RAGE is apparently a very solid game!

[entryway]

[Marnetmar]

Edward850 said:

Been reading the RAGE thread over at something awful. Apparently the engine is misinterpreting some peoples hardware set-ups with ridiculous values such as a 3MHz CPU with 0MB of Video memory, which is of course making problems with the performance scaler.

That's hilarious.

[entryway]

That's ATI
fixed?

[Jonathan]

Ars Technica posted a review. The general vibe is summed up by the headline, "RAGE is creatively and mechanically bankrupt, but it sure is pretty". So uh, yeah they're not big fans.

Unfortunately, their criticisms sound depressingly plausible to me, lamenting a dearth of originality and a blandly unsatisfying game experience. I don't understand how a company as successful and technically pioneering as id can be so mediocre in terms of design.

[Marnetmar]

Jonathan said:

I don't understand how a company as successful and technically pioneering as id can be so mediocre in terms of design.

There's your answer.

[Epyo]

Played as soon as I got home last night around 3am. At first it wouldn't load, had to turn off triple buffering in my driver, that fixed it. Unfortunately, the game's all fucked up like in the video entryway posted. Flickering triangles, flickering gui, insane texture-pop, and just generally low framerate. I dunno if my laptop's even good enough but it has an i7 and an ATI mobility radeon hd 5730 1gb. I'm assuming it's just some ATI problem someone will fix somewhere.

[ReFracture]

Clonehunter said:

PS2 and XBox... Under different subtitles, but I'm pretty sure they're all the same.

The RTCW games were actually quite different on consoles. Xbox version was fun with it's co-op, PS2 version was garbage.

I don't know guys, I've always had interest in Rage, being an iD game and all.. but $60 seems like an awful lot of money to spend on a game that doesn't really break ground outside of an asteroid striking the planet.

[Vesperas_]

The Xbox 360 version apparently has its own host of issues. To run it well, you need to install to the HD but the Xbox isn't able to tell the difference between the three discs, so you will need to manually uninstall each disc before the next one, then install the 8 GB worth of data on the next disc or you'll have a lot of pop-up, choppy gameplay and other performance issues. So if you play it on 360, just expect to be waiting for an 8 GB install every 4-5 hours unless you don't mind it running like shit from what people are saying.

Edit: I've also heard that Rage does not come packed with mod tools on the PC, despite id Software claiming it would. Can anyone confirm this?

[Craigs]

Jonathan said:

Ars Technica posted a review. The general vibe is summed up by the headline, "RAGE is creatively and mechanically bankrupt, but it sure is pretty". So uh, yeah they're not big fans.

Unfortunately, their criticisms sound depressingly plausible to me, lamenting a dearth of originality and a blandly unsatisfying game experience. I don't understand how a company as successful and technically pioneering as id can be so mediocre in terms of design.

They also called STALKER an FPSRPG and referred to it as "Oblivion with Guns" in one article. They're fucking idiots.

[DooM_RO]

John Carmack said that developing RAGE for the consoles was a big mistake, future titles will put priority on PC hardware http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23760

[Dco16]

So I've played about two hours of Rage. What I expected out of the game was fun combat. It accomplishes this, but it will likely get dry before the end. The driving mechanics are fantastic.

Also, in the above review, I can't help but be cynical for the future of gaming when people bitch about having to manually save. Maybe since I'm on PC and have a quick save button, something I'm sure the 360/PS3 lacks, it's better for me.

They'd better patch this soon, because the graphics glitches and texture loading problems are horrifying. I was able to play despite these and there were times when half the screen flashed with multicolored shit.

[DooM_RO]

Fiend said:

So I've played about two hours of Rage. What I expected out of the game was fun combat. It accomplishes this, but it will likely get dry before the end. The driving mechanics are fantastic.

Also, in the above review, I can't help but be cynical for the future of gaming when people bitch about having to manually save. Maybe since I'm on PC and have a quick save button, something I'm sure the 360/PS3 lacks, it's better for me.

They'd better patch this soon, because the graphics glitches and texture loading problems are horrifying. I was able to play despite these and there were times when half the screen flashed with multicolored shit.

So the game is indeed as fun as they say?Can you also tell us something about the level design?Finally on a scale from 1 to 10 how much would you give the game?

[hardcore_gamer]

entryway said:

Edward850 said:

Been reading the RAGE thread over at something awful. Apparently the engine is misinterpreting some peoples hardware set-ups with ridiculous values such as a 3MHz CPU with 0MB of Video memory, which is of course making problems with the performance scaler.

Wtf?

I thought one of Id's greatest strengths was creating well optimized engines that run very well.

I never assumed that Rage would be any kind of a masterpiece, but I honestly feel baffled by seeing an Id Software game failing on the PC from a technical perspective in such a laughable fashion.

[entryway]

hardcore_gamer said:

Wtf?

I thought one of Id's greatest strengths was creating well optimized engines that run very well.

I never assumed that Rage would be any kind of a masterpiece, but I honestly feel baffled by seeing an Id Software game failing on the PC from a technical perspective in such a laughable fashion.

Probably because Doom 3 Alpha was leaked by ATI :)

[Vermil]

To me, it seems most of the reviews say it's lots of fun (both the fps stuff and the driving), but it adds absolutely nothing new to the genre, that it's arguably old school (funny how thats good in some cases, bad in others).

And the story apparently sucks. Though personally I could see it a mile away that there wasn't going to be a particularly deep story in Rage and ID gave allot of it away long in advance (much like Raven did with the Stroggification in Quake 4).

But everything else is equally praised and criticized. For instance, I've read one review that states that the characters are lifeless and another review that states they are very life like.

[Xeros612]

Sig-ma said:

the length (10-15 hours),

What? Really? That's all it lasts? What the hell, Doom 3 lasted around that much time (if you don't skip all the pdas or try to speedrun it), and that was a linear game! On the cut-down xbox port, for that matter! For a game that's touted as relatively nonlinear OR open to only last that long is pretty disappointing. I mean, sure, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky last about that long if you play it linearly and only take the main quests but still.

DooM_RO said:

John Carmack said that developing RAGE for the consoles was a big mistake, future titles will put priority on PC hardware http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23760

Good! Finally, a developer that sees the folly of the ways of developing for consoles primarily! Shame it wasn't til after this game came out that he realized it, though.

hardcore_gamer said:

I thought one of Id's greatest strengths was creating well optimized engines that run very well.

Some computers struggled running iD Tech IV when Doom 3 came out, did they not? If anything I'd say one of iD's greatest strengths is making powerful, long-lasting engines. (I mean, Doom 3's lighting system alone kicks the ass of many, many more modern games', even with stencil shadows.)

[DooM_RO]

The game only ships on the 7th of October in europe.So tell me how is this game from the perspective of a doomworld user?

[hardcore_gamer]

Xeros612 said:

Some computers struggled running iD Tech IV when Doom 3 came out, did they not?

Not even remotely the same.

Doom 3 was demanding because it was an extremely good looking game at the time, and not because of crippling technical issues.

[Dco16]

DooM_RO said:

So the game is indeed as fun as they say?Can you also tell us something about the level design?Finally on a scale from 1 to 10 how much would you give the game?

Who is they? The level design is linear but the levels themselves are beautiful and finely detailed. I haven't finished it yet and according to the playtime estimates I still have 11 hours to go, so an overall rating is impossible.

But seriously, the graphics glitches are fucking ridiculous. Every time you turn everything goes from blurry to clear even if the engine had already rendered the area. It's less noticeable while exploring indoor/less graphically intense areas, but there needs to be a patch. The worst part is that besides those bugs, I'm easily getting better performance out of it than I do for most new games. It only has slight FPS drops during racing when speeding through an area.

EDIT: Now I've read on twitter in a massive retweeting fiasco between idSoftware, AMD, and NVidia that they're working on solutions using new drivers which will be released "in a few hours." So no patch for the game, just more drivers that I have to install on top of the drivers I had to install to get it to run in the first place. I don't hate this game, but it's a little high maintenance for something that cost $60.

I guess id tech 5 is so technologically advanced that it requires drivers that don't exist yet.

[Quast]

entryway said:

image

Oh wow, I bet an Apple II could run rage! Take THAT odell lake...number munchers..

Sweet.

[Vesperas_]

Xeros612 said:

What? Really? That's all it lasts?

Doom 3 lasted more than 10 hours for me my first run and while very linear at points, I still liked it. Rage is apparently also linear and much of the length is from mini-games and optional MMO-esque fetch-quests that have no reason to exist beyond adding to the length. I wasn't really expecting an amazing story but I was expecting a huge wasteland to drive around in and all kinds of environments to explore. Rage doesn't sound like it has any of that.

Zero612 said:

Some computers struggled running iD Tech IV when Doom 3 came out, did they not? If anything I'd say one of iD's greatest strengths is making powerful, long-lasting engines. (I mean, Doom 3's lighting system alone kicks the ass of many, many more modern games', even with stencil shadows.)

Doom 3 had problems but this is something different. This is an obvious console port with technology that simply doesn't work well at creating immersion. There's a lot of texture tearing on PC, but no v-sync option. There are no real options to speak of. Mouse movement that feels good in-game apparently changes in menus to lightning fast (no smooth mouse movement). I'm sure many of the issues will be fixed.

The pop-in issue happens on pretty much all hardware. Carmack said himself it is a serious limitation of the mega-texture tech and you could "break it" by making drastic movements. For this, there likely won't be a patch. The mega-textures themselves are hundreds of GB in size, super-compressed and uncompressed in real-time so it doesn't look like shit. Unless people have massive amounts of RAM, I don't know how that can be fixed to such a point that it isn't always noticeable somewhat.

[Craigs]

Apparently this is a possible cause of the technical problems.
http://kotaku.com/5846574/rage-ati-and-the-battlefield-3-beta-dont-mix

[geX]

Official statement about the PC issues

http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2011/10/04/playing-rage-on-pc/

They're working on it. Hopefully they'll fix it before europe releaase :)

[hardcore_gamer]

Craigs said:

Apparently this is a possible cause of the technical problems.
http://kotaku.com/5846574/rage-ati-and-the-battlefield-3-beta-dont-mix

No, I have heard people that use Nvidia cards complain about technical issues as well.

[Technician]

We didn't see this kinda of shit coming from Duke Nukem Forever.

[hardcore_gamer]

Technician said:

We didn't see this kinda of shit coming from Duke Nukem Forever.

Uhmmm....Duke Nukem Forever also suffered from bad technical problems.

[Whoo]

I pre-ordered it Sunday from Best Buy since I had a $25 gift card, so even if it is hugely disappointing (which I doubt it will be,) I won't be out of $60.

UPS however is taking their time getting it to my house...

[hardcore_gamer]

It appears that the user reviews for the PC version aren't being very kind so far.



That said, it is possible that many of the people giving the game bad scores are merely having knee-jerk reactions because of the technical issues and that said issues might get resolved soon.

At least, I hope that will be the case.....

[Xeros612]

hardcore_gamer said:

Not even remotely the same.

Doom 3 was demanding because it was an extremely good looking game at the time, and not because of crippling technical issues.

Fair enough, misinterpretation on my end.

Just saw Entryway's video. Holy shit. I don't know what's worse, the bad texture load-in shit, or the LACK OF VIDEO SETTINGS. What the fuck, iD?

Also, heh, metacritic. That place gives Portal 2 a 95 and Limbo- a game well known to be HORRIBLY ported to PC- an 89, so you can be sure it ain't that reliable a site. Lots of 0s with really crappy reasoning behind them and a few 1s with the same shit.

@Edward850 It's definitely an engine decision I don't support then. As a selectable option, sure. But as the only way graphical settings can be altered? Fuck that noise with a chainsaw fueled by a nuclear reactor. Deus Ex: Human Revolution's attempts to tell me "lol, you shouldn't use those settings because we think you don't have enough memory in your computer" when it clearly ran well enough on the settings I chose pissed me off enough, this just screams "we don't think you can handle choosing settings, mr. pc gamer sir, so we'll do it for you!".

[Edward850]

The lack of video options is actually engine design, as it auto scales to maintain 60FPS. However, that doesn't work so well when ATI screw up their drivers and the engine seems to think you have a 3MHz CPU and 0MB of video memory.