RAGE - New thread for the id game

[Ben Sones]

It's a game that has obvious shooter roots and shooter controls, even if they mixed up the gameplay to the extent that it's not really about shooting. It's as much a shooter as Mirror's Edge is a shooter.

[Quitch]

The point where you define the genre by the placement of the camera is the point where it loses all meaning as a genre. It's like defining animation as a genre in film. You call them shooter controls, but they're not, they controls relating to the placement of the camera.

Diablo isn't an RTS yet its controls share a lot in common with games of that genre, to an extent where someone with good RTS control will have good control in Diablo. Yet a control scheme does not a genre define.

[JM]

Thief is an FPS. It's a first person game with first person combat, albeit most of the time you'd rather not directly attack anyone. It's not an RPG, it's not an adventure game.

[Ben Sones]

It's not just the camera. It's an action game with all the mechanics and controls of a shooter--including shooting!--that just happens to have the twist that sneaking and stealing, rather than killing foes, is the goal of the game. It belongs in its own genre, if you like, but it's more closely related to shooters than anything else, and it very clearly evolved out of that genre. Again, if we're calling Mirror's Edge a shooter (another game that's not really about shooting), then I think it's fair to include Thief.

[Quitch]

It doesn't fit the next genre you can think of so it must be an FPS? How does that work?

People who enjoy Thief would be far more likely to try something like Splinter Cell next than they would Serious Sam. Does this make, say, Robinson's Requiem an FPS?

You're trying to make out that control schemes are the driver behind purchasing decisions and I don't think that holds water.

I wouldn't call Mirror's Edge a shooter, it's Prince of Persia in the first person. It's a platformer IMO. Was Mario 64 an action game because I could shoot fireballs at enemies? Clearly it's evolved of the third person action genre, I have a camera over my shoulder and I fight things! Forget about that jumping stuff that dominated the game.

[Ben Sones]

People who enjoy Thief = me, since Thief is my favorite game of all time, on any platform. And for whatever it's worth, I hated Splinter Cell. ;)

[Theodore Rex DX]

It doesn't fit the next genre you can think of so it must be an FPS? How does that work?

People who enjoy Thief would be far more likely to try something like Splinter Cell next than they would Serious Sam. Does this make, say, Robinson's Requiem an FPS?

You're trying to make out that control schemes are the driver behind purchasing decisions and I don't think that holds water.

I wouldn't call Mirror's Edge a shooter, it's Prince of Persia in the first person. It's a platformer IMO. Was Mario 64 an action game because I could shoot fireballs at enemies? Clearly it's evolved of the third person action genre, I have a camera over my shoulder and I fight things! Forget about that jumping stuff that dominated the game.

Mario could not shoot fireballs at enemies in Mario 64.

[WarrenM]

It's a game that has obvious shooter roots and shooter controls, even if they mixed up the gameplay to the extent that it's not really about shooting. It's as much a shooter as Mirror's Edge is a shooter.
Did you watch that latest video that was linked? There's a WHOLE LOT of shooting going on. In fact, that's pretty much all that's going on. I really don't think it's fair to say that the game is not about shooting.

[Ben Sones]

Are you talking about Mirror's Edge, or Rage? I don't think anyone is claiming that Rage is not a shooter (I'm certainly not). Shooting is absolutely an optional activity in Mirror's Edge, though, because it's possible to finish the game without firing a shot. There's even an achievement for it.

[marxeil]

In perfect focus, no doubt.
It doesn't have to be in focus. Its supposed to keep you aware of what is going on outside the iron sight.


Again I have to question whether some of you guys have ever even held a toy gun before.
I held plenty of toy guns in my time.

[Sarkus]

I continue to get the sense that interest in this game is really low. Surprisingly low, really. Even the official forums for the game aren't generating much chatter.

And while this thread is somewhat active, its thanks to a general debate about the evolution of shooters and now arguments over whether Thief is an FPS or not.

Makes me think the game is heading for a sales disappointment.

[TurinTur]

I continue to get the sense that interest in this game is really low. Surprisingly low, really. Even the official forums for the game aren't generating much chatter.

And while this thread is somewhat active, its thanks to a general debate about the evolution of shooters and now arguments over whether Thief is an FPS or not.

Makes me think the game is heading for a sales disappointment.

I think the lack of a strong multiplayer side in the game is what is causing the poor interest. FPS fans are in this age weighting a lot the multiplayer side when they have to choose to buy a game or not. That's why we have the holy war between MW3 and BF3, and if your game doesn't have a strong competitive part, it better have a full blown up coop campaign like Dead Island or GoW3.

And while Rage have some coop missions and the combat rally mode, it's clearly focused on a proper single player experience.


Valve already said something like that, in the timeframe of Portal 2 release, something about how they wouldn't make anymore pure single player games, now every game needs a multiplayer side.

[Sarkus]

I think the lack of a strong multiplayer side in the game is what is causing the poor interest. FPS fans are in this age weighting a lot the multiplayer side when they have to choose to buy a game or not. That's why we have the holy war between MW3 and BF3, and if your game doesn't have a strong competitive part, it better have a full blown up coop campaign like Dead Island or GoW3.

And while Rage have some coop missions and the combat rally mode, it's clearly focused on a proper single player experience.


Valve already said something like that, in the timeframe of Portal 2 release, something about how they wouldn't make anymore pure single player games, now every game needs a multiplayer side.

I think thats probably true, and also somewhat sad from my perspective as primarily a single player gamer. Even ME3 is promoting their multi-player now, IIRC. But it doesn't fully explain the "meh" that seems to surround the game. Maybe its because id isn't seemingly pushing any tech boundaries with this game. Maybe its because it looks like a Borderlands clone at first glance. Maybe its because younger gamers have no idea who id is. Or maybe people are just burned out on PA at the moment. Probably a combination of all that.

[TurinTur]

Yep, while i enjoy a good multiplayer fps from time to time, i am still more a 'old school' single player gamer, in most of genres (fps, rpg, strategy, racing), so again, i feel left behind the times.

Get off my lawn, etc.

[Chris Nahr]

For my part the problem is rather that I don't expect a great single-player experience from id, and what I've seen of Rage is not encouraging. The tech sounds interesting and I'm sure the gunplay will be great, but the setting looks like yet another generic post-apocalyptic mutant-infested wasteland, with no story to speak of and art design by id's usual 13-year old death metal fans. So I'm not surprised by the lack of excitement.

[Quitch]

The problem is that id is a poor benchmark for single-player interest. When was their last good single-player release? I'm surprised they're targeting that area so heavily. Perhaps they're hoping people don't remember who they are?

[TurinTur]

The problem is that id is a poor benchmark for single-player interest. When was their last good single-player release?


Let's see:

Commander Keen
Doom
Doom 2
Quake 1
Quake 2
Doom 3.

Mmm not bad!

[IkeVandergraaf]

I'm puzzled by what seems like low interest in this game also. An open world shooter in "yet another post-apocalyptic wasteland with mutants" with vehicles. Yes please!

I played Borderlands mostly solo and found it a little long and a little dull. I for one am glad that they've chosen to focus around the single player experience.

[Shellfishguy]

I guess I just don't see where all the negativity for this title is coming from. I think everything we've seen so far looks great. The combat looks solid, the weapons are interesting, there's crafting which is a big plus for me. They haven't really talked much about the overall story, so maybe its there and maybe its not, but the game looks like it'll be a blast. I just wish I could pick it up a launch like I had planned but shit happens.

[Theodore Rex DX]

Let's see:

Commander Keen
Doom
Doom 2
Quake 1
Quake 2
Doom 3.

Mmm not bad!

So Doom then.

[TurinTur]

It's true they have steadly lowered the quality of their single player experience. My ranking:

Dooms (excellent)
Quake 1 (excellent)
Quake 2 (very good)
Doom 3 (good)

[Major Malphunktion]

I could care. It is coming out. I have a whole shelf of games that did not capture the masses, and they are still good games.

Matter of fact, I seem to have a lack of games that DO capture the masses now that I think about it...

[WarrenM]

You're such a rebel.

[MSUSteve]

I watched the Jackal Canyon gameplay video and thought it looked pretty great, actually. I've had trouble figuring out what this game actually was going to turn out to be, and I still have questions, but I'm definitely more interested now. I already have a big backlog of newer games to play, so I'm not sure I'll be getting RAGE day one, but if the reviews are good, I'll get it at some point, I'm sure.

[Two Sheds]

When you people say this is "just another" post-apocalyptic shooter with mutants, what exactly are you referring to? There's Fallout 3/NV (which had iffy shooting mechanics, to be generous), and then . . . ? Don't say Borderlands.

For my part, this is just a notch below Skyrim on my excitement list. Great-looking tech and id's shooter know-how in a post-apocalyptic mutant-infested wasteland? With cars? I know it's cooler to like indies these days but christ--that sounds like some fun.

[Ben Sones]

I'm definitely interested in this game, but then again, I've never passed on an id shooter, and I even liked DOOM 3. I'm curious to hear more about how the co-op works, because the game looks a lot like it could be a better Borderlands.

Edit: Sorry, I said the B word!

[XenoCrash]

For me, I'm interested in the game but there is nothing about it that says, "Day 1 perch!" I think some of that has to do with not having a good handle on what exactly the game is, even though I know a fair bit about all the different parts. I'm no marketer, but I don't see how holding things back and not giving your potential audience a good idea of what a game is going to be like is good for sales.

[intruder]

For my part the problem is rather that I don't expect a great single-player experience from id, and what I've seen of Rage is not encouraging. The tech sounds interesting and I'm sure the gunplay will be great, but the setting looks like yet another generic post-apocalyptic mutant-infested wasteland, with no story to speak of and art design by id's usual 13-year old death metal fans. So I'm not surprised by the lack of excitement.

This.
I don't consider id being the masters of story telling and I like my single player games with a strong narrative however lunatic it might be.
That's why narrative focused players like me are "meh".
Add in the multiplayer crowd doing their "meh" as well and you have an idea why there is so much "meh" around.

Nevertheless I pre-ordered the Anarchy Edition as Game.co.uk offers 2 comics with backstory and a making of DVD with it.

Also I want to throw some money to John Carmack as I enjoy his lectures at every Quakecon and consider him a genius (although he doesn't need my money anymore still it's a way to recognize his deeds).

[Chris Nahr]

When you people say this is "just another" post-apocalyptic shooter with mutants, what exactly are you referring to? There's Fallout 3/NV (which had iffy shooting mechanics, to be generous), and then . . . ? Don't say Borderlands.

For my part, this is just a notch below Skyrim on my excitement list. Great-looking tech and id's shooter know-how in a post-apocalyptic mutant-infested wasteland? With cars? I know it's cooler to like indies these days but christ--that sounds like some fun.

Aside from Fallout 3/NV there's Stalker with its sequels, Metro 2033, and just now Resistance 3. I could have sworn there must be more but anyway, I just don't like this kind of setting and I'm annoyed whenever it's used in games that I otherwise want to play. Nothing to do with liking indies (are wastelands and mutants rarer among indies?). Anyway, I'm sure I'll get Rage eventually but not at full price on release.

[Two Sheds]

All right, I forgot about Stalker and Metro. Metro is a little less applicable I think, just in terms of mechanics and setting. Stalker, though, I'll grant you.

Don't have PS3 so I'm not familiar with Resistance.

[Telefrog]

Why is it "don't say Borderlands?" Borderlands is immediately the game that came to mind the first time I saw the trailers for Rage.

[Two Sheds]

Borderlands is fine for a comparison to Rage. I think it's apt as well. I was just asking about post-apocalyptic settings, and Borderlands isn't one.

[Ben Sones]

Yeah, it's really a sci-fi wild frontier sort of setting, but since that's what most post-apocalyptic settings work out to be anyway (and because Borderlands is set in a desert), I can understand the comparisons.

[Telefrog]

It's backstory. Once you have desert landscapes, mutants, buggies, shanty towns, and even a high-tech faction to contend with, it all blends together.

I understand the differences beyond just the cel-shaded versus megatexture approaches, but the fact that one takes place on an alien planet and one doesn't is a non-issue.

[Two Sheds]

I agree. I have no objection to Borderlands/Rage comparisons. I just don't think of Borderlands as post-apocalyptic. Post-apocalyptic makes me think "decaying ruins of civilization" and a note of despair. Borderlands was just an alien planet/wild frontier thing.

[Ben Sones]

Aside from Fallout 3/NV there's Stalker with its sequels, Metro 2033, and just now Resistance 3.

Also, Thief.

[Tim James]

For everyone deciding whether to buy the game, I don't think there's any rush. It doesn't seem like the type of game that people will spoil when they start name dropping what they've encountered after playing a few days.

[Marcin]

Why is it "don't say Borderlands?" Borderlands is immediately the game that came to mind the first time I saw the trailers for Rage.

Yeah, even this screen styling, with the strong outlines and tall letters around concepts is Borderlandish:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/11/sept/shotgun.jpg

I actually thought RPS was having a go ...

[Quitch]

Let's see:

Commander Keen
Doom
Doom 2
Quake 1
Quake 2
Doom 3.

Mmm not bad!

I fail to see the single-player quality after Doom. I never played the sequel so I don't know how it was.

Quake was Doom without the hordes and nothing to make up for that. Once the 3D effect wore off I couldn't see why I would want to be playing this rather than Doom. I only played a lot of this due to the Reaper and Omicron bots.

Quake II brought us great lighting and sold 3D cards, but the single-player was really nothing special. id monster design really really hit a low here I think. Thank God for the 3rd party bots like Ice which allowed me to really enjoy some CTF.

You've missed Quake III which, while orientated around a multiplayer style game mode, almost certainly saw more bot player than it did multiplayer. The bots were worse than those offered by Unreal Tournament.

Doom 3 was a tedious trek through the dark with really uninspired level design. Level design being, for me, one of the strongest parts of Doom.

So, after Doom, I don't see where the single-player quality is.

[Zylon]

Also, Thief.
Thief was post-apocalyptic? What?

[TurinTur]

I fail to see the single-player quality after Doom. I never played the sequel so I don't know how it was.

I feel sorry for you then :).

Also, you are confusing innovation with quality.

[TurinTur]

Kotaku shows the collectible card game Frenzy (http://kotaku.com/5845400/how-to-master-the-fine-art-of-rage-frenzy)

Mmm it's not what i hoped, it seems more a game where the strategy is only in building your 12 card deck, not in the game itself.


edit:

Steam is preloading the game now.

[MattKeil]

Let's see:

Commander Keen
Doom
Doom 2
Quake 1
Quake 2
Doom 3.

Mmm not bad!

Not a single enjoyable single-player game on that list, in my opinion. Doom 1 and Quake 1 held my attention for the longest of them, and that was solely due to them being Hot New Things of the moment.

[TurinTur]

Not a single enjoyable single-player game on that list, in my opinion.

Not everyone have to like FPS!

[Tim James]

Steam is preloading the game now.Direct2Drive also has their keys ready, for those of us that ordered there when it was on sale.

[lordkosc]

awaits boxed copy from newegg....

23 gb is too much to download :(

ship it nowwwwww!

[pg]

I also say only Doom 1 and Doom 2 were good single player games and then only if you were fairly hardcore. Quake 1 and 2 single player are average at best. id has always had great tech however and back in the 90s that counted for a lot. Even in Doom 1 and 2 all my best moments and most play has been in cooperative or DM/CTF. id has even failed with QuakeLive which is purely multiplayer.

[Ben Sones]

DOOM I and II were great single-player games by any standard, IMHO. I replayed DOOM just a month or two ago, and it's amazing how well it holds up today.

[MattKeil]

Not everyone have to like FPS!

I do like FPS. Very much so. I just have never liked any of id's single player efforts much. Didn't help that at the time I was playing the Marathon series, which pretty much delivered on every level Doom failed to hook me.

[Theodore Rex DX]

Doom II was verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry re-hashy. Should have been an expansion. I was hugely disappointed by Quake I at first - I just thought it looked ugly compared to Doom. It's fun enough once you get into it (Shamblers are still an effective monster), but it's nothing amazing. Quake II was just boring.

[WarrenM]

These Doom and Quake opinions ... I just ... I don't even. Quake was a life changing game for me in many ways so I just can't relate.

[Marcin]

These Doom and Quake opinions ... I just ... I don't even. Quake was a life changing game for me in many ways so I just can't relate.

This. I wouldn't know where to start.

[Theodore Rex DX]

These Doom and Quake opinions ... I just ... I don't even. Quake was a life changing game for me in many ways so I just can't relate.

Gameplay is very barebones, as is presentation. Weaponset is less interesting than Doom's. Not much enemy variety. Levels are extremely brown and repetitive. The whole thing felt less professional than Doom. I remember reading interviews before it was released about sacraficial altars and that cube thing and got excited ... what we got felt like a real letdown compared to that, and compared to Doom. The game has a cool feel to it and has aged well in a lot of ways - better than most 3D games of the time - but it's just so basic.

[JoshV]

These Doom and Quake opinions ... I just ... I don't even. Quake was a life changing game for me in many ways so I just can't relate.

Really, the single player of Quake was life changing? I mean, the multiplayer, or the mods, totally understanding, as there was some really awesome stuff there. But man, singleplayer quake was awful, and I agree with a lot of what others are saying.

Also, System Shock came out before quake, that was an amazing singleplayer game.

[DennyA]

If you guys didn't have your jaws drop the first time you played VQuake or GLQuake, you are a jaded group of mf'ers.

[mono]

Quake is still the single most awesomely fun game I've ever played. Both SP and MP. Freaking amazing.

[malkav11]

Gameplay is very barebones, as is presentation. Weaponset is less interesting than Doom's. Not much enemy variety. Levels are extremely brown and repetitive. The whole thing felt less professional than Doom. I remember reading interviews before it was released about sacraficial altars and that cube thing and got excited ... what we got felt like a real letdown compared to that, and compared to Doom. The game has a cool feel to it and has aged well in a lot of ways - better than most 3D games of the time - but it's just so basic.

I pretty much agree with this except for Quake having aged well. I guess in the sense that since I never thought it looked good even for a moment, it doesn't actually look substantially worse now. And having true 3D is obviously an important step in terms of gaming technology, but uncoupled to any gameplay features of note and butt ugly, it did not register to me as an improvement until it came into its own in more design-ambitious later games. Games like Marathon and Marathon 2 (released 2 and 1 years prior to Quake, respectively) dropped my jaw far more than Quake. All this strictly from a singleplayer perspective. I don't think I played any shooter multiplayer (except for one brief fling with Doom/Heretic "coop" at a con) until Unreal Tournament...or maybe it was Unreal Tournament 2003. (I'd played UT before that, but maybe just against bots.) And I've never warmed to it as a gameplay format.

[delirium]

DOOM I and II were great single-player games by any standard, IMHO. I replayed DOOM just a month or two ago, and it's amazing how well it holds up today.


The two Doom games (I try to forget Doom 3 happened) are among my very favorite games of all time. I replay them every couple of years and they absolutely hold up. And as much as the formula has been copied over the last 2 decades, I still don't think any other FPS delivers that kind of classic run and gun gameplay better than Doom (Mouselook is overrated!).
.
That said, Rage isn't even on my radar.

[Chris Nahr]

Also, System Shock came out before quake, that was an amazing singleplayer game.

Yeah, when I think of amazing single-player shooter experiences from the 1990s I think of System Shock and Hexen and Heretic and Cybermage and Terminator: Future Shock and Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri... certainly not the relatively primitive bare-bones id games. Those were fun, sure, but after the original Doom they were really nothing special. The rest of the industry quickly moved ahead and id just stood still.

[TurinTur]

Gamespot shows the game (http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/rage/video/6337590)

First 20 min of PS3 version (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6yvW72A8q8)

But at this point i don't want to watch anything more!

The game is no. 1 in Steam since Friday, not bad as the game launch is in Tuesday.

[belgerog]

I saw on steam that the double-barreled shotgun comes with the anarchy edition, which free if you preorder. Is that just a skin or will the vanilla game not have a double-barreled shotgun at all? Wtf?

On the discussion about Id games from the 90s, I still like playing Doom/Doom 2. It has a unique combination of speed and number of awesome monsters, and I love the shotgun.

[TurinTur]

It's a separate weapon, belgerog.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Making items separate from the base game doesn't feel like Id especially when one of them is the double-barreled shotgun.



The game is no. 1 in Steam since Friday, not bad as the game launch is in Tuesday.

Yeah, I was going to post that too as a counterpoint to all the gloom and doom.

[Major Malphunktion]

Really, the single player of Quake was life changing? I mean, the multiplayer, or the mods, totally understanding, as there was some really awesome stuff there. But man, singleplayer quake was awful, and I agree with a lot of what others are saying.

Also, System Shock came out before quake, that was an amazing singleplayer game.


....It all changed that year. Single player,multilayer...comparing a fast and furious FPS to what was really a RPG is not fair. I will say...and this is from a LGS guy, I logged far more hours playing id games than LGS games.

AS for no one cases, yeah, i can't even get it to pre-load..servers are getting hammered. Warren...up for some Co-op Wed. night?

[Quitch]

I think the use of FPS is far too broad when people apply it the 90s. When you have a genre where Doom, System Shock, Terra Nova, Descent and Thief are all sharing space, your genre is too ill-defined to be useful.

[instant0]

People fall Thief, System Shock, Terra Nova and Descent for FPS?

... Madness.

[Quitch]

You've got three different control schemes, and that's just for starters.

[nKoan]

Quake took my breath away when I first tried it using a mouse and keyboard. In essence, it changed the way I played FPS games. I was keyboard only through Doom and Doom 2.

[RobotPants]

But you're shooting in first person, Quitch, so that's pretty much the only significance behind the name. Just like a hockey game is obviously different than a basketball game, but both are in the 'sports game' category. It's a broad term to describe the game and that's about it. Does it really matter that they're all called FPSes? I think it's pretty well understood that System Shock was trying to accomplish something different than Quake.

[pg]

The two Doom games (I try to forget Doom 3 happened) are among my very favorite games of all time. I replay them every couple of years and they absolutely hold up.

You should try the new wads in coop, they take it to another level. I usually use Skulltag for coop online. Chillax.wad is pretty infamous for the sheer number of monsters it throws at you. Example of a Chillax map run. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncQf4CClZnk) Quake 1 and 2 were great in multiplayer and graphics wise.

After watching the first hour of Rage on Youtube I'm very impressed with the graphics (this is id after all) but the gun play doesn't grab me. Enemies seem to be idiots who run around screaming without firing back much when fighting up close. Story seems cliche in the worst ways. I can see why it took so long, the detail in the graphics and maps are amazing. Given how fast you run or drive by everything it is starting to feel to me like ADHD design and a waste however. I felt the same about Deus Ex 3 clutter and after a point you just filter it out and ignore it. There doesn't have to be garbage, clutter or debris everywhere. What happened to clean lines and just regular walls? More and more games seem to be like this. I understand Rage's setting but it still seems to take it a level beyond recent games. I thought the STALKER series had a good balance in this regard.

[stusser]

Steam is preloading the game now.
Well, theoretically, at least. In practice, you're 97% likely to get a "steam is too busy for any more RAGE preloads" message, even though their content servers are nowhere near capacity. Switching servers to Singapore, Toronto, or Bangladesh doesn't fix this message, because it has nothing to do with the servers being busy, it's clientside.

[Ben Sones]

I think the use of FPS is far too broad when people apply it the 90s. When you have a genre where Doom, System Shock, Terra Nova, Descent and Thief are all sharing space, your genre is too ill-defined to be useful.

Look, I'm not saying that these games aren't wildly divergent--sometimes so divergent that they effectively become their own genres. In fact, that was sort of my point. The original assertion was that the 90s was a stale era with regard to the FPS, and that all the games were basically just DOOM clones. But that's totally not true; there were plenty of games like DOOM, but there were also all these other highly creative games spinning off in other directions, starting off with an FPS framework (i.e. an action game with a first-person camera, WASD controls, and usually, shooting) and then changing up the gameplay, sometimes to the extent that the final product hardly even resembled a shooter any more (eg Thief).

Further, I think we see a lot less of that today. Yes, there are games like Portal and Mirror's Edge, creative and original shooter spin-offs in the same vein as the games above. But IMHO, there's a lot less of them than there was in the 90s, and a lot more games that fall into a small handful of well-worn categories. This isn't unusual or unique to the shooter genre or anything--over time and through trial and error, developers just find that some things work and some things don't, and then they gravitate towards the things that work. And that's fine--I'm not even necessarily complaining about the prevalence of "bread and butter" games. I even like a fair number of them, like the Battlefield games and Gears of War (the preeminent Bald Space Marine game), just as I enjoyed a lot of the DOOM-like games of the 90s.

But to say that the shooters of today are a cornucopia of innovation and the shooters of the 90s were all DOOM clones is simply mistaken, IMHO. That's all I'm saying.

[Quitch]

The 90s was, I said, jam packed with Doom clones, and it was, and that continued until Half-Life came out and changed what everyone looked for in an FPS. IMO, most of the games on your list were not relevant to the FPS crowd of the time and calling them FPS games is a mistake because that's not where their appeal lay. Instead people were suffering Blake Stone (actually, the demo was kind of fun) and Corridor 7.

Yes, they may have used the FPS universe as their starting point, but we weren't playing their starting point, we played the finished and released product.


But you're shooting in first person, Quitch, so that's pretty much the only significance behind the name. Just like a hockey game is obviously different than a basketball game, but both are in the 'sports game' category. It's a broad term to describe the game and that's about it. Does it really matter that they're all called FPSes? I think it's pretty well understood that System Shock was trying to accomplish something different than Quake.

Thief isn't about shooting stuff, or even fighting stuff, it's about avoiding fighting or evening being noticed.

Once you make a genre this broad, it serves no useful purpose and you should look at your definition. It happened when games like Diablo took off and people realised that simply throwing RPG around would make the term worthless, so we call it an action RPG. But the second something has combat and a first-person view there is this stubborn resistance to call it anything other than an FPS, no matter how unhelpful that may be.

Let's call DOTA an RTS, it used Warcraft III as a starting point after all.

[TurinTur]

Well, theoretically, at least. In practice, you're 97% likely to get a "steam is too busy for any more RAGE preloads" message, even though their content servers are nowhere near capacity. Switching servers to Singapore, Toronto, or Bangladesh doesn't fix this message, because it has nothing to do with the servers being busy, it's clientside.

I commented this two days ago in the PA forum, how i could imagine the release on Steam being a nightmare. Hell, they already had problems with Red Orchestra 2, and Rage will be much more popular and three times the size in GB, so you could extrapolate what it will happen on Tuesdays: "Steam is busy" messages, the servers crawling down to 20 kb/s, etc.

[stusser]

No, it's happening now. Steam is artificially restricting Rage downloads right now. It's unclear why.

[WarrenM]

Hooray, pre-loading! 1.2MB/s ...

[stusser]

Lucky!

[RobotPants]

Thief isn't about shooting stuff, or even fighting stuff, it's about avoiding fighting or evening being noticed.

Once you make a genre this broad, it serves no useful purpose and you should look at your definition. It happened when games like Diablo took off and people realised that simply throwing RPG around would make the term worthless, so we call it an action RPG. But the second something has combat and a first-person view there is this stubborn resistance to call it anything other than an FPS, no matter how unhelpful that may be.

Let's call DOTA an RTS, it used Warcraft III as a starting point after all.

I'm not sure why you're so hung up on them being called FPSes, though. How much does it really affect anything?

[Ben Sones]

The 90s was, I said, jam packed with Doom clones, and it was, and that continued until Half-Life came out and changed what everyone looked for in an FPS. IMO, most of the games on your list were not relevant to the FPS crowd of the time and calling them FPS games is a mistake because that's not where their appeal lay.

Seriously? Jedi Knight was not relevant to FPS fans? Duke Nukem was not relevant to FPS fans? Most of the games on that list were straight-up shooters. Here it is again, for reference, with the wildly divergent, arguably-not-an-FPS games in bold:

System Shock
Duke Nukem 3D
Starsiege: Tribes
Jedi Knight
Heretic/Hexen
Descent
Realms of the Haunting
Wheel of Time
Quarantine
Thief
Rainbow Six
and of course, Half-Life

And System Shock is debatable. I'd argue that it's absolutely an FPS, with some RPG mechanics grafted in.


Instead people were suffering Blake Stone (actually, the demo was kind of fun) and Corridor 7.

If you are going to define the FPS genre that narrowly, then I have to wonder how you could possibly think that the games of today are any more varied. By that argument, games like Mirror's Edge and Portal and Deus Ex HR are arguably "not relevant" to the FPS crowd, so what does that leave us with?

[Major Malphunktion]

Hooray, pre-loading! 1.2MB/s ...

Who do you know? :)

[Tim James]

Is there any way to verify file integrity after preloading, or do I need to wait until it unlocks?

I suppose if Steam screwed up I can always download again while I'm at work.

[lordkosc]

You have to wait till it unlocks.

[Sarkus]

Well, theoretically, at least. In practice, you're 97% likely to get a "steam is too busy for any more RAGE preloads" message, even though their content servers are nowhere near capacity. Switching servers to Singapore, Toronto, or Bangladesh doesn't fix this message, because it has nothing to do with the servers being busy, it's clientside.

This and the lack of anyone putting it on sale has me thinking the easiest thing might be to just by the physical copy on this game.

[WarrenM]

Who do you know? :)

I swear, I didn't do anything or pull any strings. :P Must be a regional thing? I dunno ... still trucking along at 1.2 MB/s, 44% complete.

[lordkosc]

This and the lack of anyone putting it on sale has me thinking the easiest thing might be to just by the physical copy on this game.

Newegg had the pre-order for a boxed copy on sale 2-3 weeks ago for 42.99 , I posted in the bargain thread, you missed it... :(

[Sarkus]

Newegg had the pre-order for a boxed copy on sale 2-3 weeks ago for 42.99 , I posted in the bargain thread, you missed it... :(

I meant on sale right now. I rarely buy games that far in advance. So I look for a sale the weekend before or on release, and find them more often then not.

[farfrael]

Situation in the UK is weird, you can buy the physical box for £25 from HMV (and have to register it on steam anyway) or you can buy it direct from steam for £30.

Unless you have a really, really fast internet connection (and no cap) it makes more sense to buy the physical box (it's usually the opposite)

[Joe M.]

Thanks for the links, Naeblis. That introduction to the game world is very well done. I am excite.

[Quitch]

Seriously? Jedi Knight was not relevant to FPS fans? Duke Nukem was not relevant to FPS fans? Most of the games on that list were straight-up shooters. Here it is again, for reference, with the wildly divergent, arguably-not-an-FPS games in bold:

System Shock
Duke Nukem 3D
Starsiege: Tribes
Jedi Knight
Heretic/Hexen
Descent
Realms of the Haunting
Wheel of Time
Quarantine
Thief
Rainbow Six
and of course, Half-Life

And System Shock is debatable. I'd argue that it's absolutely an FPS, with some RPG mechanics grafted in.

Once you remove the items in bold I think you start to get a far more accurate picture of the FPS genre in the 90s, rather than this rose-tinted glasses golden age.

And Wheels of Time was terrible.

[Pogo]

Many of those games were great sellers for their time, and all the ones in that list that are firmly in the FPS genre were very distinguishable and unique.

Jedi Knight, Hexen, Descent, DN3D, Tribes, Rainbow Six, Quarantine... everything nowadays is just sequels to mechanics that were attempted in those games, or is a military shooter with fucking experience numbers and badges and achievements flying all over the place.

Christ, why am I responding to this. You keep posting about that list and you keep being more and more wrong about it.

[WarrenM]

Hahaha, and ... fucked. My Rage pre-load went from 44% complete to 0% and is now floundering around doing .. something. Back up to 1% again!

My prediction : This launch will go smooth as silk.

[nKoan]

I meant on sale right now. I rarely buy games that far in advance. So I look for a sale the weekend before or on release, and find them more often then not.

Amazon has a $10 gift code promo going right now. Still full price though.

[TurinTur]

Hahaha, and ... fucked. My Rage pre-load went from 44% complete to 0% and is now floundering around doing .. something. Back up to 1% again!

My prediction : This launch will go smooth as silk.

I have seen that in other occasions. I think the % is broken, but the data is still in your hard disk.

Let's say you were downloading a 10GB game, and you reached 40%, then it resets and it seems it's again downloading everything, with Steam saying 1%.
But it really downloaded the first 4GB, and the new % is in base of the remaining 6GB. The estimated time to finish should be shorter than the first time you started the preload.

[Major Malphunktion]

I just wish it put me in a cue, instead of me walking by every few hours and futilely clicking on the button.

[Pogo]

Yeah that's a pretty common bug.

[stusser]

Hahaha, and ... fucked. My Rage pre-load went from 44% complete to 0% and is now floundering around doing .. something. Back up to 1% again!
<troll>Try cancelling it and restarting the download.</troll>

[TurinTur]

(non-official) Coop Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWcybBYhdOg

[Ben Sones]

So how much co-op is in the game? Is it just a couple of standalone missions, or is there a fairly significant amount of co-oppable gameplay?

[instant0]

So how much co-op is in the game? Is it just a couple of standalone missions, or is there a fairly significant amount of co-oppable gameplay?

http://www.co-optimus.com/game/1285/pc/rage.html

Basically nothing. It is not a coop title.

Single player, play and throw away from the looks of it. Might as well buy it used.

[mono]

If anyone else bought Rage via D2D, you can grab the preload at decent rates via a zip on their site. It's just the Steam pre-load data file. You can of course just pop the D2D key into Steam to activate the game, but since Steam seems a bit bent w/ Rage pre-loads, D2D seems the better route. Obviously you can't install yet. The pre-load exe invokes Steam, but tells you the game isn't unlocked yet.

[Sarkus]

First 20 min of PS3 version (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6yvW72A8q8)



There are more segments of this popping up, up to three now, so about an hour of the game. I watched the first two, but one thing I did notice is that there is some reuse of areas.

[TurinTur]

So how much co-op is in the game? Is it just a couple of standalone missions, or is there a fairly significant amount of co-oppable gameplay?

10 standalone missions, i believe. So more than "just a couple", but less than a proper coop campaign.
edit: oh, they finished the mission in that video. So let's say then "Ten 15-minutes coop missions".

[lordkosc]

There are more segments of this popping up, up to three now, so about an hour of the game. I watched the first two, but one thing I did notice is that there is some reuse of areas.

1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6yvW72A8q8

2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqTugp3R5Hs

3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=123Ir4ndbt8

[Tim James]

one thing I did notice is that there is some reuse of areas.I hope it's not too bad. This is killing me lately with the reality of modern game development.

[Giaddon]

By reuse do you mean the fetch quests that bounce you between the two camps? Because that looks pretty unbearable.

[MSUSteve]

The videos I've watched have sold me on the game. I went with the 360 version. I could've waited a bit to buy it, but I want the "Anarchy Edition" preorder goodies.

[Sarkus]

By reuse do you mean the fetch quests that bounce you between the two camps? Because that looks pretty unbearable.

Not so much that as that one set of quests sent the character into an area (a bandit base, essentially), and then a short time later he was sent back into the same area on a different quest. There was some respawning of enemies during that time as well.

That stuff is not enough to change my mind about buying the game, but I wish we weren't seeing it as much. The whole area in the first 40 minutes of those videos doesn't really seem all that big when you think about it. The open vistas make it seem bigger in some regards, but then you also see a lot of corridor like features the push you along specific paths.

[WarrenM]

I guess you guys were right ... pre-loading complete!

[stusser]

ding
gratz

[RepoMan]

Dammit WarrenM, you are going to get me to spring for this day one if you keep this shit up.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Now that pre-load finally completed (had to start it late last night) I've been looking at the file structure.

The \rage\virtualtextures folder is home to huge files with .pages extension. The largest is _vmtr.pages at 1.66 GB. Another two weigh in at more than a gig each and about 2 dozen are 100+ megs. Obviously it streams only a small portion at a time considering what's been said before about MT and min spec is 2 GB. I assume it's split into segments called pages thus the extension name.

Have there been any more detailed writeups of exactly how Megatexture stores and accesses data?

Also, anyone been able to play the .bik movie files? I installed rad game tools but playing them gets an error saying it's not a bink file. I tried checking Youtube for uploads but just end up with lots of Rage Against the Machine.



Edit: just remembered there was thread discussing that sort of stuff: http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=54357

[TurinTur]

Intro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIvHfL0y7kg) Spoiler?

[Major Malphunktion]

I just wish it put me in a cue, instead of me walking by every few hours and futilely clicking on the button.

It actually DOES put you in a cue...talk about a simple syntax change would cure some angst.

[Zylon]

Ahem, "queue".

[lordkosc]

http://www.startrek.com/legacy_media/images/200307/q01/320x240.jpg

Q !!!!!!

yeah off topic. :(

[Delta]

Intro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIvHfL0y7kg) Spoiler?

Woah. That's a... very good intro, there.

[Telefrog]

Holy crap. The first area looks terrific.

[Sarkus]

By the way, its apparently been confirmed that Rage will unlock on Steam at midnight EST tomorrow night, which means 9PM Pacific.

[TurinTur]

I am already lamenting there is only 8-10 coop missions: they seem really fun!

[Tim James]

By the way, its apparently been confirmed that Rage will unlock on Steam at midnight EST tomorrow night, which means 9PM Pacific.Cool, I bet I can squeeze an hour in to play with graphics settings and check out the opening scenes.

I probably shouldn't get my hopes up though.

[Quitch]

Woah. That's a... very good intro, there.

I think of that intro like the Dead Island trailer, no way the game will have an atmosphere that matches. Good intro though.

[Telefrog]

Preloaded! The footage has convinced me.

[Marcin]

Preloaded! The footage has convinced me.

I guess ZeniMax doesn't understand how free advertising works, because those 3 youtube playthrough videos are now down.

[HCode]

I guess ZeniMax doesn't understand how free advertising works, because those 3 youtube playthrough videos are now down.

Yeah, but the videos and their release were not controlled by them. To some marketing people that is a lot more important than getting advertising for free. Usually only happens for terrible games, though.

[Telefrog]

The only thing I see in the videos that troubles me is the fact that the player can't just pick up the bad guys' weapons. What is that all about? The player is shooting raiders with his psitol and when they die and visibly drop an automatic rifle, it's not a lootable object? Bwuh?

[TurinTur]

No, you can't take weapons from the enemies. Some of them use unique weapons (like a curved blade or a fire baseball which seems taken from Dead Island) which aren't part of the player's arsenal.
It's a convention used in lots of games, it doesn't bother me specially. Some games do the "1:1 real loot correspondence", other do a "somewhat similar but reduced loot" and in others enemies don't drop anything. The important thing is that the game is well balanced, whatever method used.

From what i have hearing, the game is 15 hours, even doing the side missions and races. A little bit on the short side, as I can't imagine myself playing dozens of hours in their rally combat multiplayer, but still a decent amount.

edit: Also, several people are saying that "Normal" difficulty is a bit easy, you may want to try to do the game straight in Hard mode.

[HRose]

I'm the only one who thinks it's technically poor?

There's a certain lack of polish and attention to detail about all the stuff that moves. See for example the vehicle physics and movement that looks quite bad with acceleration/braking, there's no smoothness to it and it clashes with the environment. Same for the animations of the running/jumping enemies that move giving a very poor sense of weight and impact.

Animation/movement as a whole give a strong uncanny valley feel to me, since everything else is quite awesome graphically, yet it's horribly approximate when it comes to move those parts.

[TurinTur]

The animations are one of the best i have seen in my life.
In both the fps part and the racing they have gone with an arcade style, maybe that's the problem for you.

[Giaddon]

I agree that the vehicles seem off -- the first-person animation is excellent, though.

I have a question for those who have been following this game a lot closer than I. Is there exploration? What I mean is: all the videos show the player going to some place as part of a quest, assigned at a hub. It's not clear that if the player traveled on their own they would be able to access any of the areas, or find anything interesting even if they could (since there's no loot or XP, I'm not even sure what there would be to find...)

[Telefrog]

No, you can't take weapons from the enemies. Some of them use unique weapons (like a curved blade or a fire baseball which seems taken from Dead Island) which aren't part of the player's arsenal.
It's a convention used in lots of games, it doesn't bother me specially. Some games do the "1:1 real loot correspondence", other do a "somewhat similar but reduced loot" and in others enemies don't drop anything. The important thing is that the game is well balanced, whatever method used.

I'm sure the balance is fine. The pistol -> shotgun -> rifle progression makes sense in that classic id way.

I guess it's more of an uncanny valley thing for me. I can see the rifle slide out of the bad guy's hands as he goes down from my fatal pistol shot. Why wouldn't I pick up that rifle? It makes no sense. I understand why I wouldn't pick up their flaming baseball bat when I have a shotgun and a spinny boomerang of death. Why not the rifle, though?

It's hard for me to even think of a shooter in the past few years that didn't allow, or almost require, the player to pick up the weapons of their fallen foes. At the very least give me some kind of janky story-based reason why I wouldn't pick that rifle up!

The animation complaints, or really any complaints about the tech, are ridiculous.

[TurinTur]

Well, the corpses (together with their weapons) also disappear. That also doesn't make any "sense". Is that also uncanny valley?
And is more or less ucanny valley that games where you recover your health in seconds without any kind of sfici or magical rationalization? ;)

BTW, in Deus Ex HR the loot was also not realistic, some guys wouldn't drop their weapon and everyone would only a random amount of bullets, usually only less than a dozen, even less than a entire singe magazine. Not very realistic. :P

[WarrenM]

If you can't use the stuff they drop, they shouldn't drop it. Just leave it attached to their hands and fade it out with their corpse. I agree that it's weird for guns to be thrown into the world that you can't actually use.

[Telefrog]

Well, the corpses (together with their weapons) also disappear. That also doesn't make any "sense". Is that also uncanny valley?

Do they? I mean, I gather that they eventually disappear, but I haven't seen bodies fizzling away into magic pixie dust while the player is looking at them in any of the videos I've seen.


And is more or less ucanny valley that games where you recover your health in seconds without any kind of sfici or magical rationalization? ;)

I'm not asking for across-the-board realism. I'll go play Arma 2 if I want that. I understand the need to have some kind of health mechanic for the player in an action shooter. Nobody wants to play a singleplayer id game where you die from one pistol hit.

[mono]

Are the tires on vehicles not really spinning much? Seems weird that they're mostly just sitting there static, gliding across the ground. I realize there's a RL optical illusion that often makes them appear to be static, or even move backwards, but if that's what id was attempting, it doesn't work for me in the videos I've watched. It's a completely minor point but I can't help but watch them not spin!

[TurinTur]

Telefrog, thinking a bit more about the issue, I think they had to use this system in Rage, to not break the economy. Being and id game, you don't fight 3 or 4 enemies, for 30 or 40 in one level. If each one of them dropped their weapons and ammo, you could pick up everything (inventory without limit) and sell all in the town.
In other words, it's the combination of gameplay with arcade combat, inventory without limit and economy system that made a bad idea to be possible to pick up everything.

[Zylon]

Are the tires on vehicles not really spinning much?
I think it's safe to assume that Id will remember to make the wheels on the cars go round and round. Cramming 60 FPS source video through YouTube tends to obliterate fast-moving detail like that.

[TurinTur]

Hah hah, yep, i didn't answer to mono but I thought something like this "mmm I think we should wait until we have the game to judge fine details like the exact amount of spinning of the tires, Flash videos are compressed and stuff". I mean, maybe he is right! but right now I really can't notice it with the actual videos.

[MattKeil]

Naeblis, I'm just warning you, if your obsessive need to see Rage as perfection in game form drives you to attempt to reconcile everything in the Rage setting in a logical manner, you're going to end up hurting yourself.

[TurinTur]

Naeblis, I'm just warning you, if your obsessive need to see Rage as perfection in game form drives you to attempt to reconcile everything in the Rage setting in a logical manner, you're going to end up hurting yourself.

Oh, but it's exactly the other way. I am not defending the game trying to explain it in a logical manner, i am trying to explain it in my pure game design armachair. Telefrog was saying it's unrealistic to have weapons that -somehow- you can't pick up. Uncanny valley for him. That's a bit stupid, because there is a long list of unrealistic stuff in videogames, especially in fps.

More specifically, i am explaining that games doesn't have to explain shit.
Because they are videogames. Including:

-Medikits that heal your almost dead character.
-Magical health auto regeneration
-Infinite stamina of your character.
-Moving with 12 weapons at your back.
-The fact you can load up 12 weapons, with one of them in your hands, one of them at your back... and somehow the other 10 are invisible!
-Main character who somehow will greatly risk his life against a huge amount of enemies and other dangers even if there is no really logical reason in the context of the story.
-Weapons and other items that you can't pick up, even if they are "there".
-Mute main character.
-Doing stupid fetch quests and other missions by unknown people (aka npcs).
-Corpses and weapons that disappear.
-Etc etc

I see videogames in general, but especially action games, as not as different as the 80s-early 90s arcade games. Action for the sake of action, so i can't be bothered by that long list of "unrealistic" stuff.

edit: I mean, i can see his point, if this was a immersive RPG with focus on exploration, survival, etc, the type of games where they try to make a real, living breathing world, it would be a real flaw. But i don't think Rage is inside that genre.

[Sarkus]

I don't know what I was thinking when I decided to just buy this on Steam as opposed to dealing with the "inconvenience" of hunting down a physical copy. It will be pre-loaded in time, but I'm pretty sure it will be the longest download I will ever have done.

Also, an interesting thread over on the Steam forums claims that the in game config options are limited, with the software making most of the choices in favor of maximizing framerate. While its assumed that you will still be able to tweak the setting within the software, some people are annoyed that they can't play with settings outside of that, especially if they are willing to live with lower frames to get better graphics.

This is the relevant quote, taken from an interview Willits did in August:


RAGE: I took the opportunity and looked at the options menu. There were no graphic options beside resolution, brightness, anti-aliasing and GPU transcoding. Is this a limitation of the test version?

This is a feature of the id Tech 5. The Engine automatically adjusts to your hardware to ensure the best performance and graphics the hardware can provide.
For example: You have a video card with 512MB VRAM, 4GB of normal RAM and a decent processor. Now the id Tech 5 adjusts the quality of the Level of Detail to the available resources. If you have twice the RAM the engine scales dynamically up to it, improves the textures and objects in the far look sharper and more detailed. At the same time the engines tries to keep running at 60 FPS even though this is not also possible – dependent on the situation.

[WarrenM]

I think this would be more productive if we could steer it away from the "realistic/unrealistic" argument, which is counter productive. The issue, as I see it, is that if a guy drops a gun and I can't pick it up or at least loot it for ammo that's not consistent with how I expect things to work. The gun is there. I'm standing in front of it. There's no logical reason why I can't bend down and grab it. As a gaming convention, if a bad guy drops something - that's loot. I expect to be able to collect loot. If they don't want me to have the guns, the guys shouldn't drop them, IMO.

[Telefrog]

Telefrog was saying it's unrealistic to have weapons that -somehow- you can't pick up. Uncanny valley for him. That's a bit stupid, because there is a long list of unrealistic stuff in videogames, especially in fps.

Whoa, back up there! I didn't complain about any of the other game conventions that I saw. Regenerating health, carrying the equivalent of a ton of ammo, multiple weapons, or any of that normal shooter stuff doesn't bother me. (From what I understand, they even handwave the health regeneration thing in the game by explaining that as an Arc refugee, you have nanites or something, blah, blah, bloodstream, science.) None of that stuff hits me because I know that I'm playing a game, and concessions have to be made for me to run & gun.

Not picking up a better gun that the enemy visibly drops just doesn't make any sense. It's lying right there! Pick it up!

This is an SP game, so who cares if picking up a discarded rifle upsets some goofy economy? Hell, you know as well as I do that you'll be swimming in credits or bottlecaps anyway. As I understand it, you have an unlimited inventory, so what's the big deal? Hey, just put some dialogue in there about the juryrigged raider rifles being subpar to the ones the shopkeepers have to explain why no one will buy them. Make them really crappy if you're concerned about weapon balance.

I'm just pointing out that in the videos I've seen, starter dude goes into a hideout with a pistol, runs out of ammo, and has to resort to using his fists to survive until he can pick up ammo. Why would he do that when the last guy he shot dropped a rifle? That's a game convention I haven't seen for years.

Edit: As Warren said, it's not a matter of realism, it's a matter of being counter to what I can actually see right there on the screen.

[MattKeil]

The world of Rage flat out doesn't make sense anyway, so it's just one more nonsensical shrimp on the barbie.

[dermot]

I agree that weapons that can't be picked up is silly and immersion-breaking. It's actually even more stupid than the traditional approach in shooters whereby the bad-guys inexplicably don't use guns that are better than the ones that the player himself is carrying. But can we please stop calling it 'uncanny valley'?

[Zylon]

It's actually even more stupid than the traditional approach in shooters whereby the bad-guys inexplicably don't use guns that are better than the ones that the player himself is carrying.
What.

[TurinTur]

I think this would be more productive if we could steer it away from the "realistic/unrealistic" argument, which is counter productive. The issue, as I see it, is that if a guy drops a gun and I can't pick it up or at least loot it for ammo that's not consistent with how I expect things to work. The gun is there. I'm standing in front of it. There's no logical reason why I can't bend down and grab it. As a gaming convention, if a bad guy drops something - that's loot. I expect to be able to collect loot. If they don't want me to have the guns, the guys shouldn't drop them, IMO.

But you are again using the realistic argument, that's why "you are expecting things to work", because it's the way it works in real life. But in lots of games it doesn't work that way. Quake, Half Life 2, Medal of Honor from what i remember (not everyone dropped their weapon), in many games the enemies happened to not have weapon when they were killed.

Wait, wait, now i see about what you are complaining. It's not about the game design, it's not about realism, it's what you have said it: the game convention.

Your issues is with the animations of the enemies when they die! Because when they die they make a ragdoll where the can drop the weapons, people can think they are pick-able.

Now i am remembering other games where they did some specific stuff when the enemies were dead: the weapons would disappear magically in the instant of their deaths, or the corpses would still have the weapon always in their hands, hugging them. So people wouldn't try to take their weapons.

So the issue i am seeing it's the animators not communicating a lot with the game designers. Because it's true it's a game convention, the players will try to pick up weapons on the ground if a enemy drops it, they should have avoided to make the weapons "rag doll" in the enemy death, separating them from their body.

Still, I can't see it as an issue, in the moment i would try to pick a pair of weapons and see i can't do it, i just would shrug off and think "oh, in this game you can't pick up their weapons" and go on.

[dermot]

What.
Are you new to the FPS genre?

[TurinTur]

Not picking up a better gun that the enemy visibly drops just doesn't make any sense. It's lying right there! Pick it up!


Why that doesn't make sense and the other stuff is ok? I don't really understand. As the other stuff, it's part of the game design.



This is an SP game, so who cares if picking up a discarded rifle upsets some goofy economy?

I care!

[Telefrog]

Why that doesn't make sense and the other stuff is ok? I don't really understand. As the other stuff, it's part of the game design.

Sorry. I don't know what else to say to explain it. I see the weapon lying there and I can't pick it up, even when I've run out of ammo for all my weapons. That bugs me.

[dermot]

Why that doesn't make sense and the other stuff is ok? I don't really understand. As the other stuff, it's part of the game design.
The other things you mention are gaming conventions: they're intrinsic gameplay elements that have been around a long time - some of them since the conception of the medium. Some of them are universal across genres. You know what else is a universal gaming convention? Being able to pick up the weapons that your enemies have dropped! In fact, that's how weapon progression normally works (hi Zylon!) and I'm about 83.1% certain that id themselves were the originator of that particular gameplay mechanic.

It's not the end of the world and I don't think anyone - not even Telefrog - is saying that it breaks the game, but it is a bit of a head-scratcher.

[Wyrlith]

I don't have a bone to pick over whether "can't pick up dropped weapons" is immersion-breaking, but I don't think it's a universal convention, or at least, it's a fairly recent universal convention (much like the "you can carry two weapons" or "hide and your health/shields will regenerate). Neither Doom 1/2 nor Quake 2/3 allowed you to pick up dropped weapons. Gears, Halo, and the CoD series are the first I can remember where all weapons could be retrieved (even when it might not make sense, how did the Locust get their hands on so much COG weaponry?)

[TurinTur]

Let's see if we can reach a middle ground. This is starting to be a long discussion for a silly point :)

I agree that is a game convention, as WarrenM said and you supported him.

BUT, there are a lot of game conventions. Game usually uses a "subset" of game conventions, game 1 uses convention A, B, D, H, K, game 2 uses A,B, H, M, L. etc

This particular convention bugs you when it isn't there, more when it seems to be there... (the enemies drop their weapon) but really it isn't there.

Me? Honestly, i also watched the videos of the start of the game, and when the player tried to pick up the weapon, and i saw no icon and no flashing on the weapon, i just thought "oh, in this game they don't use convention C, the weapons are just part of the enemy model ragdoll". And that's it, it didn't seemed to me bad, or good, or anything.

Again, it's a pretty silly thing to discuss about :P

[Soapyfrog]

Being able to pick up the weapons that your enemies have dropped! In fact, that's how weapon progression normally works (hi Zylon!) and I'm about 83.1% certain that id themselves were the originator of that particular gameplay mechanic.
I can't think of an ID game were the bad guys dropped weapons you could pick up but then I haven't played any since Quake 3.

[dermot]

I don't have a bone to pick over whether "can't pick up dropped weapons" is immersion-breaking, but I don't think it's a universal convention, or at least, it's a fairly recent universal convention (much like the "you can carry two weapons" or "hide and your health/shields will regenerate). Neither Doom 1/2 nor Quake 2/3 allowed you to pick up dropped weapons. Gears, Halo, and the CoD series are the first I can remember where all weapons could be retrieved (even when it might not make sense, how did the Locust get their hands on so much COG weaponry?)
Are you serious? When a bad guy dropped a weapon in Wolfenstein 3D you could pick it up. It's been there as a gaming convention for at least as long as your character has been able to carry more than one weapon.

[Telefrog]

It's not the end of the world and I don't think anyone - not even Telefrog - is saying that it breaks the game, but it is a bit of a head-scratcher.

Definitely not. I have it preloaded based off the same videos, so they already got the sale out of me. The shooting looks superb.

[MattKeil]

:impressive dancing to justify vanishing enemy weapons:

This is a very difficult issue to dismiss in Rage in part because the visual fidelity is so high and the animation is so believable. When something so blatantly odd and "gamey" happens in a game that looks like Rage, it's jarring. Hardly a reason to condemn the game or anything, but it's a very odd decision. Having them fade out of existence makes it worse. Plenty of games have left unusable guns on the ground, and you just sort of assume your player can't or won't use them. But very few have had the guns blink out of existence in front of your eyes.

[Soapyfrog]

Are you serious? When a bad guy dropped a weapon in Wolfenstein 3D you could pick it up. It's been there as a gaming convention for at least as long as your character has been able to carry more than one weapon.
I don't clearly remember this being the case, I think they just dropped ammo?

[dermot]

I can't think of an ID game were the bad guys dropped weapons you could pick up but then I haven't played any since Quake 3.
When someone dropped a weapon in Quake 3 you could pick it up :P

I think I need to be precise: I'm not saying that bad guys in video-games always drop weapons - they don't. I am saying that when a bad guy does drop a weapon you can pick it up.

But these are conventions, not laws - obviously there are outliers and games that buck the trend.

[dermot]

I don't clearly remember this being the case, I think they just dropped ammo?
Sometimes they did, sometimes they dropped a gun. And when you did, you could pick it up - if you already had that gun you just got additional ammo.

[MattKeil]

I don't clearly remember this being the case, I think they just dropped ammo?

Correct. They dropped ammo boxes. Weapons were found separately and at specifically designated points in the game.

http://i52.tinypic.com/9ifvgw.png

[Eightball]

I think this would be more productive if we could steer it away from the "realistic/unrealistic" argument, which is counter productive. The issue, as I see it, is that if a guy drops a gun and I can't pick it up or at least loot it for ammo that's not consistent with how I expect things to work. The gun is there. I'm standing in front of it. There's no logical reason why I can't bend down and grab it. As a gaming convention, if a bad guy drops something - that's loot. I expect to be able to collect loot. If they don't want me to have the guns, the guys shouldn't drop them, IMO.

What's worse? Not being able to pick up a weapon, or picking up the same assault rifle that you have to get more ammunition, only to discover that dead enemies only apparently carry 2 rounds of ammunition, despite having unlimited ammunition to shoot at you when they're alive? That's what I call the Deus Ex special. Both are unmistakably stupid and gamey.

[dermot]

Look, maybe I'm wrong and I'm selectively remembering games that support my case but I don't think I am because I'm not alone in thinking that RAGE is odd for doing this.

[Tim James]

I can't wait until the game unlocks tonight and we get a solid week or two of everyone playing it before we cycle back around and start picking at everything again.

[JM]

Well, the corpses (together with their weapons) also disappear. That also doesn't make any "sense". Is that also uncanny valley?
And is more or less ucanny valley that games where you recover your health in seconds without any kind of sfici or magical rationalization? ;)

BTW, in Deus Ex HR the loot was also not realistic, some guys wouldn't drop their weapon and everyone would only a random amount of bullets, usually only less than a dozen, even less than a entire singe magazine. Not very realistic. :P

Hmm, in DE:HR I don't really remember anyone dropping a weapon I couldn't pick up, and the weapon itself would have less than a clip but their body would normally have a couple of clips. It seemed very consistent and believable.

[Tim James]

It's a magazine, not a clip.

I'm trying not to be Zylon here but it's like nails on a chalkboard.

[JM]

I don't care. :)

[Tim James]

I don't care. :)Imma empty a clip in yo ass then.

[TurinTur]

I can't wait until the game unlocks tonight and we get a solid week or two of everyone playing it before we cycle back around and start picking at everything again.

I am going to preemptively nitpick something:

The quests. Fetch quests, "go and kill everything" quests, "find the mcguffin" quest (which is also a kill everything disguised as other type of quest).

Nope, definitively id Software is not Obsidian in this whole rpg thing. I am ok with the killing everything bit, but if they are going to go with the rpg trappings and a more cohesive world (which is also ok for me) then they should go fully in that direction and make a good work in it, not something half-assed. Most of the quest are pretty bad, mere transparent justifications for the player to go and explore a base full of bandits.
Actually lots of games have this same problem, so it's not something new, but they could have worked a bit more on it.


Note: I am not being sarcastic, i truly think it will be one of the flaws of the game.

[Zylon]

Are you new to the FPS genre?
Let's take a look at that again:


It's actually even more stupid than the traditional approach in shooters whereby the bad-guys inexplicably don't use guns that are better than the ones that the player himself is carrying.Considering that in most FPSs the player gets his better guns FROM his enemies, and/or that the player's better guns are unique, it's not inexplicable at all.


It's a magazine, not a clip.
It's a schooner!

[stusser]

Also, an interesting thread over on the Steam forums claims that the in game config options are limited, with the software making most of the choices in favor of maximizing framerate. While its assumed that you will still be able to tweak the setting within the software, some people are annoyed that they can't play with settings outside of that, especially if they are willing to live with lower frames to get better graphics.
This is a fantastic idea. It truly is a feature.

If you really want to tweak your settings due to OCD or running a benchmarking website or whatever, I'm sure Rage will have a console. For the rest of us, we won't have to worry about tweaking the game to run just so for our hardware. Fabulous.

[peacedog]

This is a fantastic idea. It truly is a feature.

If you really want to tweak your settings, I'm sure Rage will have a console. For the rest of us, we won't have to worry about tweaking the game to run just so for our hardware. Fabulous.

So it's impossible to have a game that will auto-detect ideal setting sbut then provides a GUI to allow power users to tweak them individually?

[stusser]

Well this comes down to the quasi-religious debate as to the appropriate amount of control for the enduser. As a game designer, do you really want to bug users with choosing between various buzzword-ified chipset-specific antialiasing modes, or do you just want to choose the right answer?

The seasoned users generally reply with "just put it behind an advanced button", but usability studies have shown that inexperienced users click on those buttons too and screw themselves over.

This hasn't historically been a religious war in gaming, but it certainly has in linux GUIs. Gnome hides everything, KDE has 'advanced' buttons. Blood has been shed over this.

[nKoan]

I'm curious if the software is continually tweaking the settings for maximum framerate.

In effect, letting the user change the settings would have to lock those specific values into place. And doing that might cause the tweaking algorithms go haywire.

/all supposition

[WarrenM]

I'm all for less options and software just "doing the right thing". It's actually vaguely embarrassing when my wife goes to play a game and starts asking me what all the terms on the video config screen mean. Do we REALLY have to expose users to all of that stuff? I don't think so. "Do I want aniso ... anisotropic ... what is this?"

[Telefrog]

If you really want to tweak your settings due to OCD or running a benchmarking website or whatever, I'm sure Rage will have a console. For the rest of us, we won't have to worry about tweaking the game to run just so for our hardware. Fabulous.

I'd be more apt to agree if I ever saw a game's autodetect function not pick a completely ass bunch of settings. I don't think I've ever had an autodetect that didn't set me way too low in screen resolution, or bone up how much aliasing I want.

I think it's fine to have an autodetect, but not making it easy for me to tweak without digging into config files is just annoying in this day and age.

[TurinTur]

I don't know what I was thinking when I decided to just buy this on Steam as opposed to dealing with the "inconvenience" of hunting down a physical copy. It will be pre-loaded in time, but I'm pretty sure it will be the longest download I will ever have done.

Also, an interesting thread over on the Steam forums claims that the in game config options are limited, with the software making most of the choices in favor of maximizing framerate. While its assumed that you will still be able to tweak the setting within the software, some people are annoyed that they can't play with settings outside of that, especially if they are willing to live with lower frames to get better graphics.

This is the relevant quote, taken from an interview Willits did in August:

I feel there is a lot of misinformation about this. In Neogaf forums there are people flipping out in ridiculous ways.

It's true there is barely any graphical options and there is some kind of automatic adjustment, but that' doesn't mean that they won't play the game at maximum detail (which is what they truly fear). They also mention how the auto adjustment in other videogames fail miserably (true, i agree with this part).

I think there is no graphical options because everybody will play a maximum detail. That's it, the only type of detail the game have. Usually graphical options mean "low/medium/high" in several areas. Because there is only one setting, instead of "maximum" we could call it "normal", it's the same. The art assets (the models, the f/x, the textures etc) are common for the three versions, they said the game in pc is the same as consoles but with better resolution and filters.
I think the "automatic adjustment" will be the megatexture itself, it will take up all the ram you have in your video card. Even that doesn't mean the game will look better, the max limit is in the art assets stored in the files, which are the same as the 360 and ps3. It surely will mean that there will be less texture streaming in game.
They also use the dynamic framebuffer to change the internal resolution, but i don't think it will be an issue, if the game moves up at 60fps in consoles, i am sure as hell i can get 60 fps in my computer.

In other words, i think it's a bit silly to complain the lack of graphical options and "auto adjustments" features (which i can imagine you can tweak yourself in the console with the keyboard).

What it is a truly valid complaint is why the hell the pc version uses up exactly the same art assets as the consoles, that's why people complained when id announced their games for consoles, multiplatform is a slippery slope in that regard. You start with the best intentions, but as the development goes forward to start to focus more and more in the the other versions.

[dermot]

Considering that in most FPSs the player gets his better guns FROM his enemies, and/or that the player's better guns are unique, it's not inexplicable at all.
That's not really contradicting what I said though. Consider this: in your typical FPS, the player starts out with a pistol. Most of the enemies he encounters have pistols. Then he encounters one who has a shotgun. He dispenses with this enemy, picks up the shotgun and from that point on he encounters more enemies who have shotguns. Then he encounters an enemy with a rifle and so on. That's what I meant above when I said that enemy weapon drops are generally tied into the weapon progression.

[TurinTur]

Truly important RAGE news
http://justjared.buzznet.com/2011/10/01/charlize-theron-stacy-keibler-rage-launch-party/

[nKoan]

Truly important RAGE news
http://justjared.buzznet.com/2011/10/01/charlize-theron-stacy-keibler-rage-launch-party/

Wait wait wait.
October 7th?

[TurinTur]

Wait wait wait.
October 7th?

Wait, what?

Seriously, it's not an article i actually read, i focused more on the photos :)

I can only think they writer of the article googled up Rage and saw somewhere the european release date (7th October) instead of the american one.

[peacedog]

Well this comes down to the quasi-religious debate as to the appropriate amount of control for the enduser. As a game designer, do you really want to bug users with choosing between various buzzword-ified chipset-specific antialiasing modes, or do you just want to choose the right answer?

The seasoned users generally reply with "just put it behind an advanced button", but usability studies have shown that inexperienced users click on those buttons too and screw themselves over.

This hasn't historically been a religious war in gaming, but it certainly has in linux GUIs. Gnome hides everything, KDE has 'advanced' buttons. Blood has been shed over this.

I'm aware of what happened with Gnome et al. I'm unimpressed with the fact that some people are decidely against it and chose to do away with options. There isn't always a right answer.

Most of the stuff in the graphical options UI probably doesn't belong there. But your way leaves us with things like FOV values that make it physically impossible to play the game (certainly, FOV typically isn't in an option screen, which is amusing as it's one of the things that arguably belong there). Auto-detect has been rather dubious over the years; I'll be interested to see how Rage does with it.

[JM]

Not sure where this is from originally:


The best thing in this game was they got John Goodman for a voice actor, and there was a Doomguy bobblehead in the opening. Other than that it's a Fallout/Borderlands environments with shitty vehicles that launch you for ragdoll physics, and a movement system that reveals the fact that it was designed for a mouse only.

There is no skip ahead button for dialogue, so if you want to retrieve your next fetch quest from random Bartertown resident, you have to start them talking, then run 50 feet away until you're out of their talking range, and when you come back they'll be on the next node of the dialogue tree. Repeat until quest page comes up ala Dead Island.

Enemies will drop weapons. You cannot pick them up. You return to the same Ghost hideout about 50 times within the first hour of the game.
"racing is shit, rubberbanding, tapping nitro defeats the mechanic and they feel entirely tacked on"

Just some random Joe I guess. Not sure if the mouse thing is meant to be a criticism!

[TurinTur]

Embargo of the reviews will be lifted at 9pm (PST). I will be sleeping around that time, so see you in... 11 hours.
http://twitter.com/#!/aegies/status/120892194126172160

[stusser]

Interesting. You guys that are rabidly anti auto-detect justify that stance by saying auto-detect has always done a shit job. But this is id, and they spent a lot of time on reaching that 60fps framerate, so maybe, just maybe, they did it right? I guess we'll see in 7 hours.

As for the lower-res textures, even with them the game is 25GB. It's a large game, the same size as SWTOR, and SWTOR has a ridiculous amount of content being a MMO as well as thousands of hours of full speech. Remember that every texture in RAGE is unique, they don't reuse.

Carmack is thinking about releasing one level with much higher resolution textures, so we'll see what we've been missing. But be prepared for a long-ass download.

[HRose]

As far as I know, all on the fly adjustments makes framerate WORSE than usual because of the continuous shift of LOD and load/unload of textures.

See for example that disaster that is GTA engine.

[Pogo]

Good thing you said "as far as I know."

[WarrenM]

I say we give Rage a shot and see how it works. I bet Carmack came up with something workable. He's a decent programmer.

[stusser]

I bet Carmack came up with something workable. He's a decent programmer.
Mmmhmm.

[peacedog]

Interesting. You guys that are rabidly anti auto-detect justify that stance by saying auto-detect has always done a shit job. But this is id, and they spent a lot of time on reaching that 60fps framerate, so maybe, just maybe, they did it right? I guess we'll see in 7 hours.

Rabid? Telefrog can certainly speak for himself, though he doesn't come off as "rabid anti-auto detect" in his comments a few post off. Neither do I. Do you always try to describe people like that when they disagree with you? That's kind of insecure.

[stusser]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply foaming at the mouth, just that you were firmly against it.

[Telefrog]

I'm not completely against the idea of autodetecting settings. I agree that in theory it's a great idea.

I just haven't seen it work to my satisfaction yet. If id has figured this one out, then bully for them.

[RepoMan]

Wait, no skip ahead button for dialogue? Deus Ex: HR got this one right. Same with picking up dropped weapons. Hmm. Good thing I had already told myself I wasn't buying Rage until I was good and finished with DX: HR. Might be time to hold off for a few polish patches....

[stusser]

If id has figured this one out, then bully for them.
Absolutely-- I'm convinced that this is one of the issues holding PC gaming back. Consoles are all the same, you optimize for one hardware configuration, so the user doesn't need to worry about which antialiasing to use.

[Telefrog]

Rough interview. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6500/the_creative_intent_of_rage.php

[Marcin]

Rough interview. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6500/the_creative_intent_of_rage.php

That was an amazing interview. Basically nonsense backpedal answers and marketing fluff to every single point/concern he made about RAGE being a generic linear shooter.

[IkeVandergraaf]

Embargo of the reviews will be lifted at 9pm (PST). I will be sleeping around that time, so see you in... 11 hours.
http://twitter.com/#!/aegies/status/120892194126172160

So does a review embargo until (effectively) release day bother anyone besides me? Generally, when a publisher has confidence in a game, they want early reviews to help sell the game, right? An embargo until it's nearly too late to cancel my preorder isn't good, is it?

I so want this game to be good.

[Telefrog]

http://www.egmnow.com/articles/egm-review-rage/

EGM review. I guess that answers which publication got first rights.

[Squee]

That was an amazing interview. Basically nonsense backpedal answers and marketing fluff to every single point/concern he made about RAGE being a generic linear shooter.
No kidding. Wish more interviews were like that.

[Joe M.]

id has made no bones about it being a mostly linear shooter. When you ask them questions about it being a linear shooter --surprise! -- they are going to confirm that it is in fact a linear shooter. I'm not quite sure what we learned from that interview other than he knows how to ask an awkward question awkwardly.

Or are we to take Rage looking like two other games as some sort of keen gotcha question? Unlike, you know, Call of Battlefield 304035 which looks like roughly a million other games.

[RepoMan]

Yeah, that dude had a chip on his shoulder so big that I could hardly read the interview over it. I bet he could have fucked over the Deus Ex: HR developers using the exact same tactics.

[MattKeil]

Rough interview. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6500/the_creative_intent_of_rage.php

And of course the first comment is full of people complaining that the interviewer was "hostile" to the game. Do readers want gaming enthusiast press to try cutting through the marketing speak or not?

[Bill Dungsroman]

id has made no bones about it being a mostly linear shooter. When you ask them questions about it being a linear shooter --surprise! -- they are going to confirm that it is in fact a linear shooter. I'm not quite sure what we learned from that interview other than he knows how to ask an awkward question awkwardly.

Or are we to take Rage looking like two other games as some sort of keen gotcha question? Unlike, you know, Call of Battlefield 304035 which looks like roughly a million other games.

They said it looks like no other game, meanwhile it looks like at least 2. Call of Battlefield 304035 didn't claim that it doesn't look like any other game. The id guys said a bunch of half-nonsense answers and he stuck to his line of questioning. Also it's id, why shouldn't they answer (moderately) difficult questions about their games? Why shouldn't any game developer?

While you lament that any game journalist would dare ask a challenging question to a game developer I will continue lamenting that not nearly enough game journalists, so-called or otherwise, dare to ask such questions.

[Sarkus]

The attitude of the interviewer in that Gamasutra piece seems to be that of wanting them to sell him on Rage. And he has a point, in that most gamers are going to look at the game in the context of two Fallouts that are open world RPGs with strong FPS elements and the context of Borderlands. In other words, the PA setting as a linear shooter doesn't really seem like a move forward.

As an aside, I kept wondering if the questions we are seeing are really the versions he used in the actual interview. Either the id guys are just being pros and ignoring the tone, or they actually saw versions that were phrased or written differently.

[Telefrog]

No kidding. Wish more interviews were like that.


I'm not quite sure what we learned from that interview other than he knows how to ask an awkward question awkwardly.



Yeah, that dude had a chip on his shoulder so big that I could hardly read the interview over it. I bet he could have fucked over the Deus Ex: HR developers using the exact same tactics.


And of course the first comment is full of people complaining that the interviewer was "hostile" to the game. Do readers want gaming enthusiast press to try cutting through the marketing speak or not?

Interesting.

[Sarkus]

And of course the first comment is full of people complaining that the interviewer was "hostile" to the game. Do readers want gaming enthusiast press to try cutting through the marketing speak or not?

What I actually want is the enthusiast press to grow some balls and stop agreeing to NDA's, but no one seems to be doing that.

And some members of the enthusiast press need to stop making vague posts on gaming forums when we can all tell they are just dying to go off on a game but are constrained by the above NDAs.

That's just me, though. ;-)

[Blips]

I liked that the interviewer seemed genuinely interested in getting a real answer from Todd instead of just accepting marketing bullshit. I'd like to see more interviewers do more of the same instead of just helping promote whatever product they're inquiring about.

[LowComDenom]

Interviewer response: (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6500/the_creative_intent_of_rage.php#comment123034)



Yes, just to clarify for folks, this interview was done directly after I had played the game for four straight hours, and my questions were essentially trying to reconcile what id has said about the game publicly, and what I had actually experienced in the game. Essentially, defend your statements against what I saw.

And the mood in the room was not hostile! We had quite a fine time, but my interviews can definitely come across as harsher when you can't hear my inflection!

[Telefrog]

Well, to be fair, it's not like he's going to say, "Oh yeah, I was totally being a dick to them during the interview."

[belgerog]

Trying to cut through marketing speak is always a good thing. I haven't read the whole interview, but I don't mind if the game looks like Fallout or Borderlands, as long as the shooting mechanics are tight.

I never expected this to be a wide-open game, I've been more excited by what Id mentioned about there being a bunch of different weapons and tools (like that spider bot) and enemies with good AI routines. Bulletstorm was horribly linear but the weapons and the shooting were good enough for me to enjoy the game. If Rage lets you jump it will already be less linear than that.

[Baseman]

Rough interview.[/url]

Refreshing.
At least not one of these how awesome is your game? interviews.

[malkav11]

I'm not completely against the idea of autodetecting settings. I agree that in theory it's a great idea.

I just haven't seen it work to my satisfaction yet. If id has figured this one out, then bully for them.

For my part, I think it's great to have the -option- to have the game handle all that stuff for you, if you can't be bothered or it's too intimidating or whatever. But personally? I love going into a configuration menu and futzing with all the sliders and checkboxes. I have different standards than the folks at id may have vis a vis quality versus performance (read: I want the highest quality I can get and still get a consistent 30 FPS or so - many people seem to feel that below 50 or 60 is unacceptable. I disagree.). And -dynamic- LOD would probably bother the shit out of me if it was at all noticeable. Which, I guess, maybe it isn't. But I can't see how they'd manage it. Finally, autodetection routines have, in the past, had issues on systems with hardware newer than they know how to deal with. So, id can implement the hell out of that stuff if they want to. I just want the option to turn it off and do things my way.

[Bill Dungsroman]

Well, to be fair, it's not like he's going to say, "Oh yeah, I was totally being a dick to them during the interview."

To be fair? No offense but he shouldn't even have to apologize for what he asked in that interview.

[James Johnson]

Refreshing.
At least not one of these how awesome is your game? interviews.

How shitty is your system and all your games?

So awesome.

[MattKeil]

What I actually want is the enthusiast press to grow some balls and stop agreeing to NDA's, but no one seems to be doing that.

And some members of the enthusiast press need to stop making vague posts on gaming forums when we can all tell they are just dying to go off on a game but are constrained by the above NDAs.

That's just me, though. ;-)

Don't believe everything you assume.

I think the questions were fair, if a little confrontational. Rage has never looked unique outside of the tech on display. It's the best-looking version of something I've seen a dozen times, but it's still something I've seen a dozen times. The interviewer's attempt to ask what exactly makes the game a singular experience is not unwarranted.

[z22]

I'm contemplating getting this but have a couple of questions about the game after watching 2-3 gameplay videos on YouTube:

The last video I watched (and maybe all of them) looked very dark. Is most of the game dark like this?
The gameplay video I watched showed your guy fighting in some sort of ruined city. I noticed the options on where he could move to seemed limited to corridors and confined areas. Is this typical of the rest of the areas?


I'm not sure anyone can answer these questions yet.

[Bill Dungsroman]

How shitty is your system and all your games?

So awesome.

No idea what this post means

[James Johnson]

No idea what this post means

It's a reference to the only funny Penny Arcade comic (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/20).

I assumed his post was referring to the same thing.

[Sarkus]

I'm contemplating getting this but have a couple of questions about the game after watching 2-3 gameplay videos on YouTube:
The last video I watched (and maybe all of them) looked very dark. Is most of the game dark like this?
The gameplay video I watched showed your guy fighting in some sort of ruined city. I noticed the options on where he could move to seemed limited to corridors and confined areas. Is this typical of the rest of the areas?

I'm not sure anyone can answer these questions yet.

1. I'm not sure about the darkness, as most of the videos I've seen have been just fine. I did see someone who already has been playing who said the default settings were too dark and that adjusting the contrast for indoors was a must.

2. It's a shooter so wandering around and exploring is limited. Think Half-Life 2, that's what it looks like to me.

[Normann]

I too thought the interviewer was trying to put the game down but he did it for the wrong reasons. There is a ton of info out about this game. He actually played it for 2+ hours and all he could complain about was that it was linear, no real choices, and no in depth dialogues. If that is all I think we are good to go. Is there anyone here who expected a Fallout 3, or Morrowind, or even a Stalker? If I get another Borderland (which I loved) I will be very happy. Shoot, drive, humor, shit blowing up, nice art, great sound effects, good music I hope, etc. If I get that I will be bored exactly by the time Skyrim will preload.

I dunno how others feel but I am always happy to see ID coming out with something. I did play Wolfenstein 3D when it was released so I am biased.

More important than that above, can anyone confirm that Steam will unlock this at midnight EST tonight? I have my d2d preload sitting on my HD. I am on sick leave so tonight would be perfect to put in 4 hours. Like in the old days. Gaming until dawn (except no pizza and Coke).

[Sarkus]

It's been confirmed a few times that yes, it is unlocking at midnight Eastern tonight. It's also what Steam is counting down to.


. . . you can now begin pre-loading the game so you’ll be ready to play on Tuesday at 12 am ET.

[jfletch]

http://www.egmnow.com/articles/egm-review-rage/

EGM review. I guess that answers which publication got first rights.

Quote from EGM: "Featuring some of the most intelligent cover-based combatants this side of Half-Life 2"

Are they serious?

[Sarkus]

Some website called LensofTruth.com has compared the 360 and PS3 versions of Rage and concluded . . . they are exactly the same.

[Normann]

It's been confirmed a few times that yes, it is unlocking at midnight Eastern tonight. It's also what Steam is counting down to.

Sweet! thanks!

[Pogo]

Quote from EGM: "Featuring some of the most intelligent cover-based combatants this side of Half-Life 2"

Are they serious?

That's kind of hilarious seeing as how every video is full of psychopaths that look exactly the same running straight for the player.

[Sarkus]

That's kind of hilarious seeing as how every video is full of psychopaths that look exactly the same running straight for the player.

In those videos (now pulled) with the first hour of gameplay I saw some enemies hide behind cover. For awhile, anyway. I was more concerned about it taking seventeen head shots with the starter pistol to kill anyone then the actual tactics of the enemies myself.

Edit: My pre-load is finally complete. That's the longest game download I've ever had, by far. Now I remember why I've been mostly buying physical copies lately. Someone remind me of that before Skyrim hits.

[stusser]

If you care about early access, digital distribution is pretty nice. I would never wait in a line on launch day, so normally I wouldn't get to play Rage until tomorrow after work. With steam I'll be playing in just under 3 hours.

[Sarkus]

If you care about early access, digital distribution is pretty nice. I would never wait in a line on launch day, so normally I wouldn't get to play Rage until tomorrow after work. With steam I'll be playing in just under 3 hours.

Don't get me wrong - digital distribution is great and its far easier to get the less mainstream titles this way as well. And even though I have a pretty slow internet connection, most titles take a few hours at most to download.

But I just spent 18 hours (more or less) downloading Rage. That pushes my limit and since there are 24 hour Walmarts nearly everywhere now, that becomes an attractive option in most of the cases where I'm looking at being able to play at midnight.

[RepoMan]

I guess I have always been reading the id interviews with a grain of salt. They have been all "ooo weeeee we're putting driving in! How novel! We have lite character building! We have shiny inventory because Bethesda told us people love that shit! You won't even believe this is an id game with all the new features!"

It's all new to them. But innovative? Have I heard of a single genuinely innovative thing in any of the interviews to date? No. They think it's innovative, but it isn't. It's pretty much Borderlands, actually; Gearbox beat id to the gameplay punch by over a year, here.

The interviewer was within his rights to call them on that, but it seemed to me that rather than asking rhetorical questions to which the id guys obviously would have no good answer, he could've just stated his opinion in a review. Putting the id guys on the defensive by asking why their game is so crappy is something that any negative reviewer could do, but it doesn't really make for a great interview.

[Tim James]

It's not the questions or some high-minded approach to games journalism. He simply failed to set up the article properly. The writer needs to understand his audience and their expectations. Tell them it's going to be a different style conversation with some back-and-forth.

In the comments he admits his interviews seem harsher than they are in real life. That means he failed to convey the proper tone in his writing.

[Woolen Horde]

Ouch. Ars just weighed in
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/10/rage-is-the-gamiest-game-that-ever-gamed.ars

[Normann]

Btw my copy is installing right now... mmmmmm Edit: time to brew some coffee

[Tim James]

Decrypted, downloading 387 MB patch. Download speeds are fine.

[mkozlows]

Ouch. Ars just weighed in
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/10/rage-is-the-gamiest-game-that-ever-gamed.ars

Joystiq isn't as enthused about the graphics (http://www.joystiq.com/2011/10/04/rage-review/), citing texture pop-in, stiff animation, and bad lighting.

[Tim James]

Uh oh, "Press Enter."

(Hehe.)

[Tim James]

In-game graphics settings: resolution, fullscreen/windowed, anti-aliasing, and one of those brightness sliders that shows you how to calibrate it.

There's quicksave, whew.

Oh shit I just turned off my computer. I guess it didn't save my settings. (Naeblis is probably twitching in his sleep right now, hehe.)

[stusser]

OK, so I just got out of the ark, and HOLY SHIT ARE THEY KIDDING WITH THAT TEXTURE POP-IN OR WHAT? It's not just noticeable, it's INSTANTLY noticeable and completely distracting. Every single time you turn your head. What the fuck, id, seriously. What the fuck.

My rig isn't state of the art, but it's a radeon 5850 with 1GB of RAM. It obliterates console graphics. How did they let this be released in this state? I expected the game to be mediocre, but the engine? What the fuck, id. What the fuck.

Very disappointing.

[Tim James]

Ouch, Carmack wasn't kidding about how inefficient PCs are. The game runs like a dog.

I do NOT think you can use vsync. The game doesn't seem to be triple buffered - every time you move or change directions, the framerate drops to around 30 until everything is cached in. Then it jumps back to 60 when you're still. Now that I've disabled vsync, framerates stay above 45-50 while moving, but there's lots of jitter. I'll have to try D3DOverrider.

The pop-in is absolutely horrendous with mouselook. If you spin around, textures need to load in even if they've previously been loaded. It doesn't seem to cache 360 degrees even after you've already seen it. Clearly designed for gamepad with slower turning radius, if even that. This is still on my HDD though, I'll need to move it to SSD later. Still, I've got 8 gigs of system RAM and 2 gigs of video RAM. Are they even using it all?

2500K / 6970.

[EDIT] ATI users checking this thread in the morning: you probably don't want to bother. It's a mess at the moment. You might have luck with the 11.10 beta drivers.

[stusser]

So I just decided to explore a bit instead of "lets go, get in the buggy". The game killed me with no explanation. I don't mean a mutant tore my head off, I mean I was walking up the road and then I was dead. Hmm.

So anyway, I tried to load my saved game and it locked up. Had to ctrl-alt-delete because it wouldn't give up my mouse pointer. This is the first 5 minutes of play. No joke.

I repeat my refrain-- what the fuck id, what the fuck?

[mono]

This game looks freaking stunning. 2560x1600 on the PC. Runs smooth as hell (I have an obnoxious GTX 580) and yeah, the textures could be sharper, and the pop in is jarring, but holy crap it looks good. I've just gotten to the first mission, taking out the bandits, but it's gorgeous.

There's also nothing like the solid feel of an id game for player responsiveness.

That Ars console review was rough, and it may prove true, but honestly, if I just get to roam around this awesome looking world and shoot stuff, I think I'll be pretty happy.

[Alex Pirani]

Ouch. Ars just weighed in
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/10/rage-is-the-gamiest-game-that-ever-gamed.ars

"Ouch." Jeez, no kidding

[Tim James]

D3DOverrider doesn't seem to detect the game to try to force triple buffering. I'm not used to playing without vsync. I'm not sure there's a playable option for me at this time.

mono what are you running?

[Tim James]

You can see the benefit of megatexture in the first tram car ride right at the start. The cliffs look incredible. It makes old and busted tech like New Vegas look like dogshit, with a shorter draw distance of course.

I'm getting a weird flashy graphics glitch across the screen every now and then. The fan's not working very hard so I don't think it's artifacting. It's also really bad while the game is running and I pull up the menu.

[Tim James]

ATI RAGE driver:

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/GPU121AMDCatRagePerfDriver.aspx

Downloading now. No sense trying to stumble along like this.

[Matthew Beaver]

Uh oh, "Press Enter."

(Hehe.)

Not for nothing, but has there lately been a better signifier of trouble to come in a pc version?

Ouch. It may be slow, but at least the pop in makes it ugly. oh wait... So... about that whole auto detect 60 fps thing. The center of the screen is looking good for me, I suppose, but its choppy as all hell (sub 20fps I'm guessing) and of course the outer 1/3rd of the screen is changing from muddy nonsense to sharp in half second steps every time I bump the mouse.

System:

Win 7 home 64 bit
i7 930 @ 2.8ghz
radeon 5850 w/ 1gig

I'd ask for ideas on setting, but, you know... I, uh, turned aa off. That's about it. :P

EDIT: just saw post RE: ATI driver, trying now.

[malkav11]

I'd love to know how you guys are playing it, because for me it just says "This game is not available at the present time." whenever I click play.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

For those wondering what people meant when talking about texture pop in, this is what I see everything I look around:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/840/rage2011100323461921.jpg/

After textures load:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/18/rage2011100323463991.jpg/


This is with 8 gigs RAM, installed to an SSD, Radeon 5870 1gb, core 2 duo 3.1 ghz.

I, for one, am delighted that Rage has proven we've reached a new era where end users do not need any ability to tweak graphic settings.


fake edit: we'll see how the rage driver improves things!

[Tim James]

I'd love to know how you guys are playing it, because for me it just says "This game is not available at the present time." whenever I click play.You restarted Steam, right?

[Blips]

my refrain-- what the fuck Bethesda, what the fuck?

Fixed for you.

[Tim James]

ATI driver update seems to have had no effect. Steam forums confirm.

[malkav11]

You restarted Steam, right?

No, but upon reading that it does seem like a logical next step. Be right back!
Edit: Yup. Okay. I need to remember that, 'cause I believe I ran into it with Deus Ex or something not too long ago as well. I just don't usually restart Steam or my computer unless I'm forced to.