id Software's Rage

Is it an RPG? Is it a first-person shooter? This is a question which reverberates around my mind while I wander through Rage’s wastes. Why the confusion? Because id’s latest shooter hovers somewhere in the middle of these genres, a chimera with, oddly enough, lashings of Motorstorm-esque racing thrown in for good measure. Rage …

[Anonymous Coward]

Yawn

Yet another post apocalyptic clone with what appears to be nothing original in it whatsoever.

[Roger B]

Except amazing visuals, great weapons and what sounds like an interesting online mode, I'm picking my copy up on Friday and think it might just tear me away from Gears 3, plus its from id! It does sound a bit short though, although the rumoured sewer entrances are apparantly tricky to find and should stretch the game out a bit longer.

[James Hughes 1]

Fine...

Got any better ideas? No? It appears no-one else does either.

(It does have a new graphics engine which is apparently pretty damn good, I believe that's original)

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Fine...

This is just id doing what it does.

"Got any better ideas? No? It appears no-one else does either."

Played a Bioware game lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting

..given that PC owners are currently enjoying the later release date, and the opportunity it is affording them for last minute cancellation of pre-orders, having read some of the more reputable reviews.

Me, I might consider it if it's cheap in this year's Steam Christmas sale.

[Andrew Baines]

Where have all the games designers gone?

Seems that for the last 15 years, all we've been offered is gradually improving graphics. Nobody got an original idea any more?

[yossarianuk]

Re : Where have all the games designers gone?

They were casualties of Microsoft's total monopoly.

[Day]

Limbo, Bastion, Portal. All of these seem pretty original to me. There are lots of original ideas in games.

[LPF]

Nice tech

But as before we will have to wait for someone to license it , to make a proper game with it, and seriously no multiplayer?? GTFO

by the way , the "Even on an Xbox" dig, pathetic , grow up! oh yes and you should have run it on a PC . fps on PC beat fps on poxy consoles, FACT!

[batfastad]

The actual FPS engine of this sounds promising. I've dropped off from gaming in the last few years apart from retro/emulation, mainly through lack of time but also because there's nothing that has really appealed..

I was a big fan of Quake 2 and Quake 3 and Timesplitters on the PS2. But FPS games these days tend to be more varied or war simulations.

I'd love to see a return to the fundamentals of the arcade-style FPS... deathmatches, capture the bag, larger maps and more of them, improved graphics, improved bot intelligence, no difference between characters, but all on modern hardware. Hopefully Doom 4 will bring that to me!

[Asgard]

@"deathmatches, capture the bag, larger maps"

I totally agree and as for "No Quake-style multiplayer" in Rage, that's very unfortunate and some what annoying as playing against real people in a FPS is often the best part of a FPS game. AI bots are never as good as playing against real people.

I was really hoping for Quake-style multiplayer in it, which combined with far better graphics, new weapons and huge maps would have been amazing. Sadly its not to be and that is a big mistake. :(

[trottel]

"AI bots are never as good as [humans]". That is because they dumb them down. Play an online shooter with some "haxors" and you get a feeling that playing with a fully enabled bot would be like: you would not get a single hit in - or maybe one frag every now and then by dumb luck.

Apart from that, that is what *really* freaks me out every now and then: those bots can easily defeat the best players out there by a huge margin. Now make a Terminator with 360 degree view and bye bye John Connor. I.e. humans will not stand any chance at all when - not if - Judgment Day comes.

We are all going to die!

[Alan Bourke]

... not playing this with a pad.

[Piro]

Contrasts a lot with...

Ars Techinca's review of this.

They said it was a dull, if very pretty, grey/brown post-apocalyptic shooter with bad quest design.

[RoboJ1M]

What's with all the "even on the Xbox 360"?

And what about PS3? Is THAT even as good?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you actually play it? It's not an RPG in the slightest, it's yet another id Software corridor-shooting tech demo. It may as well be Doom 3 pt 2.

A corridor-shooting tech demo which they've managed to spectacularly balls up on PC, ironically enough.

It's a remarkable achievement on console though

[Loyal Commenter]

So...

A cross between Fallout 3 and Borderlands then.

[yossarianuk]

Linux version?

There's still not been confirmed if a Linux version is coming out ...

Im in the 1% that cares if it does - although if you have a Nvidia card performance for games is usually faster in Linux for openGL games.

So anyone who really cares about getting the max performance out of their machines should use Linux - why buy a windows version when it's slower ?

Shame there's not much out there - although this year has seen a semi boom of indie developers supporting Linux.

For example (this looks awesome)

http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2011/10/linux-game-preview-airmech-new.html

[E Haines]

"[M]ost of us don’t have a PC with hardware expensive enough to really do Rage justice". I'm sorry, but that's absurd. Aging, outdated, 5-year-old consoles certainly can't do it justice. Please review it on a system that can actually play it; I strongly suspect that most people who are interested do in fact have at least semi-recent computer hardware.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I strongly suspect that most people who are interested do in fact have at least semi-recent computer hardware."

I used to think that having a top spec PC was the be all and end all.

However, these days I have better things to spend my money on than a £2000 gaming PC that needs upgraded every couple of months.

I built a reasonably decent spec PC for under £400 for work and older games on VMs/dosbox/emulators, and the XBox 360 on the living room TV plays the recent games.

(There are also various consoles littered about the house for when I take the notion, Wii/Ps2/DC/N64 etc.)

This allows me to spend my disposable income on alcohol, cars, holidays and saving up for the important things in live.

I quite enjoy sitting with a beer in the living room playing Fallout 3 / Bioshock / Oblivion etc.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

£2000 "gaming" PC?

Blimey, whoever bought that got ripped off.

[Zmodem]

if its like gorgeous blonde, then it might also depend on how deep you go

[Anonymous Coward]

21,654 MB download on Steam. This better be good.

[Zmodem]

its 90% assets and 10% game.. it is id`s first game where gameplay is worked around a joypad, and second attempt at a storyline while the engine was in full developement

doom 4 will be better

[Andy Farley]

Twelve hours?

No. Not any more. I'll wait until it's a fiver and pick it up then. Maybe. A game needs to be >~25 hours before I'll pay top whack for it.

[ph0b0s]

Non PC review

What do people think about this trend of games not getting a PC review any-more. Maybe it would have highlighted the issues people were having with this particular game. I was surprised that even this website is even falling into this trend.

So what do others think. Is this an issue or not?

[Zmodem]

PC games will always destroy toy console games, getting rage to work on a xbox is an achievement, the peice of pap box is still running on directx 8, tnt2 and ddr 266 mem chunks

[MJI]

Not necessary

Have you seen the Uncharted 3 gameplay trailer?

[MJI]

Got it yesterday

Great fun - runs well on PS3 but not quite exclusive quality