Is Rage worth playing?

[Arbiter]

I have played all Carmack era id Software games with the exception of Rage. Is the game any good? Does racing play a significant part?

[DannyMan]

Rage is a good game.

[P41R47]

Do you like Mad Max films?
If yes, you will enjoy it no matter what.
If not, you will probably enjoy it but found some parts lacking.

If you want something KINDA similar setting but without the vehicle missions part, try Ashes 2063.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

It's under baked and the ending is a complete joke, but it can be fun and it still looks pretty good on a technical level, even if the color palette can grow old after awhile. For every good thing about RAGE, there are one or two things that could have been better. It won't be remembered as fondly as any Quake or DOOM game, no matter how much time passes because it's too derivative to offer any real nostalgic value on its own. For an id game, its main problem was that it felt uninspired. 

[Murdoch]

It has it's moments. The dead city area is bleakly stunning and the wingsticks were fun. Give it a bash if you're bored.

[PeterMoro]

Rage is a good combination of FPS with car racing / warfare. The story is medicore but the game was pretty good for it's time.

 

Rage 2 is quite a different game. Just as good, maybe better, but with a more non-linear progression. It's a lot more like the Far Cry games, where you explore the map and unlock next area and checkpoints. Also you slowly unlock extra, cool abilities. 

 

Both games are pretty cool IMO.

[Nevander]

I'll repost what I posted before. It's a fantastic game, but disappointing ending. Everything up until the ending scene is very good.

[Chezza]

I've only played Rage 2.

 

I enjoyed it enough to complete the game. Combat is nice and fluid, solid amount of open world content and skill is required to defeat some enemies.

 

But I can't say I'm impressed with the game. Story, dialogue and villains feels like the game was made in the early 2000s. The vehicle progression is boring, especially as other vehicles aren't quite as good as your starting one with exception to flying to just skip all the travel. Needs more enemy variations. The game is quite forgettable to me. But again, combat is solid.

[Asphalt]

To me personally, with the exception of classics like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, Rage 1 is actually the best FPS game that I ever played as of 2021. It just clicked on every possible level, great visuals, cool story, cool characters, the perfect blend of shooter action and RPG elements, an amazing selection of weapons, the best post-apocalyptic setting ever seen in a videogame, great level design and atmosphere... everything is just spot on. 

 

Sure it has flaws. It can get repetitive if you want to complete all the extra missions, as most of them is just the same things reiterated over and over, plus it's quite limited to be considered an open world, especially by today's standards, and the ending is somehow rushed and lacking a real final setpiece. But it is so much fun overall that those problems feel really minor on the whole.

The racing part was promoted as one of the biggest assets of the game, while in reality I don't think it was. At all. If you enjoy it, there's a good number of different challenges to take, and you can race a lot, but as far as the actual game goes, it's only needed to progress the story in a couple of occasions. Driving is central in navigating the environment when you leave the settlements, but racing is very limited to those few missions where you have to win a certain competition in order to obtain better vehicles to move on. 

If you can buy it, The Scorchers DLC is a very worth addition, and makes the game almost twice as long. 

Not to mention that it includes some of the best levels of the entire campaign.

 

Rage 2, on the other hand, is a different beast. And and extremely inferior one in my opinion.

 

[MFG38]

Yes, Rage is worth playing.

 

9 hours ago, Asphalt said:

The Scorchers DLC is a very worth addition, and makes the game almost twice as long. 

 

I'd hardly call adding a 2-3-hour extra questline nearly doubling the game's length. Or did you just get hopelessly lost?

[7Mahonin]

I think it’s worth playing, but be prepared for this to be a one time playthrough. The game just doesn’t have too much replay value. It has some amazing weaponry though like the semi auto shotgun and the boomerang things. It also has some nice set pieces but a lot of the features in this game could’ve been far more effective if the game was slightly more open world than it is. There’s vehicles in the game but they feel like a tagged on feature that could’ve been way more cool had they done it a bit differently. Overall, it’s not a bad game, and it’s worth playing if you’re a fan of Id, and want to see Carmack’s final Id baby. 
 

It also has really good voice acting and character models, but I swear someone spent WAY more time on the female character models because I remember feeling like the female characters all looked more polished and animated than the males, but maybe that was just the Xbox version. 

[Asphalt]

On 11/15/2021 at 3:39 PM, MFG38 said:

I'd hardly call adding a 2-3-hour extra questline nearly doubling the game's length. Or did you just get hopelessly lost?

 

I remember it being quite long, and the maps being very big.

But it's also me losing time to explore everything in search for secrets and hidden items, so it may have took me longer.

That temple level was incredible. And so was the final showdown. Great addon in my opinion. \m/

[snapshot]

yes, levels where you do main questlines are varied enough to keep things fresh, you never feel like you're doing the same thing over and over or that you're stuck in the same place, except when you're driving outside towns, loved those cute little town minigames, only issue i remember having with it is getting lost looking for npcs to finish missions or progress to next mission steps in towns, but even that becomes a non issue once you learn their layouts.

[Johnatone]

Yes. From my experience on PS3 (and a small stint with it on PC):

 

Play RAGE Twice, once on a normal or hard campaign, and once on Ultra Nightmare with the Scorchers DLC.

 

The art style and lighting is quite beautiful, although the pallet suffers from the Quake (Quayola!) playbook. The models are all great, and the whole game has a unique atmosphere. (Which was stripped completely in Rage 2 for a more neon and Borderlands style approach. Boo.)

 

The driving is fantastic, arcade like, and fun, and the multi-player modes for it were great! I wished they had expanded upon this more. However, on PC the driving controls are shit and sluggish to control, and I'm too dumb to get an XBox controller set up properly, so I didn't enjoy those bits as much during that playthrough.

 

The shooting, looting, crafting, gear, and item systems worked flawlessly on a controller and were fun to use. The spider bots are quite OP, and some things like the RC car get completely underused.

 

I said play it with the Scorchers DLC on your second run with the hardest difficulty for a reason: the nail/rail-gun you get is super overpowered, and the additional looting and money means you'll never run out of resources.

 

The gunplay is slow like Doom 3 but a lot more fun. While linear (with a few levels being reversed with evidence of your earlier rampage littering the level for your return and opening up new passages*) there is a nice bit of push and give to a lot of the battles, the arenas feel more handcrafted for each encounter. Other spots you're just playing a lot of wack a mole.

 

 

 

One of the things I feel wasn't appreciated about this game is that it was part of a dying breed when it came to a high level of quality and attention to detail in handcrafted levels (to a point, I'm not dick riding it.) As much as I hate Destiny, it was the same way. Bungie created a beautiful and mostly handcrafted world. And then butchered the whole damn thing, but that's a rant for never because nobody cares.
 

 

 

I loved the card game: it's my favorite in-game mini-game since FFVIII's card game. I wish there'd been a irl version of it for marketing, or even a companion app for my phone. The other mini-games were fun as well, especially five-finger filet.

 

I felt the Scorcher's DLC was fairly priced and one of the last examples of great single player based DLC before the industry took a shit. It added a little bit of everything to the game except MP modes: a new weapon, characters, an actual boss, a complete side story, more Mutant Bash TV, a couple or mini-games, et cetera.

 

You can get all the preorder DLC on PC with the standard edition by simply changing a configuration file in notepad. Obviously I don't advise doing this if there's a legal way to get it and support the creators/IP holders. But the double barrel, balanced armor set, and extra money and loot from the sewer levels help pad the runtime and make the game easier to get through.

 

I thought the celebrity voice actors were used well, even though I find that whole trend to be a waste of money that could go into development. On the other hand: Steve fuckin' Blum. Hell yes. (I was upset he wasn't brought back for the sequel.)

 

Game was overall too short and the ending was booty, but to 100% it with all the extra content will still fill most of a fun day for you. Lots of potential with this one, a lot of fun for two playthroughs. Then you'll play Rage 2 once and enjoy yourself, but feel a dirty sense of wasted potential. Overall, I think Rage is like Quake 4, flawed but wrongly underrated and forgotten.

 

EDIT: Oh yeah! Co-op. Well. I couldn't find anyone to play online with, my ex-wife refused to play it via split screen with me, and there was only one level I could actually cheese by playing with both controllers. So I guess it's there still. I don't think you're missing too much.

 

And the multi-player car combat was awesome! I was so happy to get the opportunity to experience that. I hadn't had that much fun with a car combat game on PlayStation since Twisted Metal for the original PlayStation (before the started fucking with the car physics in III and beyond, that is.) Yeah, the vehicle MP is a completely underrated and forgotten gem in this game that deserved more attention and post release support. So I guess it's still there, but I don't know if you can do anything with it anymore.

 

But besides that, RAGE + Anarchy Edition DLC + Scorchers DLC is totally worth two sessions. And take the first time slow, breath it in, explore the nooks. It really is worth it (and helps you realize half the nooks are empty so you can skip them on the second 100% guide assisted playthrough you'll do if you're a completionist.)

 

 

Edited November 20, 2021 by Johnatone : "Sewer" had autocorrected to "server," and I forgot to mention the got dang co-op!

[Capellan]

The first Rage is kinda like a po-faced version of Borderlands with more tiresome boss fights and an even worse ending.  That said, the core gunplay is solid. 

 

Rage 2 is more whimsical and has very fun gunplay.  It does, alas, have a godawful compulsory car-racing mission wedged into the main quest, but apart from that one black spot, and a few occasional elements of glitchiness, it's a solid shooter.

 

[mrthejoshmon]

Rage is worth 1 playthrough, ironically the driving sections that Id were so proud of are the worst bit, anything about the cars is quite crap.

 

If the driving sections were omitted and the game was quite simply strung together levels I'd say it would be to the top of the list of shooters in general, it's got good mechanics and gunplay with interesting sets and fun enemies, ending is shit though.

 

Rage 2 would be an excellent game if it didn't suffer from the Ubisoft styled open world syndrome of having bouts of gameplay dotted around in small areas amongst a sea of fuck and all. Rage 2 is a great shooter; fluid, fast, frantic but most importantly fun, the only issue is that there isn't actually much actual gameplay, there's an absolute boatload of fuck and all going on in the literal wasteland it is set in and to be honest it makes it a hard sell.

 

You can enjoy 15 minutes of pure fun between 30 minutes of dick-in-hand fucking about in a desert, on the plus side the driving is much better now and you have a lot of vehicles to use (the scrap mech and tank are standouts).

[Pirx]

rage is fun. the racing parts are not so much my thing as the shooting, but it's good.

 

i have to reinstall it and see if the problem with mouse input persists under windows 11. last time i tried it, mouse input was unplayably fast, even at just 400 dpi.