megalodon, are you the authority who decides what people may like or not?

You ain't making any sense anyways, first you say you wanted an oldschool game and then you bitch about the AI?

You don't like Rage. Ok. 

The version of megatexture used in Rage is actually quite different to that used in ETQW, which had various well-documented limits, such as a smaller texture size (32kx32k vs Rage's 128kx128k) and not being able to handle overhanging geometry.

Besides, one could easily extend the argument and say "megatexture isn't new, it was used in software Quake" too (what else do you think the surface cache is?)

Enforcers in Quake shouted at you in English, and most monsters in Quake II used English as well. I fail to see the complaint here. 

Bare in mind I haven't played the game yet, but based on vids I've seen and whatnot I think it comes down to the fact that in this engine the "new graphical feature" doesn't really add any gameplay value, but rather adds a ton of artistic value.

Whereas in previous id engines the new graphical features have enhanced the gameplay in some new way. For example the shadow technology in doom 3 affected the gameplay as you could craft scenario's with them or make monster ambushes more intense, etc. In Quake the addition of a fully 3d environment affected gameplay immensely.

In Rage the megatexture makes stuff look really pretty and unique, but as far as I can tell it doesn't affect gameplay in the slightest. I suppose you could argue that the wide open world parts wouldn't exist without the tech but from what I hear that might have been a good thing? :D

Theres also the fact that it runs at 60fps *nomatter what*. That is a big deal for me at least, I can't afford to have a dual-gfx setup a crazy hispec cpu and usually my graphics settings run fine on high until some crazy action starts happening (where you need the fps most :D).

Meh, getting side tracked. Well the game looks fun, but like I mentioned I cant comment on it directly as I haven't played. If you walk around areas and shoot dudes and it feels great, then id have succeeded in making a game I want to play :) 

most rage haters appear because they expected an RPG with open world and story (from id software!) but got a linear shooter with lack of story and pseudo-open world.

I expected a solid shooter with good graphics (I expected the lack of story also) and got it. Enjoyed it much and want more of that.
I think if Rage was announced as a linear shooter it would have got a higher score and more fans. 

Pretty much what I expected, good and bad.

The only bad thing I got that I didn't really expect was it being pretty easy.

The main good thing I got that I didn't fully expect was just how good the atmosphere and sounds and general style/theme was in some areas.

The only things I really wanted were: More of it, a better, deeper ending, and more combat in open areas. 

No I don't consider myself as some authority, but I think game designers can't please both oldschool- and newschool gamers. Just like Duke Nukem Forever is at one hand old school, according to Gearbox, and yet Duke can only carry 2 weapons at once and there's no co-op. So what's the point of releasing it. Well, some people liked it. But overall it wasn't a success.

Same with Quake Wars, which was too much like Battlefield, at least that was criticism I've read a lot.

In Rage you got the same situation: it's a bit of this and a bit of that. A bit old-school a bit new-school. But I doubt you can please both parties. As I understand, ammo is scarce, which isn't old-school, but having to save manually is old-school... but the new-school gamers don't like that. And none of them like running out of ammo.

With recent games, incl. Rage, ID isn't really doing anything unique, or groundbreaking, overall. It's no jaw-dropping technical achievement and it's not that special in gameplay aspect. I mean, either go oldschool or do something new-school/groundbreaking. Easier said then done, true. But I've read several reviews and, so many times, people mentioned it was a bit like a Fallout and Borderlands rippoff. So what does it add to the current game scene? Most reviews aren't that positive, just like with DNF. And consider how long the development took.

The key questions are probably:

- How good is ID in pleasing old school gamers
- How good is ID in pleasing new school gamers
- How good is ID in pleasing both

And the answer should decide what types of games to make, imo.

But again, if people here have fun with it, that's great I guess. I'm not gonna comment on it anymore, because I do realize I should play it first instead of just watching vids and reading reviews. 

Actually playing the game before crapping all over it may be a good idea! 

It's a lot easier to diss the game when you've actually played it and aren't factually incorrect about it.

Ammo - not sure how you understand that as you've never played it, but there is plenty of ammo and you can buy LOADS in the towns. Plus there are loads of weapons and many alternate fire modes so generally even if one fire mode of one weapon isn't hugely stocked on ammo, your overall stocks are massive.

Old skool vs new skool. Rage has old skool (-ish) gameplay and very new skool graphics / theme coherence. Simple as that.

What it adds to the overall game scene, apart from a good blend of those two elements I just mentioned, is a good fun FPS game. If you want to straight up shoot bandits mutants and monsters with a fuck load of different weapons in a post-apoc environment, then errrr, it's that sort of game. 

Plus that must be one of the more bizarre posts I've ever read about it (and I've been following some of the Steam forums crap, so I've seen plenty of bizarre).

Why on earth is it that people have such a hate on the game that they feel compelled to lie about it?

A bit like a Fallout and Borderlands ripoff? My arse. It's very much a traditional id shooter and very much everything you expect from a traditional id shooter is present and correct (aside from the MP aspects where they decided to do something different).

Scarce ammo? My arse. Rage is actually a polar opposite of this; you can go completely nuts with ammo in the game.

Not a jaw-dropping technical achievement? My arse. Have you been hiding under a rock for the past 7 years. Technically it's astonishing, but it does select a different set of tradeoffs to any other game on the planet.

New school vs old school? This is a totally bogus decision. Whatever happened to "let's just make it fun"? Maybe people don't like "fun" anymore? Maybe that's it? Whatever, Rage is undoubtedly F-U-N in big neon capitals that you can read from the moon. 

Don't really agree with that, except that taking the 3 previous ID SP releases - Quake, Q2, D3 - they don't have much of a tradition except being straight up FPSes. Rage IS less visceral and less hectic than Id's earlier traditions, with more emphasis on weapons options and cover usage. Although I guess in comparison to modern games it's waaaay more traditional than average ;)

But, whatever, it works and it's fun, if you like FPSes. Last time I checked, I do.

BTW for megladons benefit, I happen to be a big fan of Rage because of my personal tastes, BUT I'm not basing my counter arguments on that....I think there is objectively plenty to criticise - but "lack of ammo", "monsters speaking english" and "lack of technical achievement" aren't part of that. 

If you guys speak the truth, then a lot of reviews I've read don't. Or it's personal opinion. I've literally read about the need for 'stacking up ammo' before going to a battle zone, other wise you run out of it.
I'm not saying you guys are lying, but, I assume then you guys thing the people who write and agree with those reviews are basically bad players that can't aim? I mean, that could be a possibility I guess. 

As other people have stated, you buy most of your ammo in stores. You can find ammo during the missions, too, but I guess that would not be enough if you didn't buy any additional ammo. However, ammo is so cheap and I had more than enough cash to buy shitloads of it, even the special ammo types... so I don't see the problem. I never ran out of ammo during a mission. Maybe I ran out of ammo for one weapon, but I still had plenty for other weapons, so it was not an issue.

Seriously, go play the game. It's fun! 

Visually, it is gorgeous for outdoor scenarios and it's good for indoors. It lacks some of the visual features of other engines (or its predecessor for that matter), but it more than makes up for it because the environment is so varied. No tiling really means much better immersion.

But the main point for me is that the engine performs incredibly well, even on my laptop, while looking mostly great and being really responsive. In Doom 3, I constantly felt like I was underwater or something. The controls were not as responsive as what I was used to, it was as if the mouse input was heavily filtered or something. This is not the case in Rage - it responds immediately to every movement you make with your mouse.

So while you can criticize that in some aspects, the engine is a step back from IDtech4 (or whatever the Doom 3 engine is), it is a huge step forward in many other aspects and personally, those aspects weigh heavier for me. I don't need normal maps and glossy shaders if I have non-repeating textures. Anyhow, I'm sure they'll figure out a way to stream normal maps and all that stuff into graphics memory in the future. 

Cant go high resolution on large worlds because the filesize is enormous and on a small scale you dont really need it.
Rage looks good because the art-design work is great and its very polished. And Rage looks bad because the technology is less than optimal and a lot of detail went down the drain when they had to shrink all the textures. 

megalodon, reviewers are full of it. Always. Critics sometimes get it right, but in general anyone who is paid to write about a game objectively doesn't.

The 'Rage is crap' bandwagon got rolling on day one with the buggy release, that was quickly fixed.

I'll be getting it for myself for Christmas. 

i tried it, and i liked it a lot.

played the demo on hard and it wasnt that hard, but i did die a bunch of times [still not used to playing fps with a controller].

the racing was weird at first but still managed to get 1st. the texture pop-in was there on the ps3, but nothing to annoy me. i guess i'm used to it after playing a lot of unreal engine games that have a lot of it.

the game looks gorgeous on the ps3, and seeing pc screenshots it must be fucking awesome to see it running on one.

i'm still kinda scared of getting it though. i have two ati cards crossfired together [5670s, no money to upgrade yet] so i don't know.

maybe i'll get it anyway early next year. but i played the ps3 demo like 5 times already, but have they said that there will be a pc demo? its kinda dumb not to have one for it. damn you bethesda! 

i played with a single 8800 gt something. was no problem. so unless the ATI drivers still suck it should work.

for a demo you could always pirate it. more convenient than the drm anyways... 

it on a Radeon HD 6970M yesterday. It runs very smoothly, but sometimes there are white flashes where a part of the screen turns white for one frame. It's pretty annoying. 

If you like the PS3 demo just get it on PC. It looks great, has a strong atmosphere, and plays just plain fun. No brainer imo. 

i always wanted to get it on pc, but was a bit afraid of all the weird shit going on at release [mostly with ati cards it seems]. i tried the ps3 demo because there is no pc demo. would have been a great way to see if i could run it with or without issues.

i guess i'll probably just get it anyway, since thats what i always end up doing :) 

And yeah - it was buggy. I hasd texture pop-in, and weird flags (I mean the actual decorative flags in the game were weird), but after a patch and some new drivers everything worked fine. The game runs super-smooth and looks purfect ;) 

so i bought during the steam sale, and man it runs not so great. i have massive texture pop-in. and when i turned on the pc today to play some more, the framerate is like 20fps or something :(

the day i got it, i turned off crossfire and the game worked really well, except for the texture poping which somehow stopped the more i played.

so during that time the game was lost of fun. i really like it, but now the problems are back and with or without crossfire turned on, trying a lot of things i have found online nothing seems to make it work like that again.

it feels like using my old pentium celeron and trying to run doom3 with the integrated chipset! :D

:( 

Update your drivers for your GPU? 

i have the latest ones. before installing them, i uninstall the old ones and then use regcleaner & drivesweeper to clean whatever junk is left off from them.

one thing i did this morning, was change some settings on catalyst [i think force v-sync it was, i was too sleepy to remember] and the game runs really smooth, but still have texture pop-in, annoying but i can live with it. if it stays this way, then i'll be more than happy.

its kinda disappointing how blurry some look. like the engine popped the temp blurry ones and it takes ages or forgets to load the normal/high res ones. :(