Old school game optimized for aging consoles
Recently the trend have been less focus on the PC as a gaming platform though. Some blame how easy it is to pirate PC-games, others point to consoles just feeling more right for games. Whatever the reason is, Rage is the first game from ID which is not made with the PC in center.
This is a more serious move for ID than for other game companies, exactly because they have been the ones pushing PC gaming hardware. When you got an ID game, you would always feel you got the very best possible gaming technology for the future generation of PCs.
But what happens when you take the PC out of the equation? ID continues to impress with visuals, but within the limitations of aging console hardware. So, it is impressive for an aging platform, but when playing on a PC you just feel it could have been so much more if they did not have the console bottleneck to worry about. We get blurry textures that seems optimized for a console resolution and a host of technical problems. It's certainly not the WOW experience we remember from the past.
Having said that, the game is a good looker. Achieved more from excellent art direction than technology though, although ID boast their new megatexture technology which allows one giant texture map to be applied to an entire level, instead of using the regular approach with tiled texture maps that are reused throughout the levels. A handy tool for the developers of the game, ID has mainly boasted this as a developer feature making painting levels easy. I am sure that is true, but for us gamers it does not seem to pay off as much.
Well, enough about the technology behind the game. ID can be forgiven for this, modern games are less technology driven than before anyway.
My first impression of the game was not so good though. You watch an asteroid passing through space before hitting the earth and destroying civilization as we know it. You awake in your hibernation capsule designed to get you through the years of inhabitable environment left by the explosion. That's all great, and as I left the vault I looked around to make sure it is safe. It is safe, not a soul anywhere, so I press on. Then suddenly teleporting in from nowhere comes two hostile wasteland survivors attacking, initiating a cutscene designed to shock and scare.
Well, I was more annoyed than scared by the game resolving to cheap tricks to frighten me. Seems like this is going to be a game witch tosses realism out of the window, and enforcing a storyline through scripting.
Most modern games do that, but it seems to be a bit poorly implemented. I got another example just after this, when some guy approaches in a truck telling me to jump in. No thanks I thought, I wanted to explore the beautiful landscape a bit before jumping on the scripted bandwagon. So, I ponder off on my own, and BAM! Ten seconds later I get shot by an invisible enemy dying at once. The game's way of telling you to abandon free will and play it like the game designers want. Oh by the way, I had to watch the entire asteroid through space cutscene again after this, because the game did not automatically save my progress.
Another example was found later in the game where I approached some kind of bossfight with a dude sitting in a car with a roof-mounted machine gun. He sprays bullets on you as you approach him through a narrow corridor. It would not be as bad if not for the fact that the corridor is artificial, formed by junk and otherwise invisible walls. So when I was rushing towards him, I tried to duck for cover in a small clearing among the junk, just to find that the area was invisibly sealed off. This misunderstanding had me die instantly, as I had no time to look for alternate cover. Lesson learned, do not attempt to play it the way you want, follow the obvious paths.
I can understand that developers find it much easier to resort to this kind of mechanics to force the player to stick to the script, then they wont have to think of all eventualities. It makes testing easier, and also will need less content to be prepared for different player approaches, as there is only one path through. Cheaper and faster to produce in other words. But, I wish they would do it in more subtle ways, and still let you have a good margin of freedom. When I am presented a huge, beautiful world, my first instinct is to explore it freely. No, says the game, you will play it in the correct order, follow the correct paths and watch the scripted sequence and fight the badguys which will be teleported in when the story branch you are currently exploring finds it necessary.
When I first read about the game, I thought it would be a mix of action and role playing. You can after all scavenge for all kinds of things, build your own stuff and take on quests from many of the wasteland survivors. But, in fact, it is 98% action on rails, and 2% role playing freedom.
So, what about the core game left then, the shooter? This is what ID is famous for knowing best. Well, nothing special here actually. You shoot cartoonish looking people, and they die. You got some special weapons, like boomerang, and you can have some powerful stuff made by scavenging rare metals left by the asteroid. The enemies sometimes wear armor, like a helmet, you can shoot off. But all in all, apart from subtle new variations, it is a pretty plain shooter. The AI is nothing special, your enemy is all too eager to die, throwing themselves in your face to make you feel rushed. And they will still talk to their teammates even after they are all dead, screaming stuff to their deceased buddies laying next to them like "he is over here!". At first I used this as an indication there would be more of them than one, but not so. It's all pretty dumb.
Forget about strategy, just run where you are told and shoot.
All in all, a pretty looking but shallow game with a bland story. If you are a big ID fan, you might be interested in it for historic reasons. And there is some simple fun to be had here. Just not the spectacular experience it was hyped to be.