So I just finished Rage on PC.

Without getting into the whole PC issue thing (Ran "Mostly" fine on my machine)

The game was ultimately a Major disappointment.

Below are a few points
Negatives:

Game was WAY too linear:
The illusion of an open world is not an open world. It may as well have been a corridor shooter at least then its not trying to sell you an open world.
Worst part of it is, subconsciously I wanted it to be an open world so I kept trying to find other ways around but everything was either blocked by rubble or an invisible wall.

Story:
OMG, I was waiting for the story to get juicy but just as I thought we may be getting somewhere I was at the end of the game.
you can't have a story that starts with humanity on the brink and then is pretty much. Authority are the bad guys but so are the bandits and the mutants and anyone else outside of the 2 towns so you have to kill them.... ? what the?

Game play:
Driving around from place to place was fun but totally pointless. Once you kill the handful of bandits you pretty much drive around in a desolate world and can do bugger all.

Enemies: while visually all the enemies moved/looked fantastic, but ultimately they were just too simple it was no challenge (except for the Giant Mutant in the hospital)
To spice things up I resorted to using my pistol with Fatboys and half a binocular as my primary weapon just to keep it interesting.

Races:
Not sure what to write, sure the first few races were fun but then there was very little point. If they integrated into the "story" a bit then it may have been worthwhile.

Ending
What the hell was that?? I was saving my BFG rounds for a big fight at the end.. but it didn't happen, the mutants were the easiest thing to kill and didn't really make me feel like this was the final battle.
I ended up finishing the game without firing a single BFG round.. I had to finish it then load a save game and finish it again just so I can see what it looked like.
The Giant Mutant in the hospital.. Now that was a monster.


Positives:

Mutant movements: I loved how the little mutants would climb walls etc, just brilliant.

Range of Weapons: selection of weapons was great and different ammo was fun, but as mentioned above it was just more fun to use the pistol in the end.

Graphics: 50/50 on this one.. the environment textures were just shocking but some of the detail on the characters was fantastic.

Mini Games: Some interesting mini games to keep things fun. ( I probably enjoyed the card game more than the actual game)


OVERALL
Without taking into consideration the graphics issues/bugs/poor quality of the PC version,
On game play alone I'd have to give it
5.5/10

If I was to add the PC issue into my evaluation I think it would be a 2/10

JimBoSS

I agree , The game was :

Bad side:

- Ugly textures on xbox 360
- Short as hell
- The story line Ridicules !!!!
- Ending , what the hell is that makes no sens at all.
- The action ends when it starts .
- Very small world
- On pc texture problems

God side :

- Interesting locations
- Some good ideas
- challenging enemies

OVERALL 3/10


John Carmack i want my money back i paid for it too much.

Come on, there are already like 50+ reviews for the game on this forum

That is too harsh. Some valid points were mentioned of course.
But to give it 5/10 that is not fair.
I would give it 83% because of:
A- lack of Real MP
B- Easy AI
C-No end Boss Fight
D- Useless car races

Useless but enjoyable and intense, therefore...NOT useless(also they meaningfully upgrade your car).
And I never thought I would like racing until Rage came along, Before I just liked driving around in games like Half Life 2, Borderlands, Battlefield series...



Thank goodness for that! I hate primitive game design like that..

You missed another 0 on the end of that figure lol. Any thread created now is a review and complaints, or people just complaining before they finish and review the game. It's getting really old.

So glad I read this and didn't waste my limited budget on this for PC. I'll likely give it a rent on X360.

I still can't get why people are complaining about the following things:

1)not an open world
-it was never intended to be a trully open sandbox style world. "open but directed" is the quote. Its open enough that you can pick where you want to go next, but it directs you on a path. This game was never advertised as an RPG- ever.

2)No "Real" multiplayer
-Come on, there is real multiplayer. It may not be what you wanted or falsely expected, but there is 'real" multiplayer. If you're reading this you can a) read and B ) have the internet.
Why not research a game before buying it and then complaining that it wasn't what you expected?

3)Storyline
-Cause people buy Id games for super awesome storylines, right?

I find the game to be pretty good for a FPS, adding extra elements that you wouldn't normally find in an FPS, while not focusing on TDM attached to a 3hr SP campaign.

Might as well post my thoughts. I've played both the Ps3 and PC version (Ps3 version was a disaster but luckily our local store allowed me to trade it in for the PC version)

Negatives:
-No story
-Level recycling
-Abysmal environment textures
-Constant texture pop-in and screen tearing (Ps3 version only)
-Audio skipping (happened only 2 or 3 times, not that big of an issue but I still noticed it)
-Lack of physics (almost everything was indestructable and nailed to the ground)
-Too easy, even on nightmare (even without taking the defibrilator into account)
-Quests were monotonous and didn't feel rewarding
-Terrible ending that made the game feel unfinished (the whole last third of the game felt rushed)
-Multiplayer felt tacked on

Positives:
-Co-op was fun
-Gunplay felt good for the most part
-Enemies have different personalities and fighting styles

Rage was my most anticiapted game of 2011 so I really tried to like it. But the annoyances just kept stacking up while playing, the lack of polish was really obvious in some parts. For me Rage was just a huge disappointment and just wasn't very fun.

Final verdict:
Ps3 version: 2.5/10
PC version: 4/10

It's not a matter of expecting this or that or research, it's a matter of this game could have gotten 92-94% rather than 80's IMO.
Of course I knew beforehand that it doesn't have TDM.
Yet some people gave it 40 or 50%! This is very bad score indeed.

I agree with most of the pros and cons that most of you are specifying, however I cannot agree with anyone who says the game was too short . . . even without the car races there is tons of content ; many missions and later side missions that return to the maps of the main missions, a fair amount of side jobs, sewer explorations and cleanouts, Mutant Bash TV (which I played at least 20 times), collector card searching, wasteland car battles . . . I racked up 40 plus hours and only did half of the races. Rage has some shortcomings including stupid confusing rally races, gunbattling being a little too easy sometimes, and having a serious lack of an exciting or challenging ending, . . . but lack of content just is not one of them.

Yeah, like most of the people here, Rage disappointed.

THE GOOD:
-nervous gunfights.
-the level design, dead city was awesome.
-the overall artistic aspect, the designers did a nice job.
-the driving but...

THE BAD:
-...outside of driving races it becomes totally useless (ooooh look, a bandit car, just passing along, no need to fight).
-the story "oh hi, I just went out of hibernation and will obey at the missions people give me with no complains and even join some resitance group just for the heck of it..."
-fetch type side quests missions, I mean really? "oh look, I need to pick some flowers for an old dude, in an area infested with mutants... " seriously, LOL Id, we're in 2011 guys.
-cartoony characters & animations, honestly, never felt any simpathy for any of the npcs.
-voiceless hero, seriously at some point in the game I felt like npc would say to you something like "yeah, you do what I'm telling you to do, understand **** ? now go get the job done".
-multiplayer? in an Id game? you surely must be joking ( a little bit of co-op missions and some driving sutff? I miss th Quake days, and Quake Live doesn't count).


I understand Id tried to make a difference with this game in comparison to their previous games, but it feels like they took the wrong decisions.
For example, is there any real reason for creating such an open area like the wasteland for just, what, going to point A to point B? destroying some bandit cars? picking a bunch of flowers?
Or all those crappy sique quests, seriously, either make them interesting or don't make them at all.
So in the end, it looks like they tried mix you're simple fps game with some open world rpgish game, and in the end, failed in both.

It's not that Id svck, they're still have potential, it's just that they took the wrong priorities for this game.

IMO, what Id need to do to be more successful:
-motion capture.
-a coherent story, seriously, I'm not asking for some Inception kind of movie, but the way stuff happened in Rage, ugh...
-a talking, charismatic hero, people care more about them than your forgettable silent "yes man" heroes.
-if you want to make again an open area, make it worth it, because if it's just for the cons I mentioned above, you guys better save your ressources for something else.
-and if you want to do side quests again, same as above, I don't want again some "howdy stranger, I don't know you but I'm going to give you a mission, I lost my kitty in some cave infested with thousands of mutties, go save it and I'll give you 100 bucks".

In resume: fast paced action shooter + empty open world = fail.

It shouldn't be a detractor that they went a different route, unless reviewers and gamers are biased towards having TDM automatically included in a FPS. Since it was discussed that they werent doing TDM waaaaaaaay before launch, I don't feel it should be judged on TDM not being there.. Its not there, judge it on what is in game, not what was never intended to be in game.
That would be like giving a stealth game a bad review because you like heavy action cant just storm through, guns blazing. Judge it at face value.

Please also remeber in the post you quoted, am talking about those who have said in plain english "There is no real multiplayer", when there clearly is. its not like they simply scrapped multiplayer, they just used a multiplayer that people arent accustomed to in a FPS. To me that's not a mistake on id's part, it's a player expectation that all FPS must have TDM (not just RAGE, but all FPS). I dont agree with that notion. Most FPS games that i play, i wont play any TDM on. Part of me wishes that TDM would have never become so entwined with FPS games, because they suffer for it. No one makes campaigns that last for more than a couple of hours.. They just use the same old same old TDM to make their money. There is no innovation left in TDM, its just an unimaginative cash cow that usually has a single player minigame attached to it. I have no problems in agetting away from that.

I would way rather have a multiplayer mode that makes me get out of my comfort zone and play a game in a different way. After all, its supposed to be a new experience.
you know what i mean?

Well, your definition of "Real MP" is different from mine and both of us won't change.
Even though there might not be anything left to add to TDM, still id needs to make money and attract the masses whether it's TDM or horde mode etc etc. Look at a Dead Island and how many copies were sold in 10 days or so!
Dead Island is nothing compared to RAGE yet they made tons of money. Don't you like id to make money?
Id map designs is one of the best so I could only imagine what would have been with TDM.

see, thats just symantics though.
real multiplayer is when multiple people can play a game together, for real.
Simply say "I want TDM or horde mode" if that's what you want.
To say that combat racing and CO-OP missions aren't "real" multiplayer is kind of a slap to those who enjoy those modes.

Dead island.. in all fairness, zombies are pretty popular right now. Haven't actually played it, but it seems to be a hack and slash, with zombies (and a damned fine trailer) as its selling point.
should id have dropped mutants and made zombies the focus of the game, just to make money? To me that would be pretty much on par with including TDM just for the sake of money.


It's not that I don't want id to make money. I think they will make plenty off of RAGE when it is all said and done- without TDM being a focus of the dev team.
I am not outright against TDM, i just find it refreshing that it isnt the focal point, using all of the dev resources at the sacrifice of a lengthy SP campaign..
When the studio editor is dropped (shame it wasnt at launch). PC sales will jump and PC users will get the ability to play around with some new tech, make TDM maps and other mods.
Lets also not forget that this engine is going to be utilized in a slew of future games. id will make money, I am not worried about that.

Haha I didn't mean to slap those who like Combat Racing. Btw I like Co-Op cause it's similar to horde mode but once it's done we have to move on. TDM is always a challenge from many points of view.

Like you said zombies are a big hit but boring too like BO. It's better to have enemies shooting and challenging you like bandits/mutants and others. To be precise MW3 will provide that based on id tech!

I hope you are right about editor stuff as things are very quiet now. Biggest hope is Doom4.

Me too, after the blacklash from the PC launch issues, it seems like it would be the saving grace for RAGE on PC. I know theres gotta be some die-hard modders out there that are salivating in anticipation.

My Thoughts after completion?
Here's my thoughts:

Played it again, went to all the side jobs etc (job boards in both towns) as well as sewers in random areas.. also really had a good look at the amount of art work that went into the game.= Awesome..
Also checked out some more multi-player and had tons of fun in the racing and leveling up in that. No I haven't mastered the racing but it is really fun so far..

On the side of an ending, I'v already made suggestions twice in the past week. ~ in short, the game is really open to mod making or hopefully a free dlc addition. ~ it would only make sense for id to justify that notion. I think if the movie at the end would have been longer, “ironed several pants” etc, then it would have been much more on a satisfaction side of things for many.
However there are 2 sides of the story on this matter, as some players tend be in a rush to just play to the ending? And others tend to play the game for what it's worth, do the side jobs, play the extra game content, play both multi-player mods, (freak'n play up to what you spent your money on.) I suppose that if you don't play the game for what its worth? then you'd have some miss-leading reason to cry about something?
Other than that though, damn good game!

On the side of repetitive? not really, the game it's self is rather good and I don't see much repeating, ai tends to be like that unless they are to stand there and tell you a freak'n story, I haven't seen a game yet that wasn't. Rage pretty much surpasses that layer though.
The forum trolls/hot chair babies on the other hand, are repetitive and usually lack ideas and suggestion..

So again I don't really have much complaint about the game or even how the game ends now, but I do about the shifty community..
So then.. My thoughts are about the launch of the game, and who pop'd in the picture complaining instead of understanding, more so than the actual game it's self. Which in reality, is the real problem..

Going back to the game..
Rage is really a good game, if you take your time with it and play it.

My comments/review were not based on a rush through game.

I did all the quest I could find and made sure I had completed everything before going on to do the final mission.

I don't think the game lacked length or content, it was probably about right any more and it may have got too repetitive.

But;
Giving me a BFG and allowing me to finish the game without having to use it was just annoying.. I was waiting for something that would challenge me (not necessarily a big final boss monster) but something that would require me to use my 8 BFG rounds. I didn't want to waste them because I figured Something had to be coming that would require this.

The last fight was just like any other, if anything it was a bit easy, I was expecting it get hard or even intense but it didn't. Most of the quest had more intense portions than the ending, so naturally you feel like something is wrong.
If there was an Epic battle or a slightly challenging one at the end then i would at least finish with a sense of accomplishment or a wow I didn't expect that or anything.... but when the credits came up I was left with a WTF feeling..

And for those that have mentioned that there would be more in DLC, well then the final battle should make me eager to play that DLC big battle and leave on a cliffhanger.. (I have no problem with that sort of ending)

These are just my thoughts/ opinions so for all who are getting defensive in the games support please understand, I am not challenging what you thought or your opinions I am just stating mine.

Jim

"What the hell was that?? I was saving my BFG rounds for a big fight at the end.. but it didn't happen, the mutants were the easiest thing to kill and didn't really make me feel like this was the final battle.
I ended up finishing the game without firing a single BFG round.. I had to finish it then load a save game and finish it again just so I can see what it looked like."

I did the exact same thing.