[Farid]

Summary of what you really need to know:

Rage is a 21th century console game developed by B3D forumites's one true idol, John Carmack and his team at id Software. It's a 20 GB shooter with some buggy racing intertwined set in a post apocalyptic world. The game uses Mega Texture [Read Richard excellent article on that texture virtualisation technology here!].

According to some Bethesda hyperbolic PR the game can be summarized by the following:

RAGE, the highly anticipated first-person shooter from legendary developer id Software, [..] has already won numerous awards at E3 2010, including ‘Best Overall Game of Show’ from IGN and three ‘Best of E3’ Game Critics Awards including ‘Best Console Game’. RAGE features intense first-person shooter action, breakneck vehicle combat, an expansive world to explore and jaw-dropping graphics powered by id’s revolutionary id Tech 5 technology.

A trailer:



Actual example of "jaw-dropping graphics powered by id's revolutionary id Tech 5 technology" running on alien/un-categorized technology called a "Personal Computer"



Here's the use'r specsbefore anyone asks:
Core i7 720QM, 5870M 1GB DDR5, 6GB DDR3 RAM, 7200RPM HDD.

Links:

Old Thread:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=54819

Old Thread: Talk about the released game starts here:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread...=54819&page=44

Metacritic page:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/rage

Ars article:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/1...ever-gamed.ars

So, just to sum up my nine plus hours with the [Xbox 360 version of the] game so far:

• No story to speak of
• No characters that make an impression
• Linear
• Broken save system
• Dull mechanics
• Tedious quests
• Weak shooting
• Stock weapons
• Racing is fun
• Minigames are enjoyable
• Very pretty

Some useful fixes for the PC version (It seems there's one!) from the Steam forum:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=2154053

http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=2159167

PC Perspective article on Rage PC performance:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphic...aluation-Day-1

RPS review (more positive tone):
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011...age-pc-review/

I.Eat.Games - A review by B3Der warcrow:
http://eat-games.blogspot.com/2011/1...-reviewed.html

[swaaye]

I tried to run the game on my X1950XTX. It doesn't even load up. The classic blue id Software program meltdown window displays various errors and dies due to no support for 'GL_ARB_draw_elements_base_vertex'. I guess this means the game requires OpenGL 3. Although in reality it requires bleeding edge OpenGL support as evidenced by the driver issues.

Next I'm going to swap in the old 8800GT.

[bigtabs]

I hate to criticize the modship here as you all do wonderful jobs for no financial reward.... but... you've killed off an already existing thread to promote your idea of what Rage is because you seemed not to like the crits it was getting in there? I'm not sure I see the good in this. I trust there is one and I'm mistaken, but I'd love to know what.

[Malo]

That whole Personal Computer platform and its multitudes of different configurations are not something easy to handle for a new development house like id, so don't be too harsh with your criticism of the IBM/Compatible Personal Computer version.

hehe I laughed good. The Wii icon is also another subtle touch

[bigtabs]

Oh crap, look I don't want to be rebellious or take the thread OT. Farid has put a lot of effort into the info he's giving us, so sod it, this thread's as good as any. I just hope we're allowed to voice our varied opinions in this one.

/edit Okay embarrasment time, I've clearly missed the point. Can I report myself?

[Farid]

bigtabs, I more than welcome your discontentment with this thread, because it's obviously negatively slanted. So, people who think the game has redeeming values are welcome and in fact should express their positive views.

I've started this thread, because we've said quite a few time that once a game get released, we should start a new thread and leave the news/preview thread behind. And since nobody went ahead with the Rage thread, I did. And well, obviously, it was bound to be tainted by my special kind opinionated prose.

To be truly honest, I'm really disappointed in how the PC version turned out, I'm not just trolling for the fun of it. I was planning on grabbing the PC version Friday after leaving work. But after reading so many complaints about the PC version from the US folks who got the game earlier, I'm now in the "how could you do this, id?/Et tu, id?" camp.

I mean, folks with much better rigs than mine suffer from terrible stuttering and textures pop-ups that wouldn't look out of place in early Sega Saturn games. This is not good, and I'm not going to be sympathetic with id for this. With that said, I repeat again, I've never been a fan of herd behaviour, so every opinions are welcome. Some folks can and should be optimistic about future patches and rewritten ATI OpenGL drivers (it's been a while, by the way) and so on, while remaining focused on the redeeming entertainment values of the game itself.

[bigtabs]

Sorry Farid, it seems you missed my edit where I realised what you'd actually done.

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by Farid

Some folks can and should be optimistic about future patches and rewritten AMD OpenGL drivers (it's been a while, by the way) and so on

ftfy

[swaaye]

If you have a NVIDIA card, there really aren't many issues. In fact the only one I know of for sure is the vsync weirdness that's solved by forcing it in the control panel. The texture pop-in is annoying but comes in exchange for some mind blowing outdoor visuals fit onto hardware with very limited RAM and storage.

I read negative complaining about every game that comes out. Crysis 2 is hated yet I found it entertaining. Crysis 1 is apparently a mindless tech demo. Deus Ex HR is hated by some even though it's pretty clear that it is an excellent game overall. Fallout 3. STALKER. Bioshock. Doom3. Every game is ripped apart for every reason that one can imagine. If you haven't played a game I don't think it's wise to go on a witty tirade about how bad it is.

[Farid]

Originally Posted by swaaye

If you have a NVIDIA card, there really aren't many issues. In fact the only one I know of for sure is the vsync weirdness that's solved by forcing it in the control panel.

I read negative complaining about every game that comes out. Crysis 2 is hated yet I found it entertaining. Deus Ex HR is hated by some even though it's pretty clear that it is an excellent game overall. Fallout 3. STALKER. Bioshock. Doom3. Every game is ripped apart for every reason that one can imagine. If you haven't played a game I don't think it's wise to go on a witty tirade about how bad it is.

I have an AMD GPU on my main rig, and looking at screenshots with checkered rendering issues all over the map doesn't infuse me with a lot of hope for the game on my PC.

Also, it doesn't take much for me to get sardonic and humourous about games. Especially games I haven't yet played. When I play and dislike them, I actually rage more than I get witty about it. rage about it. Rage, get it? It's funny because it's a pun on the name of the game we're talking about.

[swaaye]

Originally Posted by Farid

I have an AMD GPU on my main rig, and looking at screenshots with checkered rendering issues all over the map doesn't infuse me with a lot of hope for the game on my PC.

There's no denying that an AMD owner should be asking hard questions of AMD and id Software. My 6950 loads textures slower, can't render models properly sometimes and the game crashed for the first time while I was gaming on it. But considering the game runs well on NVIDIA cards probably means that most of the questions should be going at quiet little floundering AMD. It feels like Doom3 release day all over again in some ways.

[I.S.T.]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011...age-pc-review/ RPS' review, seems to mostly disagree with the Ars review.

Which, well, sane people should. Ben Kuchera can't write his way out of a paper bag, doesn't know shit and never has.

[Farid]

Originally Posted by I.S.T.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011...age-pc-review/ RPS' review, seems to mostly disagree with the Ars review.

Which, well, sane people should. Ben Kuchera can't write his way out of a paper bag, doesn't know shit and never has.

Thanks for the heads up, I've added that review to the OP. With that said, the RPS review seems to emphasize the same issues Ars' review did (bland, samey, problematic on PC). It's just that RPS' reviewer remains positive in front of the overall experience the game provides.

And yes, I, too, would be more willing to trust the RPS folks on the topic than Ars'.

In terms of quality, I honestly didn't expect an incredible game, nothing shown about the game could have made me think it was to be a masterpiece. I expected a solid experience, better than the okay-I-guess Doom 3, but nothing more. And it seems id delivered on that front. Now, I'm more disappointed with how the PC version performs out of the box and how limited the option panel looks (at least they didn't encrypt the .ini files).

Davros, like hoho said, I'm talking about the dune buggies you're driving in the game.

[snarfbot]

well ya know what would be good for reviewers is if they just compared it to other titles instead of giving it a numerical score, because its pretty much impossible to quantify fun. and thats what games are all about, and its a subjective kinda thing.

im still on the fence about this one, its a shame there is no demo, but the next best thing is real people, so maybe they can chime in with their experiences at least after they sort the technical issues out.

[Sxotty]

Originally Posted by swaaye

I read negative complaining about every game that comes out. Crysis 2 is hated yet I found it entertaining. Crysis 1 is apparently a mindless tech demo. Deus Ex HR is hated by some even though it's pretty clear that it is an excellent game overall. Fallout 3. STALKER. Bioshock. Doom3. Every game is ripped apart for every reason that one can imagine. If you haven't played a game I don't think it's wise to go on a witty tirade about how bad it is.

Well witty tirades are often best unpolluted by experience

But I agree that overall people are a bit silly and herd mentality most of the people whinging and complaining don't even have the game nor have they played it. It is a real challenge though b/c personally I think reviews are generally crap, but without a demo what is a person to do? BTW I actually understand why a demo could be hard to make, but they should have allowed the well level or something. Probably just doing the well or something would be feasible. Some like the ghost clan where you can see out to the wasteland from inside obviously could not work.

[Farid]

Originally Posted by Sxotty

How is that a problem? They were written prior to yours

True, but it would defeat the whole point of having an opening post that describes, albeit sarcastically, the game. And I didn't erase from the board the existing posts.

Originally Posted by Sxotty

Well witty tirades are often best unpolluted by experience

But I agree that overall people are a bit silly and herd mentality most of the people whinging and complaining don't even have the game nor have they played it. It is a real challenge though b/c personally I think reviews are generally crap, but without a demo what is a person to do?

The thing is it's not the reviews that disappointed me, as I said, I didn't even expect the game to be anything special, just a good old-school shooter with a racing twist, the whole set in a relatively open wasteland. And that's what the reviews say so far. And it's not like I'd trust mainstream reviews to talk about performance issues. Especially when it comes to multi-platform games, since they more often than not review the Xbox 360 version of the game.

No, the issue we hear about comes from the customers themselves. Tons of folks on PC are having a mediocre experience with the game because of various technical issues. Of course, as I said earlier in the thread, if you're willing to put that aside, take a chance or at least put up with the tweaking and unstable performance (on AMD GPUs), and jump into the game experience, you might end up having a good time. It's just that some of us don't feel like it's worth it at the moment.

[Malo]

It would've been nice if id + AMD would have got together far sooner to both sort out any issues with drivers, and to provide an AMD Transcoding solution as well to assist. It's obviously helping out lowering CPU usage for texture fetch from MT.

Of course that didn't happen. Not exactly the first title where Nv have gone the extra mile to provide benefit to their users whilst AMD did.... something else?

[swaaye]

There is a post somewhere (a link in the other thread) where it was mentioned that OpenCL had performance problems so they gave up on it. They started with CUDA C and then tried to use OpenCL too. NVIDIA doesn't care about or need OpenCL so blame AMD, I guess. What year are we on now with our advertised AMD GPGPU processors that rarely do GPGPU?

edit-
here is the post
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=2...#item_26824104

[Malo]

Originally Posted by swaaye

There is a post somewhere (a link in the other thread) where it was mentioned that OpenCL had performance problems so they gave up on it. They started with CUDA C and then tried to use OpenCL too. NVIDIA doesn't care about or need OpenCL so blame AMD, I guess. What year are we on now with our advertised AMD GPGPU processors that rarely do GPGPU?

edit-
here is the post
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=2...#item_26824104

Ah great, thanks for that. It doesn't mention whether id and AMD discussed the OpenCL implementation to see if there could be optimisations done to improve the performance though.

[Psycho]

Originally Posted by swaaye

There is a post somewhere (a link in the other thread) where it was mentioned that OpenCL had performance problems so they gave up on it. They started with CUDA C and then tried to use OpenCL too. NVIDIA doesn't care about or need OpenCL so blame AMD, I guess.http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=2...#item_26824104

Looks more like they are saying that they only got a cuda version, because the _nvidia_ opencl compiler was worse than the cuda one when they tried (shouldn't come as a surprise..) - no word about on non-cuda hardware. So they must be happy by only supporting half of the (potential...) customer base.

Ofcourse it could also be that it simply turned out the gpu version wasn't all that much faster, and not worth doing in the first place (and therefore not worth spending the additional 10-20% on a opencl port).

[hoho]

Originally Posted by Psycho

So they must be happy by only supporting half of the (potential...) customer base.

If steam survey is anything to go by then going with Cuda-only covers nearly 60% of all gamers with AMD and Intel making up 33 and 6% respectively.

[Malo]

Originally Posted by hoho

If steam survey is anything to go by then going with Cuda-only covers nearly 60% of all gamers with AMD and Intel making up 33 and 6% respectively.

Are you counting ALL Nvidia's marketshare? Isn't the CUDA support only for the latest generation or 2 of Nvidia GPUs?

[Sxotty]

BTW this is what rock paper shotgun says about the PC version
(though Farid quoted the person known as Ben instead who has very strange ideas about what a good game makes)
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011...age-pc-review/

If you don’t ever play its Dead City level you won’t see what might just be the most impressive and atmospheric mainstream videogame sight this year.

It’d be easy to lament that this brilliant technology, once it’s working, is wasted on a mere shooter. True, I’d love to see id Tech 5 also put to use on something more wild and free, but I’m also very happy that it’s powering this shooter. Rage is often guilty of ordinariness and blandness in its main missinons, but it definitely pulls off being more than just a journey of unthinking destruction. The lengths it goes to for world and character design, and its refreshing lack of interference or handicapping in terms of its large and satisfying arsenal, results in something far and above most anything out or due out this year that’s predominantly based around moving a reticule over a man/mutant’s face. It has flow, it has character, it has life and it has stair-climbing friendly spider-bots. id have learned a lot, and without abandoning why we used to love them in the first place.

Anyway you really, really ought to play it at some point whether you wait until it gets cheaper or AMD gets their drivers fixed for OpenGl. If you choose not to play it b/c of all the whiners then you are doing yourself a diservice.

[swaaye]

Originally Posted by Malo

Are you counting ALL Nvidia's marketshare? Isn't the CUDA support only for the latest generation or 2 of Nvidia GPUs?

My 8800GT showed the transcode option. But they said if you don't have a very recent chip the game will probably only use the CPU because using the GPU would slow you down.

The only real difference between GPU and CPU transcode (on a fast GPU) is a reduction of the time for the engine to bring in the high rez textures. It is fairly tangible. But you can also reduce this by using the config tweaks NV listed which dramatically reduce the chance of the engine using low rez textures. So on 1GB+ DAMMIT cards, once they have drivers without loads of weird bugs, the tweaks will make transcode pointless anyway.

[Sxotty]

Here is someones review

RAGE, at its core, is a shooter. It wasn't advertising something that it isn't, and if players earned that impression, it was likely at the fault of early hype of outside sources (from previews to interviews to early demos). It's a shooter just like Doom 3 with the same general drive. You'll have missions or tasks, but they're little more than excuses to go out and shoot and just generally have fun with the game. There are no RPG elements such as leveling and stat-points, and it's not as open of a world as it first looks, so do not expect and do not compare it to Fallout or Borderlands like many reviewers and gamers have.

There is a story to RAGE that's never fully developed in-game and to those who enjoy learning the background details and lore, there may be some disappointment. Nowhere in the game, outside of one tidbit at the start from the game's now deceased president and NPC conversations, are there e-mails, papers, data logs, journals, etc. that log any form of lore or story for the player to learn. You never learn about so-and-so's history or how this and that happened, you simply make assumptions as you go and that's that. While there's a fair share of sights to see, there's a lot of wondering about what those sights actually are and how they came to be. While in some regard, you can make a logical assumption that this is because you woke up after a hundred years since the world's destruction and there's a lot to fill in an not a whole lot of time, the general pacing of the game can be frustrating with how little you know and are told versus how much you want to know about the game.

The shooting elements are where the core of the game resides, offering some of the best gunplay I've seen yet. Enemies really do react to your bullets in fun and interesting ways, and seeing a mutant trip and slam its head into something as a result of shooting its legs adds to the experience. All the guns available to you, while not all interesting, have different uses and ammunition available to them with the same general goal: killing. There are a variety of enemies in the game, all falling under different bandit clans, mutants, and a mysterious Authority, and each have different styles of combat and weapons they use to fight. Repetition of enemy skins falling under a certain faction isn't entirely noticeable in the heat of battle, but you may find yourself looting the same corpse a few times, or very often.

Racing, a main feature of the game, is fun, hectic, explosive, and chaotic. Rough play is encouraged, and there's no such thing as bad manners in a race where destroying the competition is mandatory. There are no-weapon races, and different forms of racing outside of running laps where you collect rally points and just flat out destroy other vehicles to win. The Rally racing can be frustrating at times due to how the opposing AI will predict that a point will be taken and sneak off to another rally point's spawn location and gain a lead that's frustrating and hard to prevent if you're trying to actually race on the designed track. Apart from that, all forms of racing are still fun and offer a distraction from the main shooting elements.


On a personal level, however, I found the game to be almost disappointingly easy, for various reasons (POSSIBLE SPOILERS):

1) Often times, you'll always be fighting your opponents at very close ranges or very long ranges behind cover, and many of the weapons available are too good at placing a one-shot kill, be it a shotgun, sniper rifle, crossbow, or even your starter pistol.
2) Armor upgrades nullify an astonishing amount of damage you'll receive to the point where you're almost encouraged not to buy them if you want an actual challenge. With them, there's very little fear of getting into melee with mutants, or even charging a group with a shotgun, and dying becomes rare to the point where you have to deliberately put yourself in a position where death is even possible.
3) Returning to 1, ammunition available can be downright ridiculous and unfair, taking down even some of the toughest enemies with relative ease, diminishing the fear and stress factors that were even put into their appearances. Crossbow and shotgun ammunition that explodes tends to one shot most enemies, pistol ammunition allows you to safely play through the game with the pistol alone without much challenge at all. If you purchased the game new with the Anarchy pack, offering a bonus armor, fist weapon, and double-shotgun, you'll find that these offers are akin to many over-powered pre-order items available for other games.
4) The Wingstick is, in and of itself, the strongest and cheapest weapon in the game. Throwing it will almost always end in a one-shot kill against non-heavily armored enemies. It can stick in their head or even fly back to you, with a chance of failure and breaking, allowing you free kills without any ammunition use. : Later upgrading it can allow it to hit up to three total enemies in close to medium quarters, making an already strong weapon too good to the point where you'll refuse to use it solely because it makes the game too easy.
5) Crafting in the game is fun and interesting, rewarding scavenging early on, but you'll later come to a point where, coupled with what you find in your playthrough, you'll be able to earn enough money to afford more than enough parts and ammo to play through any mission without fear of running out.

Tips I can offer to avoid some of these issues are not buying any armor upgrades, playing on Nightmare, and avoiding any special ammunition types unless the situation absolutely calls for it. Otherwise, you'll find this to just be a fun arcade shooter with no challenge.

Regardless of those factors, the game is still very enjoyable and side mini-games, such as gambling, racing, five finger fillet, card games, and other jobs from the job board all add up to make just a plain old fun shooter with some flaws that bog it down. It doesn't have an epic narrative, and its pacing is too fast for what little information you gain in between tasks on the story and the meaning behind each action. It's fun, it's of decent length, and it's what you make of it. Just don't set your expectations high in the sky, as you may be disappointed in some areas. But at its core, it's an id Software shooter, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in a beautiful and memorable shooter

I find that funny compared to Kyle's experience

God it just keeps getting worse. I had finished a mission, call is mission A, completed the next mission beyond that, mission B, and was on to mission C. Got killed, I had not saved....it kicked me all the way back to mission A. RAGEON

So you have the ability to respawn after you die immediately with defib, and you can save at any point you want. I started on normal and only really died when I drove off a cliff into the abyss, but I changed to hard and it was about right for me.