Rage

Lurking Grue said:

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..

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Ah ok, I was talking about the game in general. I agree most of the interiors offer very little in terms of exploration, but I never expected them to anyways. Rage was always billed as a shooter/racing game, and I haven't been disappointed in those aspects.

Lurking Grue said:

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.

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Sure, but Crysis 1 was almost five years ago, and there hasn't really been a shooter like that since. That's what I meant when I said compared to other "recent" shooters. That's also why I found Crysis 2 to be such a huge disappointment.

One of the things I like about this game is the bits of humor scattered around in the form of references to other id and Bethesda games.

A few screens I took.

Lurking Grue said:

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.

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Yeah, I find myself wishing it had more substance… Still enjoyable(for me anyway).

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.

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I pretty much just sell the AR ammo because it is as useless as you've suggested. I wouldn't say the rest of the game suffers from bloated HP monsters, it's more about play style… I spend all my money on fatboys and explosive packs to then make fat mammas, pretty much a one hit kill on all but armored baddies… Wingsticks are also generally a one hit kill. Of course you can build and set up turrets(max of 2) in areas where you are being swarmed… Also, if money is an issue, you can do "reruns" of mutant bash I wind up with a surplus of ammo + bandages to go along with about $850 per run.

JDR13 said:

Ah ok, I was talking about the game in general. I agree most of the interiors offer very little in terms of exploration, but I never expected them to anyways. Rage was always billed as a shooter/racing game, and I haven't been disappointed in those aspects.

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With all due respect to grue, I think some people take the corridor complaint a little too far/out of context… The same can be said for just about every shooter, it's less of a negative and more of an inherent quality to being indoors(typically confining/corridor like).

-EDIT-

That said, a majority of combat is indoors. But combat is still varied because human and mutant enemies use different tactics. Most mutants close the gap quite fast(aside from a handful of ranged mutties) and are very agile. Even the human enemies(bandit tribals/authority) despite their cover based approach to combat will use grenades and flanking maneuvers... What I'm trying to say is that combat is better than ME2, and the corridor effect is less restrictive/confining.

JDR13 said:

One of the things I like about this game is the bits of humor scattered around in the form of references to other id and Bethesda games.

A few screens I took.

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Man, those textures are lowres. I would have expected better from id. Still intrigued by this game though. Just too many already on backlog to try it out.

Thrasher said:

Man, those textures are lowres. I would have expected better from id. Still intrigued by this game though. Just too many already on backlog to try it out.

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Yeah definitely a let down on the texture side of things(excluding the vistas/out door scenes, which have a painting in motion kind of vibe to them)… That said, a hi-res texture pack is 99.9% out of the question, it would be prohibitively large because of the whole "megatexture" approach they took. LMAO, could you imagine a 500gb or 1tb TP?!?

The graphics really are a mixed bag in Rage. They range from total crap to fantastic. Luckily, you really only notice the crap textures if you get extremely close and stop moving, but you rarely stop moving in this game.

The exterior areas generally look a lot better.

Good to know the ATI issues have *finally* been resolved several months after the fact. Perhaps I'll give this a whirl if I catch a Steam sale.

My ATI system also dissuaded me from trying it out. One day...

CountChocula said:

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

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I meant to address this post earlier as I had stumbled across a few things in their forums:

Incorporating steam workshop appears doubtful…

There's no current plans for RAGE on the Steam Workshop. Presently the team at id is working on the level editor for the game. We hope to share more details soon.

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Also,

We're working on some stuff and when we're ready to share information, we'll let everyone know.

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So a level editor and perhaps dlc at some point in the yet to be disclosed future?

I just finished it a few minutes ago.

I won't drop any spoilers, but I must say the end-game was a huge disappointment to me.

Still, I enjoyed the overall game for the most part, even if it was sub-par compared to past id titles.

Bring on Doom 4!

The art direction for many of the levels in RAGE was gorgeous. The clutter and little details of the interiors powerfully evoked the feeling of a decayed and ruined world.

This would not have been possible without the megatexture tech. I think in the coming years we will see a lot more games using partially resident textures.

QuakeCon 2012 panel - Capture the Fan: Making Multiplayer Games That Last panel featuring Chet Faliszek, (Valve Software), Marty Stratton (id Software), Max Hoberman (Certain Affinity).

Starting @ 34:49 [-EDIT- Link] Marty talks about idtech and how it is more difficult with respect to building/modding levels for/with the megatextures and the way those levels are "baked"/processing power required… However, they still intend to release mod tools.

I hate to sound like a pessimist, but releasing the tools is almost pointless as there is no community left to use them… Unless they have some killer unannounced DLC or expansion on the horizon, that could effectively reboot interest. As a side note, the game has been as cheap as $5-$10 on amazon for a boxed copy(tho not ATM).