Pretty much agree with all of the above. Utterly bland selection of both BUT it does look fun and it does look very pretty. I will play it as a solid FPS but not unfortunately as the next Q1/2 

they lack mad touch of romero and hall! 

"Stories are for sissies. Sissies who feel emotions" - great. 

I do like "solid FPS". It's actually what I want from a shooter.

I agree though that id has already done enough of those, so something more out-rageous would be nice.

Probably the wrong developer to look to for that, though.

Combinations of things like id and Splash Damage seem to work well. 

I tried playing mappi2 in coop, and every time i try to attach the cable to the device to spawn that boos, my quake crashes. Nahkahiir had the same. I use joequake nahk tried with directjoe, same result. any way around this? 

Wow - one of the guns is an AK47. My pants are billowing with excitement. 

yeah, that was hilarious. i mean, you can see the gun has been put together from spare parts. and yet, it looks just like an ak. -_- 

To give them credit, I'm gonna go out on a limb and predict that the finished game is actually going to be quite good and will have at least one or two very cool gameplay innovations (for the FPS genre at least) that they are not going to want to be spoiling this early on. My evidence for this is wholly unsubstantial, but basically comes from the following observations:

1) They've been developing this for an arse-drillingly long time
2) id aren't entirely stupid 

i predict they'll just follow in their own footsteps-- the engine will be fantastic, the gameplay will just be fairly mundane (yet still a good shooter, by all means). the art will be incredible, in part because of huge teams and money, but mostly because the tools will be so good.

i'm not arguing that id IS entirely stupid, but this formula has worked for years now. there's really no reason for them to shake anything up. carmack and co are fully capable of programming up some insanely good stuff which they can use to trade on, instead of relying as much on art and gameplay.

it's what i would do if i had access to programming skills like that. if id could just market their engine better this time around...
id tech 4 didn't see as much as as tech3 did, iirc. quake3 was like the defacto engine back then. but tech4 was more focused on interior stuffs, and while it could do exterior, it wasn't a perfect fit, and the big trend was outdoors/sandbox type stuff which is where unreal seemed to completely take over. seems like every other game out there is unreal now.

i guess the real negative point for them right now is that all the fancy stuff i remember them making a big deal about rage (for example texture streaming) is already IN most engines out there. i'm sure someone's done a version of megatexture too (crysis2 probably?). 

 

You mean, it will have to be judged by its gameplay?! 

gameplay first, please. I usually skip all cutscenes. Even crysis 2 makes me want to press buttons during cutscenes :( A convincing setting is a whole different story though (see hl1) 

The 'new' id (=carmack and his minions as opposed to a group of like-mined game devs) indeed seem to be mostly focused on advancing the engine technology and only create an alibi game around that because it has to payf of at least a little, and to get potential licensers interested. It seems the innovative/fun gameplay aspects became less and less important after Doom/Quake3 or something.

Admittedly I haven't followed much of the Rage preview material, but atm it appears to be a Borderlands with better graphics. I'm still going to get it, however without expecting too much. 

It's indeed a serious bug - a conflict between coop mode and my hacks (modelindex or the like). I'll have to investigate. 

i wouldn't mind that, tbh. i quite enjoyed borderlands with it's mix of FPS/vehicle combat.

otoh, if that's what gets done, i'd prefer it was more sandbox.

in truth, gearbox didn't have to gate the different zones in borderlands the way they did. they should have just left the entire thing open and leave it up to higher level mobs from discouraging players from moving to fast.
as it was, leveling speed was stupidly fast. for anyone who's played WoW, it felt like i was playing with perpetual 'fully rested xp'.
basically, i could have done with about 1/2 or even 1/3 xp gain rate. there was almost no reason to do side quests because you'd out-level the main quest after maybe only a couple.
it seems most devs don't seem to 'get' the XP system as a self-balancing system and instead rely on artificial means completely defeating the purpose.

anyway, i don't know if there's XP perse in rage. i just remember hearing there's 'rpg elements' which might just mean there's an inventory and you can pick up random shit. -_-
RPG is like the most abused term these days. 

I'm pretty sure it's pretty limited RPG-wise... no stats progression anyway. Probably an inventory, gun modification, and a simple skill-tree.

Negke, I think you're right - Carmack rules the roost, and he keeps them afloat with his technical skills. I doubt he even plays games anymore though.

I'm not sure this is even a matter of deciding to take risks, rather that Id is missing a creative lead with a real vision and a loud enough voice to cut through the boring.

I'm hoping in Doom 4 we see a real balls-out painkiller style of gameplay, a proper arcadey tribute to the good old days. They seemed to be hinting it was going that way... and that would be awesome. 

Those are some pretty long-winded conjectures. 

that IS almost entirely conjecture isn't it? 

I don't want painkiller gameplay. I want classic doom 2 style gameplay with improved visuals etc - Kind of like No Rest For the Living. 

I'm the only one who wants a Doom 3 sequel... 

I hear they're doing a reboot on the film series too! hahaha 

The Doom movie was SOOOO shit!. Maybe this time they will get someone to make it who has actually played the game DooM, or atleast read the back of the box...... Apart from Doom being a shit movie, they didnt even get the story right. By a long shot. They thought it was Resident Evil in space, or something....... 

When id first showed off rage, there was lots of outdoor driving, now it's mostly indoor shooting. I do wonder, was it going to be like that all along and they just wanted to show of the megatexture tech first, or did they get cold feet and retreat back to what they know, or did the fans revolt.

At least id is releasing their tools. Too bad it'll be very hard to make anything good without texture painting skills. 

I'm the only one who wants a Doom 3 sequel...

No you're not - I fucking loved Doom 3. 

It was a real benchmark in gaming, the way I see it. I remember around '04 just wishing I had a PC that could run it, then I played it through on the XBox (non-360), and I loved it too! The GFX were earth-shatteringly good. When I got my PC in '08 Doom3 was one of the first titles I bought, and I played through it again with glee.

I hope Doom 4 remains a dark and scary title. I also hope that there are more monsters and more relentless action.