Rage!

[Mortiis558]

A 3 hour review...Day 1...

 

Ok I didn't see another page for this so sorry if there was one on like page 14 of this forum.

 

Moving on, my first overall impression is I like this game, quite a bit. Think Fallout 3, but leaning a lot more towards the FPS side. There are no character stats, but you do get schematics to make stuff in your engineering tab. And no need for a skill level, if you have the schematic, and the parts, you can make it. The guns and such themselves are pretty standard stuff so far. You do get mods for all the weapons you get, plus all weapons have a variety of different ammo types.

 

Graphics...the first thing you notice upon getting control of your character is that EVERY time you move your mouse, the new textures that pop into your vision always, for a split second, look like they are from n64 era. Then it loads the nice pretty, up to date, texture, but it does this all the time as you look around, even stuff it has already rendered. Ok so you go into options and open up the graphics menu and lo and behold there are only 3 options. Resolution, Desktop or Fullscreen, and AntiAliasng 2x or 4x. So there is no way to get rid of it. If you want to see an example I am sure youtube will have plenty by now.

 

Otherwise the graphics are pretty good. Oh and this is on PC btw, I haven't read anything about the 360 or PS3 having this problem. The graphics are bright, and crisp, and pop out quite nicely. There are little details all over the world that add to the ambiance of the game very well. Though there seems to be a hint of Borderlands throughout, graphic stylng wise.

 

Gameplay itself is very polished. Though the lack of seeing bullets or tracer rounds coming out of your gun when you shoot does leave a little bit to be desired, as I have gotten used to that. But basically you drive around the desert and go around talking to people at outposts and helping them out with whatever quests they have for you. Most quests so far have been, go here, kill this group of people, or Fetch/Deliver quests. But I am still at the begining so it may vary as the game progresses. You also get a vehicle from the start of the game, and in the first major city you get to you have the option of racing. Racing nets you a special currency you can use to upgrade your racing buggy, as well as your driving around buggy. Miniguns, Rocket Launchers, Boost, and the usual Tires, springs, engine stuff. The driving itself is kinda awkward on a keyboard but it is doable. On a pad I think it will be a breeze if you are in any way decent at racing games. If you aren't you can just hang in the back and blow all your opponents to hell and win that way.

 

All in all nothing groundbreaking about Rage. What it does it does well, but unless there are some major developments later on in the game this will be just another run of the mill fps.

 

7.5/10

[Thelogan]

Nice graphic comparison of Rage on different platforms.

 

The hunter has become the hunted.

[Mortiis558]

If it weren't so true it wouldn't be so funny. Steam started a sticky of Bug/Problems with Rage today at 7:30am and at 10:30am it already had 600 posts.

 

On a good note though, AMD already released a hotfix for the graphic issue I was having and for the most part it seems to have cleared up the problem.

 

Now for a little more in depth bitching about ID Tech 5. There is NO dynmic lighting/shadows. The original FEAR had these and did them quite well, why a game that came out 5 years later on brand-new tech doesn't have it I will never know. Secondly, NO physics for world objects. Yes your car adheres to the rules of physics and when the cars blow up little pieces go flying all over the place, and when you kill people their bodies do have momentum etc, but toss a grenade into a room and watch as NOTHING happens. I mentioned that there is a lot of little detail all over, and that is thanks to MegaTexturing, but that is apparently what is causing a lot of the little problems with Rage itself. There are no repeating texture, but the game also doesn't load any textures into memory so wham, horrible graphics bugs, screen tearing, artifacting, etc.

 

id Pretty much made computer gaming cool and fun, and now they have forsaken us for the console market like just about every other developer in existence. It's sad when The Witcher 2 is the new standard that PC games and gaming should be held too.

 

Still all in all it's a fun game. But if you plan on playing on a PC, pirate it, don't pay for it.