Hi everyone. I just registered, because I felt the need to tell you what I think about the game. I've known id software games, since Commander Keen games. I loved every single one of the games they put out, and I still regard id software as The Best game developer in the world. Period. Disagree, agree I don't care, nor will I take part in useless banther exercises.

Now, to the issue that made me register here...

Bought it, installed it, played it, finished it. Overall, the game was good. The same mark as 2004's DOOM 3. The first thing I noticed was how beautiful and smooth the game was. Incredible graphics, running smoothly on my crappy HD3650. Resolution 1280x720, large textures, anisotropic filtering. Beautiful game too look at, and so smooth running on such a low end system... Very Impressive. No matter what you think about them, id software DOES have the talent. They really KNOW how to do this. But this is just about looks...

Content? Again, like DOOM 3, a bit disappointing. The FPS part of the game is absolutely brilliant. It is so fun and so addictive, it reminded me of what I felt playing DOOM and Quake for the first time, as a "banana peeler" high school kid. A M A Z I N G. Headshots on enemies armored with helmets are extremely fun to do and to watch. They get disoriented, crash into walls, fall on their buttocks, complain, ask for help... A M A Z I N G. AI is very, very good. They flank you very quickly if you're not careful. They force you to have at least, a decent strategy. And that makes me feel Very Good... Weapons are spot on. The sound they make, the effects they have. It is a pleasure to empty them on everything that moves. FPS part of the game... 10/10, easy.

Now, for the not so good part... Very objective and authoritarian game. A typical games console game. You can't even jump from the stairs to the floor below! You Have To Go Down Each Step Of The Stairs, just to reach the ground. Missions... Again, very objective and authoritarian... "See guy X, he tells you to kill every single thing in place A, and the sends you to guy Y, who then sends you to place B, to kill everything," and so on and on... But the worst isn't this... The job boards, or other missions, make use of the same sections, only a bit altered, to make them look different... What gibs? I felt insulted.

Driving part of the game... Didn't like it very well. Boring those races to get racing certificates, that allow you to update the car with better armor, engines, tyres and suspension... Shooting other cars, was alright, but I got bored very quickly. I ran from other cars to avoid being bored to death...

Storyline. Bland, extremely simple and very, very short. No nemesis, no nothing. Lovely and attractive NPC's, that make you relate to the game (like Mass Effect)? Z E R O. You're the warrior boy. There are some mean looking guy, with all the tech that want to rule the world. Save everyone must, because you were under the ground for 200 years with some rotten skeletons (?). When I saw the ending cinematic, I was thinking to myself "oh yeah... More FPS coming... I'll lead a squad and start shooting very soon...". Well, you all know that does not happen... I was very, but very disappointed.

Long story short... I felt that the game was like a demo, for the amazing, beautiful, impossibly optimized id tech 5. You may not like this, but here goes.

An advice, that may have been given by someone much better and informed than me... If you want to make games, update yourself. Authoritarian and objective games like this are outdated. Other games with the same "personality", make up for that with an incredible story line and length (like the Mass Effect series). Seriously, you should think about this. id software should make amazing games, not just amazing graphics engines. Be aware that you're seriously on the line to become outdated. You should start looking at this very quickly.

Graphics and FPS were absolutely amazing. id tech 5 really is the best graphics engine out there for now... Beautiful, optimized like a dream. Just a shame about the rest.

Take care... Oh, I always have DOOM and Quake installed. I play them often. More DOOM than Quake. I still have the original CD's and boxes...

A minor nitpick:
Half of your readers will see that and hear it pronounced in their heads as "Jibbs" (which is the more correct pronunciation FYI)

Anyway, I completely agree with your opinion. I've been a fan of id since I could run, literally. For me it began at Doom, although when I was 8 I discovered Commander Keen and fell in love with that for a few years too.

Your post reminds me of an old quote of Carmack: "Story in a game is like a story in a porm movie. Its expected to be there, but it's not that important." That's all changed as gamers have begun to demand engaging stories and characters to match the more cinematic graphics, but for most developers the transition hasn't been easy. With Rage it had a 27 million dollar budget when most AAA games now cost 40-50 million and the newest Star Wars video game cost 200 million. In other words, its the equivalent of a B movie budget and there's only so much you can expect.

What I think they really need to do is take a few lessons from the classic Hollywood B movies. Rage, for example, is a Mad Max world and there are plenty of those in B movies. Mutant Bash added a touch of humor, but most cheesy action flicks punch up the dialogue more with one-liners and a few jokes. Nothing elaborate, just a little something appropriate to the genre and the budget. Same thing with Doom 3. People complained there were too many cheesy scenes with monsters jumping out of closets and it was too dark and claustrophobic. Nothing a look at a few B horror movies couldn't cure.

Its easy to confuse id games with console games simply because they focus on fast cutting edge graphics engines and have B movie budgets. Instead of adding a lot of bells and whistles like interactive environments their engines are lean, built for speed, and push the limits of graphics. Instead of fancy stories or elaborate humor or dramatic stunts they emphasis the action with a million monsters coming at you all at once. Simple, straightforward, cheap, and easy to execute on the engine. None of that means the game is merely for consoles and the upcoming Doom 4 will be capable of using the newest AMD 7970 hardware acceleration for megatextures. Its also been said to look 3 or 4 times better then Rage and we'll just have to wait and see if this next B movie turns out to be a cult classic.

I understand that... Budget, money, whatever. But that excuse, no matter how truthful it is, is useless against those 40-50 million games. Games like this, make up for their personality with engaging story and characters, as well as length. Mass Effect series are a perfect example of that. That excuse does not erase the fact that a 27 million game is competing with 40-50 million games. That is what is important. Gamers do take note of that. I believe that if id software are going to stick with these type of games, they should really take a look at Mass Effect for inspiration. How a story is made, characters that make you fall in love with the game, enough so that it becomes addictive, despite its shortcomings. However, if they want to take a leap forward, they should really look at Elder Scrolls. Skyrim is The Best open-ended game so far, and its story and characters aren't really that good. But the openness of the game is brilliant art. Nothing short of breathtaking. Id Software should look at these games, if they haven't already...



If DOOM 4 is going to look 4 times better than RAGE, it does make sense. However, RAGE is already beautiful. I can't even imagine how good D4 will look...

Right! Glad to see that at least some people see the pros of Rage without permanently repeating the cons.

Perfectly right! Especially the enemies reacting physically to bullett impact is A+! Strangely enough, most people won't even notice...


Hmmm.... If you're an ID fan and own most, if not all of their games, what's your opinion about Quake 4 ?
I consider your complaint about Rage to fit way better to that one.
There's no need to play any Job Board mission. You have the freedom to skip them.
As for jumping down the stairs: You can freely move through the wasteland. I explored every possible corner. Even the ones that ID didn't want me to see without any noclipping cheats.
The missions are a little more restrictive, right. But i'd say ID made a good job with delivering the best of both worlds: Freedom AND modern "tunnel" gameplay.

You can also get racing certs from doing the bandit killing job for Sally. Each time you kill a bandit in the wasteland, she pays you and gives you certs.
Only a very few races have to be done to get certain cars. Again: You have a choice.

What's the point? Every ID game has almost NO story. And i'd say the "lovely and attractive NPCs" are a question of taste. I personally found the characters in Rage to have more life in them than the sterile types in the Mass Effect series.

Like most other ID games before...

Hey, me too !

Especially with the new id tech 5 engine its id's job to look at the artwork in other games. However, they've been hiring professional writers to do the stories. Hopefully with time they'll get bigger budgets and be able to afford the best writers.

id games like Doom and Commander Keen were much more than simple tech demos. They were GAMES, with great art, excellent gameplay, and clever level designs.

Right, but i assume that lots of people expected a deeper storyline from Rage as it is considered to be an rpg or at least an rpg-like shooter.
All ID games before where low on story and focused on graphics and gameplay. And all ID games before Doom3 where also tech demos for ID's technology as the engines where widely licensed and used by other game companies afterwards. That's what i meant.

Indeed I had such high hopes for this game. It would have made an amazing game done right and with a few changes to the engine.
I doubt they will make another PC game, maybe Doom 4 might appear but it would not surprise me one bit to see it canned for PC.

Yeah, if you want a mindless shooter Doom has never been beaten. I have H2H competition wads if anyone wants the best Doom has to offer.

And here I was just expecting to see an anagram with:

HITS

@http://www.gamesas.com/user/781427-jcps001/

You hit the nail on the head with your original post. Completely agree. RAGE has so much going for it, I hope they can use a lot of what they have and build upon it. The FPS mechanics, shooting, AI, animation and all art assets (models, sound, maps) are all great in RAGE. If they could pair these amazing aspects with a better game, they would be on to a winner.

I don't know what to suggest though... more exploration, more variety in the missions, more enemy variety at once (I mean in the same place at the same time), more going on in the wastelands (there's basically nothing fun to do there). The game felt a bit unfinished somehow and was a concoction of mainly half-baked ideas. id need another lead designer with the good attributes of John Romero. Someone that knows exactly what gamers would find fun, what should / shouldn't go into the next game, someone who wants to push the next game to be great and innovative, someone with massive enthusiasm and passion. Having said that, I really enjoyed the co-op missions in RAGE, and those hark back to a more no-nonsense, traditional id Software games (which I really like but I am an old gamer!). I think I preferred the co-op as it was straight-to-the-point shooting with no filler or extra crap to dilute what is RAGE's strongest suit - shooting baddies.

I can see that id tried to step out of their comfort zone a bit with RAGE, and they'll be all the more better for doing so, but ultimately it still feels like an old fashioned game that dabbles with more modern concepts in a shallow / unfinished way.

Ok...I have mixed feelings about this game.

On the positive side, it's definately the most fun i've had with a first person shooter for some time. It also has,

- a great variety of guns which 'feel' better to use & pack more of a punch than in any other recent shooter.
- alternate ammo types & crafting system are good (although craftable armor would've been nice).....wingsticks, RC bomb cars are nice..
- great enemy animations, especially when they're wounded.
-a very good looking game despite the typical console graphical restrictions.
- buggy racing, mini-games & mutant bash tv & the hub areas in general make for a welcome change of pace between missions, and have a good amount of personality to them. These should be expanded upon in a future installment.
- NPC's in the hubs are generally endearing, despite not having an awful lot to say..
- hubs and characters are surprisingly colourful and detailed despite the predominance of the reddish/brown hues of the post-apocalyptic wasteland setting.

On the negative side,

- why oh why did we have to pre-order the game to get the double barrel shotgun?? I mean its an id staple and removing it from the standard version is just utterly cynical.
-having done the right thing by id/bethesda and pre-ordering the game for pc, it was pretty irritating that I couldn't play the game on Day 1 because it was unplayable on ATi cards like mine. Having got the game running smoothly, the new patch seems to have brought back the epilepsy inducing flickering that came with the vanilla version. Wonderful..Graphics options are still not what they ought to be..
-The game is about half the size of what it should've been for $60. Same price for Skyrim, Witcher 2 and even Deus Ex HR is a bit far feched when it only lasts 10-12 hours and has little replayability. Considering open-world exploration is not what id are about, there should've been about 4 or 5 game hubs instead of the 2 we got, plus more missions and people to interact with.
-Despite being true to the id formula, it would've been nice if the mission zones were a bit more open to allow for different tactics. They give you these gadgets like the RC Bomb car, but it has little tactical use outside of the few places it is specifically designed for...because you can hardly ever get the drop on enemies...they almost always see you first as they attack from front on in typical corridor shooting fashion once you trigger the invisible checkpoints.
-Boss fights were underwhelming. The one with the mega mutant in the Dead City was just awful.
-For such an advanced graphical engine, it beggars belief that you cant vault over railings or jump over environmental obstacles. It tries to look 'open', but most doors can't be opened, and you simply cannot access a lot of areas you see because the game keeps funnelling you along through not so subtle use of said environmental obstacles. The game has a weird kind of tension between being devoutly linear, but wanting the appearance of openess. It would've been nice if there were more things to see, people to talk to & things to do, when you're driving across the wasteland.
-quests/missions could've done with a bit more variety/imagination.
-the story was naff, not surprising...but what was most disappointing was the farce that was the 'Authority'..Those high tech, fearsome super-soldiers were simply no match for the authority pulse cannon. It was a non-contest in the end. It was as if they'd just ran out of time and had to put something together in the last week prior to release. The capital prime mission was the most blatantly linear of all the missions. Incredibly weak ending..almost as bad as Crysis 2 in that respect.
- Reusing the zones of previous missions is unforgiveable in such a relatively short game.

That's a fair bit of negative stuff, but overall I did enjoy the game quite a bit, when it actually works properly. I guess being a Commander Keen/Wolfenstein/Doom fan from back in the day, i had high expectations for this one. Really high expectaions. A new engine for a game that had been a long time in development... but it does feel more like a tech demo than a fully fledged game. Id are certainly never shy of acknowledging that they created the genre. However, its clear that they need to expand upon the baby steps they've taken away from pure linearity towards something a little more in line with modern design values, i.e by actually giving us more than one way of approaching the enemy so that we can make better use of this cool arsenal of weapons at our disposal. It doesn't have to be 'open-world', but I would like to be able to traverse more of the environment that I can 'see', than this game currently allows.

Finally, what happend to the dlc?? Its been 5 months and nothing...Have they moved onto something else?? Tim Willits said prior to release that dlc would depend on what players wanted. Well, its clear people do want dlc...particularly considering the game is unfinished from a narrative perspective. Its true that they don't have any obligation to do anything after the game's released, but the Witcher 2 for instance, already has 9 dlc's and has a 4 hour expansion coming in April. I know i'll be buying whatever CD Projekt Red put out next on day 1. With id's next game, i'm kinda doubting that will be the case. I certainly won't be pre-ordering again.

indeed. A big disappointment for many of us.

I played it on ps3 and although the texture pop in was a little distracting(as Im told it is on most systems low en pcs included) I thought it was quite a technical achievement. 60fps on consoles?...as a console gamer I wish I saw it more often. When I was (and will be a PC gamer again) I often had to make concessions to get 50 -60 fps so I love the way they made this game. Peformance on consoles and low end machines is a good priority to take. '

It wasnt that I didnt like the story....its just that it was too frickin short. It was good enough I wanted more but not good enough that Id care for a sequal. I thought all of that item combining stuff and engineering belonged in a longer slower game(fallout! :S). I thought that opening the menu to hotkey stuff and combine sutff to make items jsut made this game feel too complicated considering it was just a fast paced simian browed shooter. With that said though I absolutely love this game. I love the art style, I love the 60fps performance, i liked alot of the characters, the weapons felt great, the atmospher in the dungeons was great, and i loved the universe too the point I would have liked this to be a 30 hour game rather than a 12 hour one.

One particular area of this game that deserves praise is the amazing and varied artiful AI. I felt that all the factions had different attacks styles and patterns that made them all unqique and challeing. The mutants had pure numbers, those guys that did all the flips with the blads were hard to hit and the authority had some of the trickiesdt tactics ive seen. I saw the authority suppress and advance, fall in behind shelded comrades, and all seemed to use the enviroment to their advantage really really impressive stuff. Enemiesn retreating when you ran into a room and blew away six of their comrades also adds a great degree of realism. Enemies with some self preservation added a sort of realism that you dont often feel in shooters where drone after drone piles into a room only to be shot in the dome. Retreated when outgunned makes the AI feel like a real person that has some investment in this shootout and they rather fal back and regroup than just be a funny looing ragdoll death to please the player. The ai is on par with the f.e.a.r series and the original half life and in my opinion that is saying a lot.

So really I think the ONLY problems I had with this game are is it should have been MORE linear rather than pretend to be open world. Just drive from one area to the next you know and just upgrade your car after certain missions. And of course it should have been longer I guess any game I love I will always want more and I understand that a game of this quality might have to lose some quantity. Maybe next game well get both.

Oh for sure. I think if they removed the open-ish-world and I as a player was just going through regular maps between loading screens, I wouldn't like the game any less. I think what makes the open-ish-world feel a little shallow (I say that out the side of my mouth and am NOT in any way belittling the epic-ness of RAGE's outdoor environments and outdoor driving elements. It's way too easy to make a game, or part of a game, sound bad in a sentence that doesn't account for even 1% of the quality on show and fun to be had in that part of the game.), is the speed of the buggy combined with the almost arcade-feel of the mechanics/combat/encounters.

S'the same with the races. I'd rather be punished for racing badly, and have to put up cash for repairs after the race, (making entering a race a *meaningful choice*) than have it be an almost out-of-world experience that has no bearing at all on the game world proper. I could win upgrades, or I could severely damage my only means of conveyance through a Wasteland littered with bandits and mutants (which I'd expect to be more abundant if they slowed things down a bit out there). I'd also like to have seen the driving segments have guys running onto the track to layout boost pickups and ammo supplies, and have a small period/anim when picking it up, making the races feel less arcadey, and more *in-worldy*. lol

When the buggy breaks down, (in this revised, slower Wasteland driving trek) I think the tow and repair method should have been *in-game*, and you have to fight off mutants and bandits while waiting on aid from Wellspring or Subway, with a minimap and clock/counter showing the progress of the coming tow truck. Combine this with more expensive, rarer ammo, making a "meaningful choice" out of weapon selection, and even limiting what your loadout is by limiting the funds and cost of ammo. Forcing a player to choose a set of weapons - that they have ammo for - rather than allowing him to carry a [censored]-load of everything, with a [censored]-ton of ammo for it all. So instead of making it a player choice to only buy ammo for certain weapons, with no limit, which I do right now (usually a Settler Pistol with 30 Fatboys, and a Shottie with 40 rounds - anything else I find in the map I'm playing I'll use with whatever weapon it is for. I also only carry 5 Wingsticks, and 2 of each deployable, but none of these choices are necessary.)

I'm a fan of id, and I don't hesitate in saying they make *the best* action shooters anywhere. I don't know which FPS game was the first to introduce it but what takes away - from my experience at least - something special about id games is the regen health system. The regen thing doesn't seem to do anything except remove tension - from ALL shooters! I mean it's fine for console because playing on a pad you;re likely to get hit a lot more, slower turning, no precision twitch aiming, you could use some help. I would rather - in Nightmare mode PC especially - be on the side of the game that makes it unfair to be a player! Like the aimbots in QIIIA Nightmare that handed me my ass for aaagggeeesss, until I got better, and could trounce all of them while laughing at how pathetic they were, making human opponents the only go-to for a challenge.

I want to enter Dead City Central, after having gone through the streets, with whatever health I have left over from my encounters there. Maybe a little low on decent ammo. Even if there were NO health pickups, and the defib system worked as health boost you can apply yourself like the repair items for the cars and their *health bars* (armour bars). It's just a better system. IMO. Low health makes for a cautious player, cautious players feel more tension in scary places. Anyone can list a bunch of FPSs that they think are better than RAGE, or more challenging, but I'd guarantee that they are only because RAGE is sporting this regen/defib system, that helps poor players but guarantees a win for good players. Did anyone really need the second defib from Dead City to take on the Authority, even on Nightmare? Or the third refib from the dude in the bar in exchange for the Feltrite? The defibs acted as like a get out of jail card for svcking on a regen system that it's really difficult on which to svck! All you gotta do is find cover fast, or spam a bandage.

Half of the Wasteland Legends in multiplayer - you can clear rooms in no time flat by rushing in toting the shottie, leading with a Wingstick, spamming a bandage and dropping all the AI. S'FUN! But if you had a health bar, and replaced the bandage with 25% health gain... you see better players scraping through those rooms with a coupla scratches and maybe contemplating using that last precious bandage, and worse players just.... insta-DEAD.

S'hard to quantify how much I love about RAGE. But that doesn't mean I can't, while playing it, think what could have been. I mean Doom3 had health bars, but I don;t think there was a point in it that I was ever not toting 100+ shottie ammo, max everything that had a max ammo. I went through the entire game only using a shotgun yet never ran low on ammo, and was never short of a health boost/pickup, so always had 100/125 health/armour. Except... on Nightmare. Which at least gave you crappy health and Soul Cube to boost it for short period. RAGE could have made a similar effort.

Also: On top of all this I would love to add spawn points for *too many* mutants in all of the cleared areas of the game, that once you enter, you cannot leave! (By the way you came in... you have to run through the entire level to exit in respawning mutant hell.) An almost scarily constant stream of Mutants as you run and gun through entire maps would be epic to play through every once in a while. Stock up on, *expensive on Nightmare* ammo, coupla deployables, and just go waste some mutants in Dead City a la Mutant Bash, without the arena style environments. One word: EPIC!

Hmmm. Seems like i am the only guy on this planet who thinks ID is giving us the best of all worlds.
Rage has good old first person shooter gameplay, it doesn't permanently tell you what to do and it has a decent amount of freedom to explore.
In other words: it has everything i expect from a good first person game.

I never expected Rage to be open world. Where does this expectation come from?
I heard this from many people as a complaint but i don't remember that ID ever said something about open world before release.

I expected Rage to be somewhat like Wolfenstein. A large hub system (the wasteland) with lots of missions scattered around it.
And this is exactly what they delivered.

He's saying what little open-ish-worldness, lol, there is... he would have preferred less of it. S'a legit comment. The same could have been said about Wolfenstein now that you mention it. I too was expecting something a little like Wolfenstein though so, I'm with you there. But also, you could make RAGE a straight-up shooter and like I said I wouldn't like it any less. Maybe have the Ark raise in the beginning, two survivors, one's a techy, and the other is you. Techy greets you when you wake up, informs you that there are ton of *things* outside, and that s/he used the satellite to track a nearby depot/weapons cache. You have to run there.... begin shooter journey through hell with story delivered in audio/techy narration and communication, logs, and more mutanty foes than humany bandity foes that begs questions like, "Where are their womenfolk?". Scary, but you also kick-ass, so only really, really scary if you svck at shooters. lol That kinda thing I could handle in droves. Techy gets killed at some point... la la la on and on... just a pure shooter experience with epic environments like those in RAGE, yes, now I'm babbling.

If you watch some of the videos that Bethesda was putting out, before RAGE's release, of Willits and co. talking about RAGE... they do kinda misrepresent the game.... a little.

I would say quite a bit more than a little. They tried to piggyback on the, very popular open world games, by insinuating it would be an exploring and fairly open world game. "Open but directed" was the weasel phrase used when called on that association. A lie. There is nothing open about Rage.

I honestly expected this game to be alot longer given the open world stuff. I liked upgrading my car. I liked making weapons. I liked hanging out in town. I thought driving was fun as hell. The only problem I had was by the time the game was over my car was great and i could engineer all kinds of fancy gadgets and jsut as my character was turning into a well equipped bad ass...it was over. I thought the end cutscene was going to be a transition from one area to the next....but it was the end! I never expected it to be open world really. Not like fallout, gta or anything. I had a feeling it was gonna be just a HUGE linear game with alot of side missions but to be honest I dont think I even found a side mission! I thought the game was gonna be so much longer i kinda just tried to charge through then backtrack and pick up stuff i missed but it ended before that!

I agree with whoever said about that regeneration health I mean come on what the HELL?!?! It makes sense in one game and one game only....halo because you are where a big fancy suit of armor and a layer of enery around you protects you but after too much damage it dissipates and you have a shot or 2 left because theyn the layer is gone and your getting hit with bullets. Stay alive long enough and the suit recharges but any damage done without the suit requires a health kit. Now tell me where does a game like rage, or worse again CALL OF DUTY get off having standard human beings taking a bullet and running around? Ok gameplay purposes. IM down with that the same way in almsot any shooter you can carry 10000 lbs of ammo and guns. But I think it makes the gameplay worse(except halo ). I used to love playing old pc games like half life and when you shot somone up they were hurt until they healed! It changes the whole flow of the game. If you get trapped with no health your screwed.

With healthpack based health there is a certain element of fight or flight. 'Ive got 10% health I better amke this a headshot if i wanna live!" ...regenerating health "I better run away for 5 seconds so I can turn around and still take another 10 bullets!". Why should someone who jsut got shot up have a chance to run and hide. No change that you dont even need to hide you jsut have to run. regeneratiing health teaches you the opposite of how to handle yourself in a real firefight. Sticking youself to take a look should be more dangerous but even if you get tagged you can jsut pop down hold your breath and be good to go. Now I excuse halo because it a part of the lore and also the gameplay is tailored to that kind of health system. For example weapons that drain your sheild but cant kill you. Halo started teh regen health thing but the game was built around that ability so it works. WHy every other shooter on earth took such a unique effective health system and just slapped it on every other game is beyond me. The biggesdt reason I can think of oddly enough is that it removes the effort of balancing health pickups thrughout singleplayer lol

I dunno, but if we're going to argue lore I'd suggest that the nanotrites do not seem too contrived and the health regen seems to fit with that program pretty well. Maybe weapons to disable (even if just temporarily) the nanotrites would fit better?

Actually i did watch lots of the coverage before Rage was released and i never heard anything about open world.
In fact i rechecked some of the Willits interviews now and what he describes as Rage's gameplay is pretty much accurate in what the game turned out in the end.
I could post the links here but i remember reading something about links to other sites being forbidden in this forum.

In my opinion, this "open world" misunderstanding has to do with player's personal backgrounds and their expectations as a result:

I myself never cared about open world RPGs and therefore expected ID to make an upgraded first person shooter.

Lots of RPG players on the other hand might have interpreted coverage on Rage in a different way, especially since ID now belongs to Zenimax which also owns Bethesda which are famous for their open world RPGs.

Yeah, I never cared for this whole "open world" thing and indeed I can't recall a single time when Willits or anyone else said it would be. He's always said "open but direct," and that's exactly what Rage is, and I love it.

What really buggs me about the videos and stuff they showed was all the content they took out. I noticed the red mutant isn't in the game, neither is the badass one with the mowhawk, which wasn't on videos but looks like a better enemy than the other mutants. It also looked in the interview gameplay like there was going to be alot of fighting mutants in the Wasteland, as they showed mutants outside the Crazy joe area I think it was, running around and some throwing the junk on fire. That's what really got me thinking the game was gonna be cool, but then they took all that out.

If this sounds tacky then I am effing sorry.

I have played ID games since Wolfenstein. Yes, the old shareware DOS version.

They have so far not failed to dssappoint.

Put yer consoles away kiddies.

Back a long long time ago when computers were down into the 8 KB mem range, were happy and were killers......lol.

So after performing Rage on a SOTA PC, I am very happy with this game.

It is both visually enticing, and playfully on top of the game.

It might not be Grand Theft Auto, or one of a thousand BS titles on xBox, but it is still a SOA gaming handle.

I for one will stand here and defend ID long atfer you console pussies quit whining about one thing or another.

At the end of the day, who fracking cares.

It's game on beyotches................lol

cheers mates

I would disagree. Rage certainly is disappointing but apart from Doom 3 and possibly Quake 4 the rest are pretty good. Some of the older games are excellent.

I know you did not mean what you said, the opposite in fact, but I do mean what I say.

Nah you can post links to other sites, just not to sites of a dodgy nature or sporting dodgy content. lol I'm not going to post links because I can't be frigged going surfing for links, but I would direct you to the Bethesda Official YouTube Channel and the RAGE dev diaries type introduction to RAGE-thingy, which is presented in several parts. They talk about NPCs and quest givers, exploration, choice, thinking-man's game over straight out kick the door in shooter type game, visiting compounds and settlements and being greeted with hostility until you ingratiate yourself with the settlers there... a lot of it amounts to misrepresenting RAGE.

It sounds like you'll be driving around a Wasteland (off your own back) coming upon different settlements containing NPCs, unique characters with unique problems. You'll be met with suspicion, you'll take a few quests, go off on your shooter rampage and return to find favour with the locals. In fact what you do is emerge from the Ark and head with Dan to settlement one (Hagar territory), whose quests take you to settlement two (Outrigger), and you eventually get a buggy to complete your quest which takes you to settlement three (Wellspring). You don't so much come upon these places as you do plough through them at speed as the main quests take you to them. Side-quests are often presented but to my mind they appear when you've cleared an area and you get to go back to that area to search for civvies (Ghost territory) or a guy's booze (Wasted territory) etc.

It's not that they're presenting falsehoods, because when you're promoting a game you tend not to qualify what you say with anything approaching a negative, but it is misrepresenting RAGE a little. So there are settlements in which you're greeted suspiciously (Wellspring NPCs react to your funky Ark garb, and until you're in with the mayor - of Subway too - you're not greeted by 'hello''s and 'thanks for doing X's' around the place by passing NPCs. You can't exactly say, "You do drive to settlements when you follow the main quest-line, and you meet great NPCs who'll keep you moving forward, and keep you busy, but if you hop in your buggy expecting to enter say, Ghost territory, without a quest, you won't find anything there, or you'll come upon a locked door." Willits does say in I think around the third or fourth video that it's a shooter and people shouldn't get the wrong idea about what id does. But he doesn't exactly say, it's a shooter and people shouldn't get the wrong idea about what RAGE *is*! You could easily take it as being this is id doing something else and they've retained their shooter elements, because *that's* what id does. "so we've got this and this and this... on top of our shooter stuff."

I didn't watch this crap until early, or maybe late January, so ages after I'd played RAGE. I dunno, after I'd posted here recently, that's when I watched it. But when I was watching it I came to realise where some players have gotten the wrong idea. Mainly I was just gawping like, wha? This isn't RAGE. I think you said it best in your post here earlier - it's like Wolfenstein. (If Wolf had had an old jeep and a WWII countryside to drive around. lol)

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ComboBreaker, K-dog is right about the Nanotrites and the regeneration. I didn't say the regen system didn't make sense. The idea is you play a guy emerging from an Ark, from the past, who is altogether more *special* than anyone else in the Wasteland - except maybe other Ark-dudes like Captain Marshall and some Authority guys - you're BADASS! I mean if you take the lore from the book - I don't, but meh, if you do - then you are a vet of many tours of many theatres of war. Dan Hagar pretty much tells you this before he sends you off to wipe out a camp full of badass bandits. "You Ark people are special." He knows you won;t get owned because you can regen and restart your heart.

You have the Nanotrites working their magic in your blood and you have the defibrillator installed - at first I thought it was part of the Ark suit but that gets taken from you so I dunno how it;s installed. lol But yeah, it makes sense in terms of background and setting, but it just svcks as a game mechanic. It's all go and no blow. It offers too much and there's no trade-off. Players don't earn it, it's just there, messing with my Chi that despite not getting hit so often, it wouldn't matter if I did. Players can be good at RAGE, but they're not punished when they're not good. I don;t when games stopped kicking my ass and just started helping me along. But meh, this generation of gamers gets sore thumbs from their joypads for holding forward too long, I used to get sore thumbs for being obligated to press jump a thousand times in two minutes, while pressing various memorised combos on a d-pad, and artfully dodging whatever general-svck onscreen was coming at my guy - or have to start the entire game all over again!

lol.. no, not really, but seriously... games like RAGE shouldn't hold my hand! It's a kickass shooter, it has the right bits in the right places, but it's got one hand tied behind it's back and it keeps telling me where to hit it. Like, "Go for the jaw, man, I have a glass jaw." Then when I hit it it goes - when it recovers - "Woah nice shot dude! You're epic." No, I mean yeah it was kinda cool that I strafe-jumped and bumped off those two Mutants, but I mean, if they'd hit me, nothing would have happened. I'd have just wound up shooting them point-blank and feeling less cool that I have red borders on my screen. "No d00d, you're the bestest evar! Now get ready, cos I'm sending more guys your way. Hit me in the sack man, I'll go right down if you do that."

Edit - Wall of text. Sorry gang.

Edit 2 - PenGun, if you didn't like Doom3 or Quake 4, you were never going to like RAGE. It's kinda feels like QIIIA if you hop around and strafe-jump while you're shotting at stuff... but before that... meh... not sure I want a retro-spastic time of it while gaming. When I do go play uh, old games.