Rage

[BillSeurer]

And who has died several times on normal difficulty. And who therefore sighs.

There's always "geriatric mode". Heh heh heh…

says Bill who just restarted another game on "novice" mode …

 

[DoctorNarrative]

Are you implying it's my fault the game doesn't work? Maybe, but I'd say, if I meet all the system requirements plus have the latest non-beta drivers installed and the game doesn't even get beyond the intro cinematic, then there's something wrong with the game. If PC gaming is to survive in this console era, then this is exactly what should not happen (start hunting for work-arounds, mess around with the config file, install beta drivers, etc.).

PC gaming is PC gaming. It means open platform, it means unique systems, it means varying settings. PC gaming inherently involves troubleshooting and user error, conflicts and patches. To remove all that would necessitate PC gaming no longer being PC gaming. If you want that, just play on Xbox.

 

[Lurking Grue]

PC gaming is PC gaming. It means open platform, it means unique systems, it means varying settings. PC gaming inherently involves troubleshooting and user error, conflicts and patches. To remove all that would necessitate PC gaming no longer being PC gaming. If you want that, just play on Xbox.

Oh please! It's not as if I didn't mess around with different settings and drivers and whatnot. And it's not that I was advocating consolization of PC gaming; instead, I was advocating a standard for solid, well-tested PC releases that aren't borked from the get go for quite a sizeable portion of the customers (check the Beth/Steam forums). Should we, as paid customers, be content with botched PC versions? I say no. We don't need to eat sh*t and say thank you, sir.

Are you seriously saying that a modern PC release is OK and well-tested, if it doesn't even go beyond the intro cinematic before crashing on an up-to-date system? Are you saying, that it is part of PC gaming elitist bliss to pay 50 euros for a supposedly AAA game and get a piece of patchwork coding that a sizeable part of the gaming public cannot even get to work properly, and it's our PC gaming prerogative and privilige to hope and pray to somehow get it to function like it's supposed to? Are you saying, that it's solely the customer's responsibility to get the game working? That's just apologist bull! It's not the early 1990s afterall. Even the most bugged releases I've gotten in the recent years, like New Vegas or Red Orchestra 2, did actually launch and work passably enough for me to play the damn thing. Not so with Rage.

Is it too much to admit that maybe your(?) Messiah Carmack of the Holy Church of id f*cked up the PC release? That maybe they didn't test the PC version enough and made a mess of it? Oh, we the unpenitent ones must not be worthy of his PC gaming grace if the game doesn't work for us. It's all our fault! Repent!! Repent, I say!!! Oh, woe is us.

Whatever, I'm done with this subject.

P.S. As if it wasn't apparent, the above was written after quite a few beers. So maybe I wasn't the most subtle or eloquent. I'm just sick of this trend of releasing a badly mangled and half-baked PC version and let the end users worry about getting it to work - ha, ha, we got your money, suckers! It shouldn't be like that, IMO. Anyways, no hard feelings. Keep on keeping on! Peace.

 

[SpoonFULL]

PC gaming is PC gaming. It means open platform, it means unique systems, it means varying settings. PC gaming inherently involves troubleshooting and user error, conflicts and patches. To remove all that would necessitate PC gaming no longer being PC gaming. If you want that, just play on Xbox.

I would accept patches to 'improve' the gaming performance after the product is working correctly using the minimun/recommended system requirements set by the developer. I would not accept a game that does not start or crashes before the gameplay screen. I did not pay a large sum of money to be a beta tester and it is not fun for one to go through installing/uninstalling beta drivers, changing stable system settings .. etc.

I remember in the old days (90s) that some PC games did not work for the reason that many of our systems did not meet the minimum system requirements, and tweeking an old system to run the game in this case was fun. It is not fun nor my job to fix a broken game for the developer.

 

[JDR13]

I think DN was simply suggesting that perhaps it's a bit of an exaggeration to call it "broken", and I agree. Plenty of people seem to be running it just fine.

Installing it now btw… I'll post my impressions shortly.

 

[JDR13]

Ok…

The game runs flawlessly. 1920x1200 with vsync on, anistropy on high, and 4x antialiasing. I was getting a small amount of texture pop-in when I first started until I set the texture cache to high. Otherwise, I played for little over an hour, and it was completely smooth with no crashes or glitches.

That aside, my first impression of the actual game isn't very good. First, I'm surprisingly underwhelmed by the visuals. I don't understand how the textures in this game take up nearly 25GB. With all the hoopla about Rage's graphics, I was expecting it to look…better?

The visuals have a much softer look than what I had gathered from the trailers. Some parts almost look cel-shaded to me, and the backdrops remind me of Borderlands, which is not a good thing in my book. Overall I just don't see anything impressive about it technically or artistically. I haven't tried any of those tweaks yet, so hopefully that might make a difference.

Gameplay is pretty "meh" so far. I don't like how most of the stuff you find has no purpose other than sell for cash, or at least that's the impression I'm getting. No menu options for crosshairs or the mini-map, which I find annoying. Also, this game apparently doesn't even recognize all the keys on my numberpad, which is what I map to for action games.

 

[DoctorNarrative]

Oh please! It's not as if I didn't mess around with different settings and drivers and whatnot. And it's not that I was advocating consolization of PC gaming; instead, I was advocating a standard for solid, well-tested PC releases that aren't borked from the get go for quite a sizeable portion of the customers (check the Beth/Steam forums). Should we, as paid customers, be content with botched PC versions? I say no. We don't need to eat sh*t and say thank you, sir.

It is absolutely 100% impossible to test a PC game for every configuration though. That was pretty much my point, PC gaming inherently means some people not being able to play at launch, or even forever. The best way to combat that is to keep your gaming PC as clean as possible, but it will happen to everyone eventually.

 

[DoctorNarrative]

That aside, my first impression of the actual game isn't very good. First, I'm surprisingly underwhelmed by the visuals. I don't understand how the textures in this game take up nearly 25GB. With all the hoopla about Rage's graphics, I was expecting it to look…better?

It looks pretty damn good from a distance, looking at a whole scene. I would go as far as to say in those situations it looks amazing. The problem is that smaller scale stuff, tunnels or rooms or shelves, look freaking TERRIBLE. So it's a weird balancing act. It takes the mixture of good and bad textures that console games use to save memory and amplifies it to extremes.

Gameplay is pretty "meh" so far. I don't like how most of the stuff you find has no purpose other than sell for cash, or at least that's the impression I'm getting.

A lot of it is used for crafting. When you sell stuff every item has a label that indicates what it's good for and junk for selling has a dollar sign. Just sell that stuff, nothing else.

 

[JDR13]

The problem is that smaller scale stuff, tunnels or rooms or shelves, look freaking TERRIBLE. So it's a weird balancing act. It takes the mixture of good and bad textures that console games use to save memory and amplifies it to extremes.

Carmack is claiming that's going to be addressed in the next patch.

http://twitter.com/#!/ID_AA_Carmack/status/124916837791186945

I'm going to shelve Rage till then. I don't have the free time for it now anyways.

 

[BillSeurer]

Well, I ran into my first real game bug with Rage; I fell through the floor in one of the towns! It's an old school bug I haven't seen in games for a while.

 

[JDR13]

Well, I ran into my first real game bug with Rage; I fell through the floor in one of the towns! It's an old school bug I haven't seen in games for a while.

A bug that involves falling through the floor in a game that was published by the same people who made Daggerfall… the irony.

 

[BillSeurer]

There's no ocean (ala Daggerfallthroughfloor) under that city at least. It was kinda cool to walk around and look up.

 

[ToddMcF2002]

I've only played Rage for about a half hour but.... talk about a total ripoff of Borderlands. I'm perfectly happy having more Borderlands type gameplay but I think Gearbox should get royalties for this thing...seriously.

Anyway. I don't think people should complain about the textures. The Carmack megatexture system (originally developed for Quake Wars) enables the stellar framerates we are all enjoying at the expense of some slight fidelity loss close up. Personally, I think it looks fantastic and I very much dig the framerates.
I played Arcania for 5 minutes before booting up Rage. I started getting a migraine from the crap frame rate. I'll take the megatexture system thank you!

 

[MasterKromm]

So for the next two weekends I have mon+tues off and the GF is off visiting family up north… Of course that means time to catch up on some games I had bought and shelved, Rage being one of them.

First off the bat, the game runs smooth and looks pretty good… I'm using the latest update which was released earlier this month, pretty sure the darn thing was ~1gb. My gpu is an Evga GTX 460 1gb, I run it anywhere from stock to 905mhz core/1810mhz shader - depends on the game and if the OC improves FPS. Though in this case it runs rage well with high detail(4xAA, high AF, ect) at 1920x1200 w/vsynch @ a constant 60fps on stock settings.

I'm literally just an hour into the game but am enjoying it thus far, combat is fun - wingsticks are especially handy and entertaining. Though from the interactions thus far the game appears to be entirely on rails… Which is fine I guess but I honestly see a lot of potential in this post-apoc/sci fi-ish setting. Oh and it's begging for a hint of steampunk, IMO...

Will post more later…

 

[JDR13]

I'm literally just an hour into the game but am enjoying it thus far, combat is fun - wingsticks are especially handy and entertaining. Though from the interactions thus far the game appears to be entirely on rails… Which is fine I guess but I honestly see a lot of potential in this post-apoc/sci fi-ish setting. Oh and it's begging for a hint of steampunk, IMO…

It does start off very linear but opens up after the first few missions. The map isn't very large though, so don't expect any type of meaningful exploration.

It does get better as the game goes on, especially in terms of weapons/items. Crafting is extremely useful, and you get to create some pretty neat stuff later. I've also really liked some of the locations.. just wait till you get to the Dead City.

You really get your money's worth with this game though. I'm more than 25 hours in and still not finished. Considering that most shooters nowadays are usually anywhere from 5 to 8 hours long, Rage gives you a lot of content.

 

[MasterKromm]

Yeah, I'm really enjoying Rage… The minigames(races, card game and holographic sheriff shooter) are a big plus, they are fun and yet not mandatory(excluding a couple easy races). I'd say I'm about halfway through and you're right the hospital/dead city is great. That giant mutant rearing it's ugly mug/fat paw early on set the stage perfectly for the soon to be encounter. Also liked that it was more than a bloated HP monster, you had to survive and figure out how to kill him.

I'm still wishing there was more depth and dialogue choices though… It's unfortunate that the game was so poorly received/reviewed I doubt we'll see anything else out of ID where they use this setting…

I had read that they were working on a 1.3patch and/or editor… Not sure as I can't seem to find the thread on their forums anymore.

-Rambling thought-

Is it just ATI users suffering from bugs/issues? I have more than acceptable FPS(a constant 60), clear + crisp textures 99.99% of the time and zero CTDs… :shrug:

Where did DoctorNarrative go? He was a pretty prolific poster @ 1823 posts in </= 11 months.

 

[Lurking Grue]

Is it just ATI users suffering from bugs/issues? I have more than acceptable FPS(a constant 60), clear + crisp textures 99.99% of the time and zero CTDs… :shrug:

It used to be so, but the recent ATI drivers (v12.1, IIRC) have finally made the game playable for ATI users as well. It does have a few problems still, but the biggest problems with blank/black/blue (take your pick) textures and frequent crashing have been ironed out. It still has the ugly texture popping problem when you turn your view quickly from side to side and it's quite a hog to get running silky smooth, but it is playable. About time too. I had to wait some six months before I could play it without serious technical problems. It has been quite a traincrash of a release for most ATI users.

My views of the actual game have no doubt been shadowed by my troubles of getting RAGE to work on an ATI card, but once I finally got to play the game I was quite underwhelmed by it. Sure it looks pretty and the world/setting is intriguing (loved the ambiance in the settlements), but sadly it only is a mediocre "corridor shooter" with tacked on driving sections. It was promising, but didn't really grab my like I hoped it would have.

liked that it was more than a bloated HP monster

IMO, nearly everything else has that "bloated HP" problem, though. When regular, run-of-the-mill bandits need c. half a clip from an assault rifle to kill, something's really off.

 

[JDR13]

Considering the present state of the genre, I think Rage is pretty good. I'm not sure how anyone could claim it's a corridor shooter. It most certainly isn't. Compared to other recent high profile shooters, like Crysis 2 or Modern Warfare, I'm finding it vastly superior.

I have no problem with the amount of shots it takes to kill human enemies. After all, I would assume they're wearing armor, just like the PC is. Notice that the mutants take a lot less ammo to kill.

It's certainly far from id Software's best work, but I'm just stating the obvious there.

 

[Lurking Grue]

I'm not sure how anyone could claim it's a corridor shooter. It most certainly isn't.

Once you get into the mission areas, they are quite corridor-like, IMO. Well made corridors, true, but corridors none the less. You rarely have much of freedom of movement in them, save for the occasional side tour, which usually either dead ends or leads you back to the "main corridor." There is rarely much of a chance to go "off the rails" in those areas. Note that I'm talking about the mission areas, where the main action is, and not the "over world", where you do have much more freedom of movement.

Compared to other recent high profile shooters, like Crysis 2 or Modern Warfare, I'm finding it vastly superior.

Haven't played either of them, but when compared to e.g. Crysis 1, you have a much, much more corridor-like game experience (wrt to mission areas) in RAGE.

 

[CountChocula]

I had read that they were working on a 1.3patch and/or editor… Not sure as I can't seem to find the thread on their forums anymore.

The mod tool is definitely coming. I hope it will incorporate Steam Workshop, but it's not clear from Todd Hollenshead's comment.

https://twitter.com/#!/Thollenshead/status/166962363071860737