The gameplay is refreshingly different from all other shooters, it's far more dynamic and the weapons are more varied.
Refreshingly different in what way?
Also, how is it more dynamic when you don't have destroyable scenery, moving scenery (well, there's a lift in the second act). You can't jump on basically anything you see as there's invisible walls everywhere. You see enemies jump over tables to take cover but when you try to do it you can't. They basically deprecated jumping: it's used in a handful of places so you find a few hidden shotgun shells or a playing card.
Weapons are more varied? Punching, Pistol, Shotgun, Mechine gun, Sniper Rifle, Crossbow and RocketLauncher. Alternate ammo that basically mimics other weapons like grenade launchers. It's the same array of weapons we've had since DOOM (I'm fine with that btw, but I wouldn't call them more varied). Spider bots, turrets and RC cars are the only novelties and plenty of other games have had them (spider bots are lifted from DOOM 3 even). They're still nice to have but the game makes poor use of them. Of course you could be referring to the no-skill-instant-kill boomerang, which coupled with a laughingly small engineering price, health-regen and auto-revive means you only die out of sheer boredom.
But in case you get the wrong idea I actually liked Rage. On the dedicated thread I said it's a solid 8/10 game. But for me, Crysis 2 is the better game. If Rage didn't have invisible walls everywhere, if it had a proper ending, and a plot that made sense: resistance has this huge world-wide army of freedom fighters and yet, they've been waiting on one guy to go alone into a fortress and push a button? Sorry, two buttons. If it mattered (it doesn't) Raine isn't the only ark-survivor in the resistance! If Rage wasn't so easy that I beat the game first time on ultra-violence WITH a gamepad and found no challenge whatsoever. If the core gameplay mechanics (move, shoot, look) weren't the same as we had in DOOM 3 it would have beat Crysis 2, even with the low resolution textures and static environments.
Speaking of grahics:
Rage has preserved the artistic vision of the concept artist far better than any other game I've seen. Texture resolution is not artistic vision.
Not all concepts are drawings, a concept could be an animation of train derailing and plowing through station taking down pillars, vending machines while people run away. Another concept could be the sun setting on Raine as he drives through dead city. Rage can't pull any of that off convincingly because it abhors dynamic geometry/lights. Forget day/night cycles, Rage doesn't even have moving clouds. Remember Unreal 1's skies?
Didn't you notice right in the first level of the game you have to go into (Ghost Clan) how the light given off by the torches was static all the while the torch's fire was billowing and changing in intensity? Didn't that automatically cancel your suspension of disbelief? Weren't you otherwise bothered any time your car went through the shadow of a canyon wall and you saw your vehicle shadow flip around because it was now being projected from a different point in space?
It's funny because in DOOM 3, screenshots didn't do the game justice as the game was only truly experienced while playing (or in videos). Because that's the only way you could appreciate the dynamic lights and shadows, the bumpmapping and specular highlights, the multitude of dynamic geometry that permeated the levels. While moving, the harshness of the shadow volumes and the low-polycount of the models almost faded away. Rage is the complete opposite. It looks great in screenshots but doesn't hold up, at all, while moving.
So, if Carmack thinks he should dedicate his time to VR goggles it's perfectly fine by me. Honest! I want my holodeck too. I didn't even know latency was so high on HMDs so I'm happy that Carmack is helping get that down. I'd only be worried if Tim, Tiago, Sebbi, Repii, and others graphics programmers/engineers/directors that are pushing the envelope decided to drop what they are doing.
