I felt like I was reading about Rage for an eternity. There was a trailer for the game shown off in 2007 at QuakeCon, and in retrospect it's kind of impressive how close to the finished game it still looks, considering there was a ~4 year gap between that trailer being released and the game shipping in October 2011. There were magazine features all about idTech5, MegaTextures, and how revolutionary it all was. There were years of trailers and such. John Carmack enthusiastically showed the game off on iOS, and in fact a rail-shooter based on the game was released almost a full year before the final game came out!
In the end, it was a bit of a damp squib, both technically and critically. It was a nice looking game to be sure, but suffered from very notciable (at least on PC using a mouse) texture pop-in issues not just when entering new areas, but when turning too fast. It scored a ~79 on PC and ~81 on console for metascores, which is by no means bad, but didn't stand out that much from the crowd. 2011 was the year of Skyrim, Dark Souls, Portal 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Batman Arkham City, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Gears of War 3, Uncharted 3, Crysis 2, Modern Warfare 3 and The Witcher 2.
I first tried Rage on a friend's computer the year it came out, but I thought it seemed kind of bad and quickly forgot about it. In 2016, I picked it up for $5 on sale and decided I'd give it another go. I made it ~45 minutes in before giving up because it just didn't feel that great to play. Last week, I decided it was time to actually push through and see if I could get into it.
Technical Performance
For a 2011 game it certainly doesn't look bad. The aforementioned pop-in issues are annoying, but not a complete deal breaker. What is more annoying is idTech5's complicated relationship with framerate. The game is designed around maintaining 60fps, but the in-engine frame limited isn't very good at its job. I used RTSS to view a real time frametime graph, and it reported that the game was microstutter central. In addition to uneven framepacing being a constant factor of life, I experienced intermittent acute stutters that I was never able to fix. The microstutter was solved by using RTSS to limit the framerate at 60, rather than the in-game limiter. I have a G-sync display so it was never a major issue, but it's interesting in an academic sense that a developer put so much sweat and blood into maintaining a steady framerate, but didn't seem to be paying a lot of attention to framerate beyond the 1 second average interval. Frametime analysis wasn't really done much (or at all) in 2011 and prior, so I guess it makes sense, but still, kind of interesting.
The game holds up fine in the "open world", although that itself isn't very large. That's the way I like it though, and adding 4x as much driving with points of interest everywhere would have done nothing to improve the game.
Core gameplay and Progression systems
The pistol you get at the start of the game kind of blows. Eventually you find more powerful ammo for it and get some upgrades and it becomes useful, but I think this was behind my initial poor impressions. The enemies are quite aggressive and move fast, so when you have to pump 3-5 shots into basic enemies to down them like that it feels a bit shit. The hit reactions aren't the greatest, which doesn't help that much. Once I got the Shotgun and Assault Rifle up and running, the game became instantly much better. The arsenal grows rapidly from there, and in the ~10 hours the game runs, you get 8 total weapons (plus fists) each with multiple ammo types that behave quite differently (except the sniper rifle which only has the regular-ass bullets). The Minigun's alternate ammo is BFG shots. The crossbow can make people explode or electrocute or just do regular damage. The pistol can have a burst fire, or heavy shots. The shotgun can fire EMP slugs, or mini rockets, or regular shells. It's actually a really nice variety.
The main weakness in the game is that at the 3/4 point, all enemies become super bullet spongey. You start fighting the Authority and more advanced gangs of people who are all wearing super tough armor. My enjoyment rapidly plummeted at this point, because as mentioned earlier Hit Reactions are mediocre and enemies move quite fast. It feels like you're just pumping lead into these people's faces, 6 or 7 headshots with the AR at close range to down them, and if you're at long range you'll need to use the big guns or dump a whole mag into a single enemy. It stops feeling good.
Driving is serviceable. The races are pretty easy, and the mandatory stuff is basically effortless to win. Car combat is so-so, like it's not awful but it's not something that inspired me to put much extra time into it. Late game you get this super gun that instakills all enemy vehicles and I have no idea why, but I wasn't complaining because the "open world" combat is a bit repetitive anyway.
The cars and your person have various upgrades available. Extra armor, new weapon types, schematics etc. It's not over-systematized in the way that a lot of modern games are when they're trying to keep you hooked on the upgrade treadmill for 20+ hours, so overall I rate it as quite good for what it is.
Plot and Characters
Ehhh. Characters are thin, but it gets the job done. The premise of the game is moderately interesting, but it's not the kind of game where you're going to get invested. When THE RESISTENCE shows up it almost felt parodic, or like they were setting up for some twist. But it's all face-value stuff in the end, the Authority is indeed very nefariously evil and want to take over the world completely using an army of mind controlled supermutant hybrids with guns, the Resistence is noble, the small townships are good, and every other human group or mutant is out to kill you. In droves.
Overall
Not bad, somewhere in the 7 or 8 out of 10 range is accurate and I think it was recieved accurately by critics of the era. I was really loving it in the middle, but the late game dragged the experience down, and the opening is quite weak IMO. I'm looking forward to Rage 2, although I understand it's going to be tonally and technically radical departures, and the game is not going to play similarly.
In the end, it was a bit of a damp squib, both technically and critically. It was a nice looking game to be sure, but suffered from very notciable (at least on PC using a mouse) texture pop-in issues not just when entering new areas, but when turning too fast. It scored a ~79 on PC and ~81 on console for metascores, which is by no means bad, but didn't stand out that much from the crowd. 2011 was the year of Skyrim, Dark Souls, Portal 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Batman Arkham City, Zelda: Skyward Sword, Gears of War 3, Uncharted 3, Crysis 2, Modern Warfare 3 and The Witcher 2.
I first tried Rage on a friend's computer the year it came out, but I thought it seemed kind of bad and quickly forgot about it. In 2016, I picked it up for $5 on sale and decided I'd give it another go. I made it ~45 minutes in before giving up because it just didn't feel that great to play. Last week, I decided it was time to actually push through and see if I could get into it.
Technical Performance
For a 2011 game it certainly doesn't look bad. The aforementioned pop-in issues are annoying, but not a complete deal breaker. What is more annoying is idTech5's complicated relationship with framerate. The game is designed around maintaining 60fps, but the in-engine frame limited isn't very good at its job. I used RTSS to view a real time frametime graph, and it reported that the game was microstutter central. In addition to uneven framepacing being a constant factor of life, I experienced intermittent acute stutters that I was never able to fix. The microstutter was solved by using RTSS to limit the framerate at 60, rather than the in-game limiter. I have a G-sync display so it was never a major issue, but it's interesting in an academic sense that a developer put so much sweat and blood into maintaining a steady framerate, but didn't seem to be paying a lot of attention to framerate beyond the 1 second average interval. Frametime analysis wasn't really done much (or at all) in 2011 and prior, so I guess it makes sense, but still, kind of interesting.
The game holds up fine in the "open world", although that itself isn't very large. That's the way I like it though, and adding 4x as much driving with points of interest everywhere would have done nothing to improve the game.
Core gameplay and Progression systems
The pistol you get at the start of the game kind of blows. Eventually you find more powerful ammo for it and get some upgrades and it becomes useful, but I think this was behind my initial poor impressions. The enemies are quite aggressive and move fast, so when you have to pump 3-5 shots into basic enemies to down them like that it feels a bit shit. The hit reactions aren't the greatest, which doesn't help that much. Once I got the Shotgun and Assault Rifle up and running, the game became instantly much better. The arsenal grows rapidly from there, and in the ~10 hours the game runs, you get 8 total weapons (plus fists) each with multiple ammo types that behave quite differently (except the sniper rifle which only has the regular-ass bullets). The Minigun's alternate ammo is BFG shots. The crossbow can make people explode or electrocute or just do regular damage. The pistol can have a burst fire, or heavy shots. The shotgun can fire EMP slugs, or mini rockets, or regular shells. It's actually a really nice variety.
The main weakness in the game is that at the 3/4 point, all enemies become super bullet spongey. You start fighting the Authority and more advanced gangs of people who are all wearing super tough armor. My enjoyment rapidly plummeted at this point, because as mentioned earlier Hit Reactions are mediocre and enemies move quite fast. It feels like you're just pumping lead into these people's faces, 6 or 7 headshots with the AR at close range to down them, and if you're at long range you'll need to use the big guns or dump a whole mag into a single enemy. It stops feeling good.
Driving is serviceable. The races are pretty easy, and the mandatory stuff is basically effortless to win. Car combat is so-so, like it's not awful but it's not something that inspired me to put much extra time into it. Late game you get this super gun that instakills all enemy vehicles and I have no idea why, but I wasn't complaining because the "open world" combat is a bit repetitive anyway.
The cars and your person have various upgrades available. Extra armor, new weapon types, schematics etc. It's not over-systematized in the way that a lot of modern games are when they're trying to keep you hooked on the upgrade treadmill for 20+ hours, so overall I rate it as quite good for what it is.
Plot and Characters
Ehhh. Characters are thin, but it gets the job done. The premise of the game is moderately interesting, but it's not the kind of game where you're going to get invested. When THE RESISTENCE shows up it almost felt parodic, or like they were setting up for some twist. But it's all face-value stuff in the end, the Authority is indeed very nefariously evil and want to take over the world completely using an army of mind controlled supermutant hybrids with guns, the Resistence is noble, the small townships are good, and every other human group or mutant is out to kill you. In droves.
Overall
Not bad, somewhere in the 7 or 8 out of 10 range is accurate and I think it was recieved accurately by critics of the era. I was really loving it in the middle, but the late game dragged the experience down, and the opening is quite weak IMO. I'm looking forward to Rage 2, although I understand it's going to be tonally and technically radical departures, and the game is not going to play similarly.
