I prefer not waking up without pants.

Then again, pants are overrated. 

spiney I agree with your insane and rambling drunk criticism, for the most part.

Uninspired level layouts? YES I AGREE STRONGLY

Whack a mole gun play? Well not necessarily, at least I personally played it very aggressively on nightmare\ultra nightmare (the game doesn't have an exaggerated spread like other modern fpses), also there are some parts swarming with ultra fast and mobile mutants and you are basically forced to move around a lot (on ultra nightmare of course)

"Just wish Rage was a bit more... you know, Quake1-ish gameplay on the whole?" everybody wishes that of course but we can't have too much nice things on this planet

"Apart from that, the story reads like it was written by a 13 year old." Yes. I don't mind it that much in a shooter if the action is good\decent but they could improve it. IN a sequel I would like less combine soldiers and more satanist bandits\ monsters\ general post apocalyptic stuff

"Also, an ending would have been... nice? You know, like Romero or robot Hitler.." Yes pretty weird way to end a game

Anyway thanks for your reply and your rambling\drunk way of writing criticism while still maintaining coherency. 

not bad

don't agree with the cover comment. you can freely charge in and blast things.

massive sound compression on id software logo video... wtf?

beautiful open world look... with invisible walls everywhere. depressing.

terrain makes my jaw drop 

but ultimately felt unfinished. Imagine if it had just a couple more encounters with bigger bad guys and it had a proper boss battle at the end. That could have propelled the game from being a 6 or 7 to a full 10/10 IMO.

Was the game too grandiose for id to make properly? They are still not a large enough developer for such a project IMO. 

You can charge freely but you'll need to dodge all the waist high cover that's littered everywhere. And the smarter enemies use it a lot.
And if you get hit by something your screen turns annoyingly red. Maybe it's because I played on the higher difficulty, dunno... just feels more pop and stop than it should be at times, it's different with the mutants tho. Maybe i'm too noobish? That's always a possiblity 

i usually just jump over the waist high cover. i do use it sometimes though.
mind you, i'm only playing on hard and haven't gotten far into the game so maybe when it becomes more difficult, i'll need to hide more or something. 

"Was the game too grandiose for id to make properly? They are still not a large enough developer for such a project IMO. "

I think that's why they should have expanded rage with a sequel instead of starting from scratch again with doom 4.

"it's because I played on the higher difficulty, dunno... just feels more pop and stop than it should be at times"

On the highest difficulty enemies are extremely precise. I still managed to rush the majority of the fights. You can still pull out your rocket lawn chair to quickly resolve stand stills, even while jumping around.

On hard you can run strafe bullets at least at the beginning 

Rage is one of those games that I just can't help but sigh in disappointment, while at the same time, can't stop but return and play it because damn, the gameplay feel so satisfying. I agree with some of the previous commenters here, playing through it (for the third time), while the gameplay fundamentals feels refined (aiming, shooting, movement) the whole design feels incoherent and incomplete.

Vast expanse of land, cool, but then again, nothing much to do but only to go from objective to objective. Shame that they didn't even consider making those points of interests have respawning enemies on revisit. The concept of megatexture, wow. I really like the amount of texture detail per surface, rarely spotting an absolute repeating texture. But, meh, concrete, rocks and debris, looking at it as a whole...

I'm not bothered by the gratuitous texture pop-ins as it means the game, in return, just chugs on for me at a consistent 60+fps. The screen tears a bit too much though. Also, seriously love the fact that there's almost nonexistent amount of depth-of-field, blur, bloom. Keeps the whole game clear. And makes me appreciate the surface textures even more.

Some may not like it, but I love the over-animated npcs. Makes them feel cartoony and I like it that way. Kinda fits with the not-really-photorealistic visual design. The enemy movements are commendable too.

The vehicle feels great, but then again, finite amount of bad guys so later ends in just driving in vastness of nothing.

The arena and the racing I like too, but without much variety (on replay the mutant-bash only has, like, two variations?) it get stale pretty quickly.

The weapon feel-idsoftware grade of refinement. The weapon and ammo variety, is indeed varied, but-with the exception of the shotgun and pistol-ammunition and money are pretty finite, so unless you are a fan of the shotgun and pistol, other folks preferring other weapons would feel shortchange for the experience of the other weapons.

In the end, the only REAL downer for me for the game is the fact that, for a game that really works aces on the shooting department, you will-in such a big, semi-open landscape-run out of things to shoot. Which makes the post-campaign freeroam on the DLC/patch pointless.

But still, like it way better than Doom 3. 

I have previously played about 2/3 through the game on a PC and right now I am replaying it on a PS3 with all the DLC. Why did the game fail to do well financially? Was it all about the backlash to initial driver problems? The game itself is really REALLY good. Sure, there is some filler and the story is forgettable, but the 2 important things: actual combat/gunplay and environment design are phenomenal. 

but the 2 important things: actual combat/gunplay and environment design are phenomenal.

I have to make a couple of points here:

1) If by "environment design" you mean the visual art side of it, then I agree it is phenomenal, but that is not one of the two most important things in a game.

2) if by "environment design" you mean "level design", then I agree it is one of the two most important things in a game, but in Rage, the level design is not phenomenal - it is very linear, simplistic and dull. 

For an FPS, in the age of COD and games-trying-to-be-COD, Rage level design is very much non-linear, but yes, I did mostly mean the visual art side of things. 

Because it is a fucking idiotic mix of a racing game and a mediocre FPS with an awful GUI/UX (on PC), shallow story, lifeless world, boring missions, stupid gimmicks, invisible walls, shit gameplay but really really fancy static environments. 

Where are RAGE levels non-linear? 

either go left or right around the boulders in the wastelands. 

You have to re-navigate each level backwards at a later point in the game.

Oh wait, that's still shit. 

Seriously. Every level in RAGE is on a rail. I'm not complaining, if that's what they wanted, that's fine but I can count the number of times I had an actual choice on one middle finger. 

Just throw me a bunch (horde) of enemies and fuck the rails of whatever they are

Why does everybody complain?

Great game with a great gameplay(a side of racing) and level design 

the last great game using id's engine was
wolfenstein 2009 

They wasted it, they could of done much better indeed with respawning and as to linearity. Again those decisions at ID... 

Something occurred when reading above, ID use to have other studios go ahead and make expansion packs for their games, and some of those were pretty OK. Why are they not doing this with Rage to get more out of the whole base they built up with it ? 

The accountants obviously made some predictions based on Rage's sales and decided it wasn't worth the cost of development. 

for the same reason - it didn't sell enough. 

<< it didn't sell enough.

so what the difference between the sells of q1 and q2

or is it sellmark completely changes over the years?

it's just laziness, imho 

 

but just imagine the man-hours (aka money) required to make Rage, and compare with the man-hours required to make Quake1. Offset your gross against that to gauge whether or not it gets a mission pack.

That's why everyone involved in Quake1 drives a Ferrari.