...for third time. Yeah, I've already bought two copies of RAGE - one for me and one for my GF. But I always wanted to get my hands on Anarchy Edition (since in my country it comes in nice and shiny DVD-box instead of jewel and has nice poster with it). So, the questions are:
Is Anarchy Edition stuff activated by a separate code from the core game and sewers DLC?
How much do AE items change gameplay? Are they as imbalanced as I was told they are?
Is it idiotic to buy RAGE again?

Its cheap entertainment and if you want to buy another copy for yourself it says nothing about you except that you like this particular cheap entertainment.

The anarchy edition stuff is all automatically activated by Steam when you install. To me they don't really change the gameplay at all because the game is just too easy even on nightmare level. With any luck the upcoming patch or some mod will make the game harder without ruining the fun.

You should much rather spend your money on something else than buying the same game twice.

Technically, thrice, so it doesn't really matter.
That's bad. I'd like to have Anarchy Edition stuff separately, so I could activate it and give the game's and sewer's codes to a friend.

If you pay more than $20 US ... perhaps you are.

Couldn't agree more on that one , a sign of console-focus, and nobody likes the smell of it.

Yeah, Carmack admitted before the game was released the biggest mistake they made was leaning towards the console too much. The biggest problem is they insisted on getting 60fps on consoles which is unheard of and to do that they had to reduce the number of monsters and leave out some graphics effects. It would be nice if they could add them in the patch or something, but if not they intend to not make that mistake again with future games and settle for 30fps on consoles.

Did he? I remember him saying that they practically chose to dump PC in favor of designing the game with consoles in mind.

They obviously didn't dump the PC entirely. The controls, for example, translate extremely well to the PC and the program itself can even use Nvidia cuda transcoding which isn't available on any console. However the basic game itself was hobbled considerably by their insistence on getting 60fps. What Carmack said was that when the first consoles came out they were so powerful by the standards of the time they thought it couldn't possibly hobble the game to use them as the standard, but computers grew so much more powerful over the course of the game being developed he lived to regret that assumption.

Just because high-end PC's don't see a benefit from targeting 60 FPS on consoles, it doesn't mean they didn't put any effort into making a good PC version.

No graphic options in PC version before patch. Sorry, but having graphic options in game's launcher is already a sign of bad port.

I don't get you... Rage has the graphics settings within the game. Are you sure you didn't get this mixed up with Skyrim, Fallout 3 or Oblivion?

In this
Yeah, I think they did a good job making it run on PC. Its just that it isn't half as good a game on PC as it could have been. Carmack's already said Doom 4 looks many times better because they settled for getting 30fps on consoles and could add all the extra graphics effects.

He's right, there were almost no graphics options before the patch but, then, there aren't many after the patch either! The game just don't have a lot of graphics options and its designed to automatically adjust the graphics from one minute to the next so it would be pretty pointless to add a lot of options. The only reason they added a few more options with the patch was to make it easier for people to compensate for the bad drivers.

Before the first patch there were no graphic options. Having them in the launcher is bad already, but this is just awful.

back on subject of anarchy edition

the extra stuff is neat but really adds nothing to the game

i wouldnt buy a third

I think we can all eb relieved to here that this 6o frame per second stuff wil not be an issue on Doom 4. I reguarly check up news on what little is said about its development, here is a quote from Carmack:
"At E3 2011, John Carmack was interviewed with GameSpot and mentioned that "as soon as Rage ships, the core tech team moves over to start making things happen on the Doom 4 project." In addition, Carmack said that Doom 4, with regards to consoles, will run at 30 frame/s for single player and 60 frame/s in multiplayer, stating that "you can't have 30 guys crawling all over you at 60 frames per second at this graphics technology level because it's painful. -- So [in single player] we can have 30 demons crawling all over you on there" - From Doom 4 tuped into WIkipedia.

So I am really looking forward to that. And if he said that the biggest mistake they made with RAGE was to focus on console... we could be looking at an incredibly big come back of id Software with Doom 4. As I've said, I loved RAGE, but there are a lot of fans out there who feel let down, so hopefully this will not only pick up broken spirits, but bring in some new blood

The only kind of dynamic graphics adjustment I know of is the dynamic resolution scaling which is only present in the console versions (or if you enable it in an unpatched *.exe for the game - the patch disabled that feature).

However the thing about the game is that there are barely any things that would need to be configured to get better performance or image quality, since much of the world detail is actually baked into the texture for the world.
The only thing I've found which would be a valid graphics option would be to force all shadows to be soft shadows.

Example: http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/4354/softshadowsoff.jpg http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/1707/softshadowson.jpg

But I guess it couldn't hurt if they implemented some extra graphics featurs like:

• SSAO
  
• Motion Blurring
  
• 'Detail Texturing' (but seems to be planned for Patch #2 already)
  
• Tessellation (primary use would be to make objects more round/smooth like tubes and cables - higher polycounts are wanted for high resolutions like 2560x1440)
  
• FXAA Filter (the games current MSAA implementation still manages to miss a few jagged edges)

But other than that, there really isn't much to complain about visuals wise besides the obvious such as the texture compression and texture pop-ins.

The answer is simple, yes. However, your already an idiot for buying this game twice so it wouldn't make a difference.

Well, at least I'm not illiterate idiot like you, because I clearly stated that second copy was not for me.

LOL, I'm not complaining about the lack of effects or graphics options. I'm merely pointing out its confusing a lot of hard core PC gamers. They've come to associate a lack of options with bad console ports and between all the driver issues, low resolution textures, lack of graphics effects, and lack of settings options Rage has bad console port written all over it as far as they are concerned. That's all part of the perfect storm of events that have come together to make the launch of the game such a disaster.

Personally I'm interested in seeing what id can add to the game with the patch, but I suspect the controversy around this game and the id tech 5 will continue for years to come. Even if everything had gone right from the start and they had settled for 30fps on consoles and added as many special effects as humanly possible I suspect a lot of PC gamers would still be ranting and raving because they just don't understand the technology. Its worse then trying to get a toddler to try something they've never eaten before. I'm sure with time most of them will eventually come around to appreciate the technology, but like that toddler you may have a hard time getting them to admit it wasn't so bad to begin with.

Well, I hope they will enhance optimization with the next patch.

It's not the engine or the art. It's a crappy game.

Skyrim is inferior in both the engine and art, well actually the Skyrim art is not bad at all really. It is however a very fine game and deserves the GOTY it won.

It's the GAME stupid. (Paraphrasing Wild Bill here).

You ask if you're an idiot in a forum and when you get an answer, you get all defensive...

You spent 120$ for 2 copies of a single player game (with worthless mp), a game that can be easily shared or hell, give away, and you ask if you're an idiot? I'm surprised your gf doesnt think your an idiot, maybe you should go find out. Wouldn't be surprised.

No one gives a [censored] about what's it made out off dike ask any pc gamer , that just want it to look good and run... I'd tech 5 whoa UFO tech right here... Stupid.