» Fri Dec 09, 2011 12:42 am The weapons and shooting was done rather well. There was a decent selection of weapons and different ammunition. The weapons felt good to use, much thanks to excellent animations when enemies were shot. The animations/ragdoll effects that kicked in when shooting and killing enemies is pretty much unrivaled in the gaming industry to the best of my knowledge. I hope other developers will take note of this, because having reactions like this from enemies when being shot, adds so much to games that are focused on action. Id didn't set a new standard in graphics with this game, but they did set a new standard to animations/ragdoll effects when shooting and killing stuff. The game is also rather gory which I usually don't think is a bad thing for action games, because just like the animations it helps to add the feeling of impact from your weapons. Sadly one other thing that could have made shooting even more fun is mostly missing, and that's the stuff around you somehow reacting to be shot, like breaking bottles and lights, and basically some breakable stuff. I'm not talking about having a fully destructible environment, but it shouldn't be hard to have some destructible stuff, as there are plenty of games released over a decade ago that have it. Also I know I was playing on nightmare difficulty, but headshots were maybe a bit too weak, there are other ways to up the difficulty than just having the enemies a lot tougher and be able to take multiple headshots from most guns (I get some of the stronger enemies could be like this, but I'm even talking about the weakest ones). Then I have some nitpicks that I really want to address, that are mostly some aspects that felt very half-assed. The first one of those aspects are the upgrades to the weapons. You get a few upgrades, ether earned or bought, and it kinda leaves you expecting more, but there isn't, those very few upgrades are all there is (think there were maybe 3-5 upgrades). Then there are the mind control bolts and electric bolts. The mind control bolts are mostly fine, but if you shoot some guy standing in a place that your character can't reach, you can't control him, he just explodes instantly. The electric bolts also work fine, but I wouldn't have minded a bit more opportunities to use them on water to kill enemies. One little last nitpick is that it would have been nice if the sniper had at least one more type of ammunition like most of the other weapons (maybe some armor piercing that could kill some dudes with 1 headshot instead of 2).
The Difficulty - Weak
I played the game on the hardest difficulty (nightmare) on my first and only play through (because I like to have some challenge), and I have to say that the difficulty is pathetic. It's easy enough without having the defibrillator (not to mention when it's actually upgraded), but with it (and all the other stuff you have) you are borderline invincible. You have regenerating health, in addition to that, you have bandages that heal you instantly (and it's not hard to have plenty of them), and then you have a defibrillator, and just in case that's not enough it can be upgraded to have 2 charges and recharge faster. So in the rare case that you take too much damage, you get resurrected, send an electric shock to the enemies standing near you, that usually kills them, and have 1 charge to spare, while also recharging the other charge. Then in addition to that there is one type of consumable that can make you regenerate health faster for a limited time, and I think there was also some consumable that made you have more health for a limited time, but ether way I never found the need to use it. I don't think I ever died completely thanks to an enemy (I however remember at least dying completely once getting crushed by an elevator). The difficulty is extremely disappointing and if anyone is looking for a challenge, look elsewhere, there is (barely) none to be found here.
The AI - Decent
I'm not overly impressed by the AI, but I've seen a lot worse. The mutants are actually rather impressive, not in a tactical way (and I can understand that since they don't look like the smartest bunch out there), but when charging at you they do move around in such a way that they aren't the the easiest target possible, not always moving in straight line and also doing some wall jumping (they are pretty athletic). The more intelligent enemies use cover, some blindfire, sometimes grenades to try and kill you or flush you out, and some try to advance towards you (especially the heavy armor guys). But too often they find some cover they like and just settle there, and then you can stay where you are without worry and pick them out, and get back in cover and regenerate health if needed without any worry of them advancing to you. The problem is also that you gain a lot more from cover than they do since you regenerate health and they don't, and Rage is of course not the only shooter with regenerating health to have this problem, but that doesn't make it any less of a problem. The enemy is fighting you like you are they're equal to you, when they need to fight you like you are a much stronger guy than them (because you are). Also if the enemy tries to flush you out with a grenade, it's easy to retreat a bit out of its range and then just come back (while the enemy just stays in the same place). Basically the guys with the guns need to be even more aggressive at advancing to your position to pose a real threat. I guess the AI might also seem a little underwhelming sometimes because the they fail to challenge you. That's however not really just the fault of the AI, but their strength and options. The levels are so linear that the AI usually has no way of flanking you ether, which means that their strength in numbers doesn't help them all that much, and then I guess most of the enemies are just too weak to pose as a real threat even if they were smarter.
The Cars/Driving/Driving areas (wasteland) - Disappointing
Why am I using the word disappointing for driving in an Id game you ask. Well, it's not like I was expecting the driving to be something special, and as expected that was how it turned out to be. The upgrade part is like for the guns, half-assed, just one upgrade for each part of the car, except for the wheels (but why would you get the slightly less expensive wheels, when you can get the best of both by paying a tiny bit more). Also barely any visual upgrades. The races are ok, but nothing special. You get a few weapons and car powers to kill your enemies, but sadly the only enemies you meet when driving are mostly just other cars and some towers with 1 guy equipped with a machine gun (there are only a few exceptions), and those don't really pose any threat to you, they're merely just a minor annoyance while driving from point A to B, or a way to earn a few extra racing certificates and a tiny bit of money. I tried the car powers but the shield was the only one worth using, except maybe in races (then the repair and shock wave could be pretty useful, but you didn't need to buy them for the races). The wastelands look good, and you are free to drive where you want (although there isn't really that much of an area to explore), but that's all there is to it. You enter the wasteland to drive to the mission areas, and that's mostly it. There is barely anything to do in the wasteland. There are a few sewers to find, some very few plants that grow in specific places, and some flying stuff you can jump and crash into. But aside from looking good the wasteland adds very little to the game, and that's what is so disappointing. There is this big useless part of the game that barely adds anything of value to the game. Id should ether have just skipped this part completely and instead add something that mattered to the game (more levels, or more open levels, or something that would add something of more meaningful value to the game), or actually have driving and the wasteland, but not do it in such a half-assed way (actually have som. It's disappoint that probably plenty of Ids resources went to make this mostly useless and half-assed part of the game, instead of something else that could have mattered much more and actually made the game better.
The Graphics - A mixed bag
A lot of people had technical problems on launch, which is of course a bad thing. I was rather lucky on that aspect myself, though I had some problems too. I had a severe graphical glitch at first and couldn't see [censored], so I had to restart the game, and that fixed it, the other problem was that I couldn't enable AA at all in options without the game crashing, and that was never fixed while I played the game at least. Also there was a severe lack of graphics options, although they added a few more after patch. However when I got the game running, it ran smoothly, no lag (playing on a 3 year old computer). I guess they succeeded in that regard, although that was probably more aimed at consoles. The big picture looked good, and character models also looked good, however a lot of closeup textures look horrible and blurry, also there is sometimes a slight texture pop-up but I didn't have that much of a problem with it. I know the big thing about this engine was it's unique textures (megatextures), so you get plenty of unique textures which is of course good artistically, but sadly there seem to be plenty of drawbacks too. I'm not sure if it's because of the engine, or that they wanted 60fps constantly on consoles, or a bit of both, but they couldn't use dynamic lighting which also means no possibility of day/night cycles. The sky also looks pretty good, but it's just a picture. We most likely would have had at least a somewhat better looking game if it had been made with PC as the priority. In short, the graphics have some good points, but ultimately rather disappointing, especially coming from Id. At least there is a possibility that some high-res textures might be released later, but there is no guarantee on that.
The Story - svcks
It's as simple as that. I wasn't even expecting much since Id isn't know for great story, but even with my rather low exceptions I was disappointed. There are the mutants and some evil gangs and factions that matter nothing to the story, except the mutants matter a little bit. Then there is the resistance and the authority. The resistance are a tiny group of 5 or 6 people, that are the good guys, and they fight they bad guys called the authority. Or mostly it's just you fighting the authority, and they telling you what to do and giving you some weapons, ammo and upgrades to do it. Rage also has a very bad and anti climatic ending, not just story wise, but gameplay wise too. You hear about some general or something that's supposed to be some big guy in the authority but you never see or meet him. Actually you don't meet anyone at all from the authority other than their grunts that you kill, not one man of importance for the authority. A 10 year old could write a better story that this. I've heard there are some Rage books or book that may have some better story than in the game, but that doesn't matter to me, I'm judging the game, not something based off it, also if I wanted to read a good book, I wouldn't be looking at Rage. Even if they wanted to continue the story and the ending of this would just be a big cliffhanger it still would be bad. Hell, even Serious Sam has a better story, and you get to kill a big boss and fight hundreds of monsters, not press a few buttons a kill a few authority controlled mutants. Yes that is the ending, I spoiled it if you can call it that, because there really isn't anything of interest to spoil in this game. In fact I think I have rather made you fully aware that you won't like the ending, so I'm sparing you a bit of disappointment. Also you get a big [censored] gun for the last mission but the hardest enemies you will meet there are a few armored authority guys, so just use your megashots (or whatever they were called) on them instead of saving the ammo up for some boss.
The Characters - A little better than the story (but still far from awesome)
The characters look good, both graphically and artistically, but as for personality they really never get to develop, they just have a short chat and send you on a mission so they all end up being rather flat and unforgettable. Or maybe you will remember them a little for their looks, or maybe voice actor (John Goodman). I can't say any character left a particularly strong impression on me.
The Animation - Awesome
I've already said how good it is when you shoot enemies, but overall the animation is great. It's especially cool to see the mutants and move, jumping on walls, climbing towards you, and flinging themselves from door openings. The characters that you talk to are also very well animated, which helps them look more lifelike. I'd probably pick animation as the best aspect of the game, especially since it helps make the most important thing about a shooter much better (the actual shooting part of it).
Sound - Good
The sound overall is good. No complaints here.
The Levels - Too restricted
There are two small cities where you get your missions, they look both look nice and are very different to each other, no big complaints on them particularly, but there is no fighting going on in them, they are just hubs where you can talk to people (not all that much talking, mostly just listening, most of it not all that interesting), get missions, and play some minigames. The real meat of the game is however played in linear levels that you usually drive to through the wastelands, or sometimes enter from the cities. The levels are varied and have interesting design visually, and linear is fine, but having them a bit more open would be nice. There are too many invincible walls, they are even in the bit more open place where they shouldn't be. Often you can't even jump onto small objects because of invincible walls (I'm talking about stuff like a car in the middle of a garage). A little more open levels would have been a big improvement to the game. I've already explained how could help the AI make a few more interesting moves, but also just having a little more freedom to move for the player could add a lot. The only open areas don't get anything from being open, and the areas where you would want a tiny bit more freedom feel too restricted.
The Enemies - Decent variety, could be better
I wouldn't mind a few more types, like a few more types of mutants would be cool. But also the more dangerous mutants are used very little. I'd like to have seen some of the harder enemies used more, would have at least helped a little bit with the challenge that the game is lacking.
The Other stuff (minigames, sidequests, crafting, trading, items, inventory, upgrades) - Not all bad, could be better
I've already said racing is nothing special. Crafting is okay I guess, I don't really feel like complaining to much about it, it's nice little element to have in the game that I like, maybe some more stuff to craft would be nice, but that would probably be classified as nitpicking from my side. Trading is rather basic stuff, you can sell and buy stuff you want, that stuff mostly being ammo, a few upgrades, some recipes for crafting, and a tiny amount of the available weapons in the game. No real complaints about it ether, a little nice extra thing to have, but money is maybe a bit too easy to get (especially with a few rounds of Mutant Bash TV). Sure you can say, don't go out there and make money, if you think it makes the game even more easy, but that's like saying just use a pistol if you want more challenge, but that would be lame. The developer has to take into account how powerful you are and what you have access to when making difficulty. There are plenty of items, some of them I would count as weapons, like the wingsticks, spiderbot, the turret, and the RC bomb car. The wingsticks, spiderbot and turret can be very nice to have sometimes. Other stuff like some health regeneration and damage buffs I never used even if I had a few of all of them. I guess the difficulty also is to blame a bit here, you get a lot of useful stuff, but it's kind of like giving superman the ability to become invincible to beat some thugs, sure he could use it and go all stealthy, but he probably wouldn't even bother, because it would be easier to just smash them into a table and leave some money to pay for the damages. You have inventory with no little limits on how much you can hold, there is an ammo limit, but it's rather high, and there is some limit on other stuff too, but if you fill that, you probably have more than enough, especially since you can restock after each mission. No complaints here, it's nice to be able to hold onto everything and every weapon you find, it's not realistic, but who cares, it's fun. Or wait, I have one complaint about inventory, for some reason I can't open it when playing the co op mode. I've already talked about gun and car upgrades, and how they leave a lot do be desired, there are also some few other upgrades to items, armor, and defibrillator, and that's fine, but as I already have stated, the defibrillator with one charge already makes the game to easy, so imagine what two charges that recharge faster does to the difficulty. There are some side quests, but not that many really, mostly just returning to old areas, I also feel this is a rather half-assed aspect of the game. The last thing to mention here are the minigames, they are a nice little bonus, the cardgame is probably the coolest of them, and you can find and collect differect cards hidden (or sometimes not so hidden) in all of the major areas you travel to. No complaints about the minigames really, they are a nice little touch to the game, would be nice to be able to play the cardgame without betting any money though (so I guess one small complaint here).
Length - Rather good length if you do all the stuff, but probably not half as long if you only do the main stuff
If you rush through it, you probably will finish it in less the 10 hours. If you take you really take your time and do everything and then some more, you might end up in somewhere around 20. I did the latter and ended up in a little over 20. But much of that is rather cheap length, stopping frequently in levels to look for hidden cards, and even returning to a few areas to check if there are any left, and even then I missed a few, but I thought enough is enough, they really aren't worth spending many extra hours looking for, I have plenty of other better things to do, and it's not like I ended up playing that card game that much anyways. Then there was is this dice minigame where you shoot 4 thugs, I wanted to get 1 perfect round (get all 4 thugs in the beginning), spent a little to much time trying that (and failed, lol). And then there was the races, and jumps, and doing extra rounds in Mutant Bash TV, and some other stupid stuff. So basically plenty of time went into some stupid stuff, much of what wasn't all that fun. The fun part of the game is maybe somewhere around 12 hours (do the main quests, sidequests, trying out the minigames without overdoing it like I did, and do a minimum amount of races). The rest is just gonna be some cheap stretching of the length of the game. Basically what I'm saying is that you can spend 20 hours with it but you won't get anything near 20 quality hours out of it.
Multiplayer - One is okay, the other I don't even want to bother with
Can't really say much about it, since I haven't really played it, except the first level in the co op mode which I did solo on nightmare. The co op mode is a nice little bonus to have, but that racing mode I have no interest in. I completed all the races in single player, since I like to complete all the stuff in the game, but I not even the slightest interest in trying out that racing mode. They should have rather have made a half-assed deathmatch mode from one of the stronger aspects of the game, instead of making a multiplayer mode out of a half-assed aspect of the game.
Conclusion
Rage isn't a bad game. It does the shooting part well, where the animations help a lot, and set a new standard for the genre in that one specific aspect. And of course we have the unique but sadly often to low res to impress textures, which no other game has. But that are the only things it does different or better that it's competitors. Even if it is a fun game, it also is a very disappointing game. Try the hardest difficulty in Doom 1 or 2, then try the hardest difficulty in Rage. The difference is like black and white, the easiest difficulty in Doom is probably harder than Rage on nightmare. The complete lack of challenge is one of the biggest letdowns in this game. The story is a letdown and the ending is a letdown. The levels are cool but would be so much better if a bit more open and without some of those pointless invincible walls. There are some nice little aspects that add a little bit of flavor to the game, but then there are those half-assed aspects that barely add anything to the game. Although the wastelands aren't too open, I kinda feel like they are a sandbox without the sand. Rage probably would have ended up better if Id had stuck closer to it's roots (and I'm not just talking about making it primarily for PC, although there is that too). I have a feeling the closer Id sticks to it's roots, the better game they will end up making. Make an awesome shooter, with kickass weapons and really satisfying shooting, challenging harder difficulties, great graphics, sound and animation, great AI, complex and rather open levels with plenty of secrets (like the old doom games), filled with a lot of different crazy monsters, and some cool powerups, and nobody will complain about your barely or nonexistent story, because you are just some hardcoe dude kicking thousands of monsters ass, and nobody will complain about lackluster ending because the ending will be great thanks to some awesome bossfight. Also make it for PC first, then you can port it to consoles afterwards and make all the necessary downgrades to graphics and gameplay or whatever needs to be downgraded for the consoles. Hell you can even keep the inventory, crafting, trading, and minigames. Just stick some card game loving demon in your level that is desperately looking for an opponent that doesn't eat his cards. Alternatively you could cooperate with Bethesda to make a Fallout game with great shooting and animations.
~ I'll have to go back and see the details later.. 