Rage: First impressions...

[Item!]

I will post back thoughts and snippets as I play - just got back from work and played for half-hour or so before dinner.

1) Plays...Ok. Vehicles are responsive and easy to drive, but not seen too much of this side of things yet. The shooting aspects are just generic FPS shooting so far. Competent but utterly unremarkable and not notably meaty or satisfying. Bad guys leap around and move in a fairly engaging way.

2) Looks...mixed. Everything from a distance looks pretty great - lighting is nice and everything looks like a slightly washed out and slightly more realistic Borderlands. Model textures for guns and characters are also pretty tight. On the negative side, landscape and level textures look disturbingly PS2-like when you get close - real ugly. Some slightly odd texture pop-in and screen tearing glitches which will probably be fixed out with driver updates.

3)Sounds...fine I guess. Voice acting is decent, guns go boom, cars go vroom. *shrug*

3) Technically...works fine so far. No crashes or major glitches yet. SLI support doesn't seem to be working, even with the latest NVIDIA beta drivers and the screen tearing seemed worse with it on, so I have switched it off for now. Weird not having any graphical settings other than AA, Resolution and "GPU Transcoding" Everything else is supposed to be done automatically under the new ID5 tech - adjusting on the fly to keep things at 60fps. Meh - I would rather choose my own settings, but whatever. Runs fine on my PC, but I would expect it to with 2500k, 8Gb and GTX570(x2)

Will post back more thoughts later - lemme know if you have any specific questions.

[squirrel]

I so much look forward to this game too, but forgot to withdraw money from bank and happens this week is public holiday here. I have to wait for next week.

[Item!]

Good news!

Shotguns are fun and make stuff die good.

Bad news!

It is still visually glitchy and there are some rough edges to the audio too - when I am driving my buggy and press/release accelerate, the samples of "accelerate" and "decelerate" kind of lurch into each other - it is irritating.

Ugly news!

Why-oh-why-oh-why do I have to boot to a title screen which encourages me to then "press enter" to get to the menu/start screen proper?

I know it is only a small thing, but it really gets on my chebs - just boot to the damn menu already!

[Jockie]

I actually cancelled my pre-order today, I was looking forward to this, but the bugginess and ATI problems alongside the apparent 'creative bankruptcy' of the game have put me right off. Wait for a Steam sale now I guess.

[squirrel]

the bugginess and ATI problems alongside the apparent 'creative bankruptcy' of the game have put me right off.

The ATI fix reported by RPS states that it's only compatible with HD5XXX/6XXX series. Do you mates know if the game runs fine on HD4870?

[Item!]

The ATI fix reported by RPS states that it's only compatible with HD5XXX/6XXX series. Do you mates know if the game runs fine on HD4870?

Judging from the howls of anguish it seems that ATI users across the board are suffering from a variety of issues, some more show-stopping than others.

I have an NVIDIA card and things still aren't great, but it is playable and so far stable.

[squirrel]

Judging from the howls of anguish it seems that ATI users across the board are suffering from a variety of issues, some more show-stopping than others.

I have an NVIDIA card and things still aren't great, but it is playable and so far stable.

Thanks for the info. Then I would have to wait till they release another fix.

[Cunzy1 1]

Why-oh-why-oh-why do I have to boot to a title screen which encourages me to then "press enter" to get to the menu/start screen proper?

I know it is only a small thing, but it really gets on my chebs - just boot to the damn menu already!

Ugh. How? How does this get through playtesting? It might be the best game in the world but stuff like this just breaks you down.

[orcane]

Sure it's not a big issue but come on, I'm not even sure why they do this on consoles (historical reasons?) but on a PC it's utterly pointless to have "press any key/enter" intro screens. Yes Sir I actually launched the game to play it! For that matter, the games on Steam which always pop up the "launch game/launch setup app" selection every session annoy me as well.

The technical wonkyness aside, I'm more concerned about the gameplay not being fun enough (or worth a full price game), guess I should cancel my preorder :(

[Jockie]

To be fair Orcane, from what I've played of Rage (20 mins at EG Expo) gameplay is the part it's good at as long as you're a fan of the genre (corridor shooter). The guns felt punchy and the animations were sublime.

No sooner did I cancel my pre-order than I'm asked to review the game.. fate is a funny guy. 22gb download is a bit hair-raising mind.

[othelios]

I too have it pre-ordered and am concerned with whether or not I'll enjoy it. Would you recommend it to someone who enjoys shooters like Half-Life (series), Fallout 3, Doom 3 and Quake (series including 4)? What shooters do you enjoy? It's rather difficult to gauge what people mean by "good", "OK" and "bad".

I'm not too bothered with the technical issues as they will eventually be patched. Not that there should have been any to this extreme in the first place, but for once I am glad there's a staggered release between regions.

I think if I do cancel I'll be getting From Dust now that the DRM has been removed.

[othelios]

Forgot to mention that I pre-ordered it for £25.70 so I wouldn't say I was/will be paying full price for it.

[TixyLixx]

What has Id done since Quake 3?

Doom 3 sucked and everything else was made by other developers.

[Vandelay]

Sure it's not a big issue but come on, I'm not even sure why they do this on consoles (historical reasons?) but on a PC it's utterly pointless to have "press any key/enter" intro screens. Yes Sir I actually launched the game to play it!

I remember this being asked by many (including myself) during the release of Crysis 2 demo. If I recall correctly, the answer was that it is because consoles use that screen to detect which controller is being used as controller 1. Not sure whether that is true or not. Either way, can't see any reason why it should be in a PC game.

I thought Rage looked good from the video previews and it seemed to be surprising a few journalists (including those here.) Technical problems mean I will probably hold off for patches and driver updates though. If the bad publicity is anything to go by, it will probably be £10 during the Steam Christmas sale.

Edit: Doom 3 wasn't bad. It might not have been amazing, but I was definitely surprised by how good it actually was when I finally played it, after all the naysayers.

[othelios]

Doom 3 sucked and everything else was made by other developers.

I enjoyed Doom 3. Story wasn't great but I enjoyed the premise and the visuals, not just graphical quality but the creature and level design. I also liked the computer terminals and data pads. I liked how they were interactive and quite high res, not just a blurry texture.

I compared it to those action films where story and character development come 2nd to the guns and explosions. People enjoy these sort of films but they also enjoy deep, meaningful films as well.

[SirKicksalot]

Remember to defragment your HDD. It's a must for a game that heavily relies on texture streaming. And don't trust Steam to do that. I use O&O Defrag.

[soldant]

Well, I guess there's still room for patching. I absolutely HATE those "Push Start/Enter!" screens though, I can't think of a valid reason for them at all whether on PC or consoles. Not certain if I want to get Rage yet, I guess I'll wait for the post-release rage to settle a bit.

[Oak]

It's to keep you from thinking you have to insert a coin.

[Item!]

I too have it pre-ordered and am concerned with whether or not I'll enjoy it. Would you recommend it to someone who enjoys shooters like Half-Life (series), Fallout 3, Doom 3 and Quake (series including 4)? What shooters do you enjoy? It's rather difficult to gauge what people mean by "good", "OK" and "bad".

Yeah - good point. Ok:

No real comparison to Fallout 3 (post apocalyptic setting aside) - it is a straight shooter so far, with NPCs who say stuff/give you missions/sell you ammo and bits etc when you click on them and some very basic crafting options. It doesn't even attempt to approach the RPG depths of the FO series and thats fine.

I think it stands up very well against Doom 3 and Quake - the combat is better paced and feels more solid and engaging and the environments have more complexity than your standard corridor. Enemies react to shots in a more entertaining and dynamic way than either of these games.

So far I don't think it manages the superior "mouthfeel" of the Half-Life games. Just as it is hard to put my finger on quite why these play so satisfyingly compared to their peers, I would be hard pushed to describe why Rage fails to feel quite this good after 3 hours or so....but it doesn't.

If you are looking for an id style shooter which is a reasonable evolution over their previous games and you are happy to ride out the technical glitches, then I think you would probably enjoy Rage just fine.

...For those of you with consoles, I still can't help feeling the best approach would be to rent it on your console of choice and see how you get on.

[Item!]

I thought Rage looked good from the video previews and it seemed to be surprising a few journalists (including those here.) .

Graphics-wise it is very odd.

Texture popping/streaming issues aside (and these seem very minor on my PC compared to the complaints I have seen elsewhere) this Megatexture tech offers beautiful vistas...as long as you keep your distance.

Very close up, the scenery is jarringly low-res and really does look like something from HL1 or that era. Strange.