite that as cause for complaint. You may as well buy a hamburger and then complain that it doesn't have ice-cream in it, and it would be just as much your own fault.

Yes, I am aware there are more clueless, foolish people in the world.
The racing was showed off and mentioned since 2007, my friend.

Edit: It's like Jimmy said, although I see it more as getting a hamburger and complaining there's no pepperoni, lol. Same idea though.

People need to stop buying games without the slightest knowledge on them. Not knowing Rage had racing at the core? That's almost pathetic...

Paying attention to the story would help. The Authority is evil because:
A) They put a bounty on every Ark Survivor. Thus, the PC already has a reason to kill them
They make experiments on people. All of the mutants, all the [censored] in the Dead City is their work.
C) They double-cross and deceive - there's a side mission where you're hired as a guard, when sheriff Black negotiates with The Authority representatives. They attempt to murder him and you need to kill the Authority snipers before they kill him.
D) They conquer other cities - Subway is an example.
E) They started out with betrayal and deception: General Cross, aka The Visionary gathered his closest friends and made his and their Ark to open up before all the others, then he successfully got all the power and became head of the Authority.

On the puzzle thing - again, you weren't paying attention. Each personal disk has valuable information - places where the other Arks are located, places where the warehouses with all sorts of resources are, et cetera. Each disk has only part of information, or a piece of a bigger puzzle, if you will. This was stated in the very same dialogue and you would know that if only you listened.
And, really? Dialogue? You criticize WRITING in an id Software game? Well, okay. Shooting in Mass Effect was positively [censored], it was positively wooden in Mass Effect 2 and it got actually nice in ME3, but by that time the writing was total crap.
Immersion - did you question "immersion" "dialog" in any shooter you mentioned? No? Then what in the hell?
And really, if RAGE is the worst gaming experience you've ever had, you're really spoiled. Period.

Although the game was most certainly marketed as an open world exploring game the locals need to believe it's just stupid people who bought the game and were disappointed. There was certainly no mention of the racing being essential to progress.

This is pretty well the same as the GOP saying that Obama got elected because of stupid voters.

Fail is fail. Rage $4.99 on the Steam flash sale, gone now, $11.99 full price. Syrim at it's lowest ever at $29.99 for another 17 hours then back to $60 I imagine.

So now you're back to trying to start a "my game is better than your game" war?

I have some 52 Steam games. Yes Skyrim is still installed, no Rage is not. Skyrim is fun even for a shooter guy but it's hardly my game.

The fail is Rage, to contrast that, Skyrim, still in the top ten sold on Steam.

I played a friend's 360 copy of skyrim for about an hour and then gave it back to him after experiencing the feeling of total, massive boredom.
I have about 80 hrs+ of playtime on Rage and still play it from time to time.

I prefer machineguns over swords and cars over horses.

I am playing:

Stalker SoC Narodnya
Stalker CoP SGM
Black Mesa
Dark Mod
Dishonored
Fallout NV
Fallout 3
Skyrim

I am about to fire up DayZ for Arma2. With some 650 hours playing Skyrim I can say I am not bad with a sword now. My weapon of choice is the Stalker G36, a superb assault rifle.
http://carnagepro.com/pics/blowout.jpg
If I have to drive something a modded Stalker APC will do. Dangerous place the Stalker universe. This anomaly wil shred a human. I managed to bail and took this pic http://carnagepro.com/pics/APC.jpg
Still Skrim is fun. My Dark Elf dispatching a Dragon.http://carnagepro.com/pics/diedragon.jpg

I'm playing Quake II. 4th or 5th time this year and it's still fun, even though I know it inside out and back-to-front by now. Rage itself will never hit that point for me, but I don't consider it an unmitigated disaster either. It's OK. Hey! Radical concept! Something can be at an intermediate point between awesome and rubbish!

@PenGun: I heard the german soldiers in Afghanistan complain about the lack of accuracy of the real G36 when hot.

I'm playing Doom3 BFG, Resident Evil 6 and tada: Sonic Allstars Racing Transformed. Most disturbingly violent game ever made...

Reality svcks. The Stalker G36 is amazing. You can leave all your other guns at home and just wander with the sweet piece. Almost a sniper rifle, fully modded it is very accurate. Handling is maxed and with the modded rate of fire it is devastating.

I don't know if you heard about the UN minder who by himself, with his G36, stopped and killed most of a 7 or 8 man Taliban suicide attack team in Kabul. He was wounded in several places and when he came down off the roof the secret police murdered him for his weapon.

I understand that was the original concept, but surely it was not advertised as such... was it?