Is Rage worth buying?

[AirRaid]

The game will definitely be at least 75% off in the coming Steam Sale, meaning $5. It was last sale, no reason for it not to be again.

Aside from all the graphical malarkey which is always divisive, hardly anyone touched on why Rage is so great, and why people were pissed at the ending.

They wanted to play more. Why?

Because the shooting, and the reaction animations is absolutely top-notch. They did a lot of Mo-cap work of guys getting shot, stumbling, flinching, falling over, and the guns feel nice and meaty to use, which all combines to give great feedback on just shooting dudes. This is the number one thing that a game whose main mechanic is shooting dudes needs to get right and Rage nailed it.

Buy it on sale, Steam Sale or some cheap disc copy if you have bandwidth issues, it's a big-ass download (Steam quotes 23,825MB), but it's worth playing.

The ending was a let-down though. No way around that.

[Da Werecat]

kristus said:

Please explain what you're talking about and how that relates to my post.

Nevermind.

I think I misunderstood you.

[geo]

Caffeine Freak said:

I think part of the problem with Rage was simply poor planning, and not anticipating all of the major cuts that would have to be made. Carmack talked a lot about this, especially during the last year of development, how they were systematically going through the game and trimming all the assets way down, particularly textures, because they simply couldn't afford the disc space for it all, even when using numerous fancy compression methods. If you look at some of Rage's early previews, they're more graphically impressive than the final product turned out to be, and I think that's primarily the reason why. In the early development cycle, artists were going hog wild with artistic assets simply because they could; id Tech 5 can render an unlimited amount of texture data at any given time. Unfortunately, physical storage limitations came back in the end to bite them in the ass.

That's why a lot of games just reuse the same desk for every desk. I remember Terminator Salvation being really horrible for it. Oh look another white van. They could still have very basic barebones 1 desk = 1,000 desks in game. Then gone through and saw we have this much empty space left on the disk. How about 4 desks = 1,000 desks in game? Its kinda backward. Kind of like levels first, textures later. That way you don't pay graphic artists to make a ton of stuff that was never in game.

[geo]

DooM_RO said:

I bet Carmack got a lot of bad rep for it behind the scenes because of it. Before being hired by Bethesda, he basically had everyone by the balls "If we don't do this I quit". This happened in Doom 3 as well but to a lesser extent. I think Id sold the company to Bethesda to solve these kind of issues. NO one should have this much power even if you are J Carmack.

I've been thinking iD sold the company so it didn't have to bank roll all of its employees another 5 years while they messed around with Doom 4. But then maybe I'm wrong and iD bankrolls all its own employees independent from Zenimax.

Carmack said in an interview he had to sell his company to get a publishing deal. He said Activision was pushing bigger FPS (CoD). Yep so you sold your company for a publishing deal.

http://kotaku.com/5302139/id-why-we-sold-to-zenimax

[DooM_RO]

They also considered EA...

[geo]

Considered EA. The competition to Activision. CoD vs Battlefield. They love their Frostbyte engine. Could have been iD tech powering all the new FPS on new systems. Could have been.

[Cupboard]

The very beginning of the game was interesting in the sense that you get the taste of driving around a desert canyon thing and hunting down enemies with funny AI behavior (doing flips, sliding on hooks, dodging your shots sorta well). The NPCs are visually memorable but essentially lifeless.

I don't think it is worth buying but if you end up liking it, the expansion pack was supposed to be offer better content.

There is a surprising amount of minor details in the most unassuming of places yet the recycled dungeons is where things truly collapse, not to mention how few enemies appear onscreen at once. I guess it is sort of like a free-roam Doom 3. I don't know, I only watched my roommate play and he never finished before trading it in.

[Caffeine Freak]

DooM_RO said:

They also considered EA...

Initially, EA was contracted to publish Rage before id was acquired by Bethesda.

[Stroggos]

Texture popping and crap story aside, I like this game as a sort of mindless shooter. Less mindless than CoD but more mindless than Doom 3. The shooting portion of the game is exceptional they really nailed that down, it's just everything else about it, although initially I did enjoy the driving I got over it fast. I haven't bothered with the Scorchers DLC; but I can't imagine that it would add anything to the overall game.

The biggest problem I had with it, because I can overlook the texture popping as it's not as bad as people say and the low res textures as I barely ever smash my face against a wall in game, was the ending. I had fun blasting my way though the lesser enemies, feeling the build up to a big fuck-off boss fight, and then nothing. What the fuck was up with that? Did they not play this portion of the game to see if it was any good?

Overall I'm happy to have purchased it as it killed a few hours, but it could've been a lot better with a bit of care.

[DooM_RO]

You should get The Schorchers, it adds quite a lot for 5 dollars. You get about 5 more missions (in a completely new environment) and the nailgun with alternative fire modes so different it might as well be 3 guns.