Sad, but true. id has been a great engine developer, but a lackluster when it comes to making games with good gameplay or story line. They have been great at graphics (or they used to be a long time ago) but thats old now.

Story lines are rather dull to non-existant and not even worth following. After playing about 3 hrs of rage, I dont even know what is happening or care about it. I go from point A to point B, talk to a character, then to point C and shoot. Done.

Rage is extremely pretty (after getting past the PC issues) and seems to have great enemy AI, but thats about it. Not much in terms of story line, character development etc. It probably was an artist's dream and of course Carmacks engine dream. But just feels like a good fancy tech demo for the engine.

Deus Ex HR still remains my best game of the year thus far even though its graphics were sub par. I think its high time to stop making FPS-only games with linear gameplay and let the old aim and shoot genre rest in peace. And let FPS-rpg take over. If they wanted to keep it FPS only, then lets bring in modern stuff like destructible environments or alternate gameplay style like Crysis (a 4+ year old game) introduced (stealth).

Perhaps id should get back into engine licensing and forget about making full games.

ARS review = skip
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/10/rage-is-the-gamiest-game-that-ever-gamed.ars?comments=1#comments-bar

Metacritic = 8.1
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/rage/critic-reviews

This game is not an RPG , it's not open world . no character development , if you want that , go to Fallout 3 or WoW.

RPG or not, doesnt matter. Its 2011 and not 2000, games need to mature up if they plan to take more than 3 years in development or expect to carry a price tag of 60 bucks.

Deus EX HR is pretty much a FPS with minor RPG elements. There isn't much 'role playing' going on in there. Yes there are choices and consequences of those choices, but that doesnt make it an RPG. Its still a FPS with elements adopted from RPGs.

Its the story line (which has nothing to do with RPG) was awesome.
Just look at Half Life or Portal series as FPS counterparts to id games.
Story / character / gameplay > graphics. And yes, WoW is/was a pretty good example of how graphics dont matter.

And maybe, like I mentioned above, its time to stop making linear FPSs without additional gameplay elements.

I was in no way expecting Rage to be like Fallout or a fully fleshed RPG or even like Deus Ex with choices.
But I was sure wanting it to be like Crysis or Half Life.

I played for 2-3 hrs and already starting to get a bit bored. Though the 1st hr was struggling with PC graphics vsync issues that were frustrating.
Compared to Deus Ex, which I was playing pretty much like a FPS (ignoring side quests, ignoring reading the enormous textual stuff it had or exploring the cities) I was hooked for hrs after hrs and even wanted to replay the game.