Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Just in case anyone was worried that Rage might end up just being Slightly Miffed, the launch trailer, which you may have seen on a televisual device, has come along to remind us what the game is really about. Angry music and mutants being clobbered. Of course, there is actually more to it than that but it’s important to emphasise that the following things will be happening: giant mutants will clamber toward you threateningly, vehicles will flip over and explode, and balloons will deliver explosive payloads to incredulous enemies. See below for proof.

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Ha, the latest Rage diary has Id’s Tim Willits uttering one of those phrases that (fortunately) tend to only come from the lips of game designers: “…then we had to decide how to destroy the planet.” In this case, of course, it was a convenient asteroid impact in the 2030s which sets the scene for Rage’s ruined world one-hundred years later. Yeah, I think you know the sort of thing, but anyway this latest trailer-diary, entitled “The Dawn”, has loads of new footage and some of it is quite spectacular – that ruined/infected skyscraper is a thing of beauty.

(I also love the juxtaposition of Matt Hooper saying the words “deep and meaningful story” as the player shoots a red exploding barrel on screen.)
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Bethesda Blog announces a bunch of updates for Quake Live, the most important of which includes new maps for their premium service. Good news for those premium subscribers, I suppose, but I can’t help wondering how successful Quake Live has actually been for Id. I play games on there every couple of weeks, and there’s almost always a decent EU capture the flag game to be had. That’s great, because it means the community is ticking over, but even as a semi-regular user I don’t see much reason to pay for a premium account. The competition for this relaunched classic must be particularly tough when the range of free shooters is now so enormous, from the hardcore precision of Warsow, to the Facebooked ease of Uberstrike, to the more mature corporately packaged experience of BFP4F. It can’t be easy out there.

It makes me wonder whether any of you lot play a free shooter? More to the point, do any of you lot pay for a free shooter?

Reports have been coming in that the next game from Id Software might just be using the little-known “first-person” format to deliver its particular brand of post-apocalyptic action. Well now we actually have proof! This most recent video (carefully embedded below by our technicians) proves, without any doubt, that Rage is a first-person shooter videogame. They said it couldn’t be done, and they’ve only gone and done it. For more evidence please refer to our recent hands-on preview article.
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That’s what id’s design director Matt Hooper told has told Eurogamer.

“They’re [the Doom 4 team] going in their own direction,” Hooper added. “They’re doing something Doom fans will be happy with. I try to support them as much as possible. It’s a good thing. We’re separated enough to be able to go our own ways, but still connected where we can help facilitate both those directions. It is distinct enough. It would be dangerous… We don’t want to make a re-skinned Doom [with Rage] and then Doom 4 be a re-skinned Rage. That would be bad.”

My speculatometer points to Doom 4 (or 400M, as we’re calling it) being an attempt to recapture the demonic themes and pacey blasting of the original games. Odds on for an unveiling at QuakeCon this summer, and a late-2012 release. But I guess we’ll see…