Anyone Looking Forward to RAGE?

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I don't play many games, really, but I think I'll pick this one up in October. I like the occasional FPS when it's done well.

Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(video_game)

Screens:











And a cool interactive feature thingie:

http://rage.com/us/about-rage

 

A good post-apocalyptic setting is always a plus. But that seems to be the only plus that I can think of. In my opinion id Software developed games since Quake (thanks to its multiplayer features) have been quite uninteresting and focused more on being tech demos rather than well designed games. Hopefully this will be an exception though.

 

I know that's the popular opinion these days, but I'm one of the few who thoroughy enjoyed Doom 3*, so I'm rather hopeful for this one.

*except for those god-damned monster closets ... what the hell kind of monster waits around in a closet for days on end, hoping for unsuspecting prey to pass by? And what do they do while they're waiting? Nap? Sudoku? Grrrr ...

 

The expansion pack, 'Resurrection of Evil' or whatever it was called, bowed to that criticism and did away with the dark, returning to the run and gun formula. Ironically it also sucked, imo. The tension was gone and it was just a regular shooter, so I think the dark was ultimately what Doom 3 needed to be successful at what it was - moreso a creepy (as you say) horror show where you shoot and blow up bad things some of the time and risk your wel-being and peace of mind simply moving from point A to point B ... which is what the entire objective of the game was, basically. (Get out of the place.) I often found myself simply hiding, and liking it.

Good stuff. I was immersed. I do understand that's not for everybody though.

 

lol ... point.

 

Rage certainly looks interesting, but i'll probably not pick it up straight away. Once the price drops it should be an ok game.

I also wonder if id Software left the strafe jumping that they've had since the beginning in the idTech 5 engine. Always found it quite amusing to strafe jump everywhere in Quake 4 and Prey. Normal walking speed always seems so slow afterwards

Doom 3 wasn't really my cup of tea. I'm not too fond of horror in general and it always struck me as incredibly strange that these apparently very well equiped security people never had even a single night vision device laying around. And after a while the whole lights-out-monster-spawns routine just became repetitive. It just made me think "Again?!" every time it happened.

@Gaear: What do you mean with monster closets?

 

You're walking down a dimly lit, dingy corridor on your way to a medkit or a box of shotgun shells down at the end and zOMG!, suddenly, without warning, a panel opens up in the wall next to you, revealing a hidden closet! Inside is a housekeeping cart ferocious monster playing sudoku patiently waiting who wants nothing more than to claw your eyes out, and his moment has finally arrived! His plan to surprise you from the closet in this lonely corridor two miles from where you started the game has at last paid dividends! ... All those hours spent idling away the time, wondering if you or any other likely victims would even come this way are swept away in this, his moment of triumph! You'd better take him out quick, because there's probably another laundry closet monster closet 10 feet down the corridor, so you blast him with your shotgun and flush his dreams of being the monster who did what no other monster could and killed your ass right down the toilet, along with his chances of being promoted to evil demon in charge of the night shift for section B-4 of the second floor of the Alpha Labs complex.

Repeat as necessary.

 

Admittedly, they'd have a better chance of success if this space marine didn't have the magical power to roll back in time to some random part in the past and then comes the same way but now knows precisely in which closet our friendly neighbourhood monster in the closet is hiding. Which kind of ruins the surprise. All that waiting for naught.

I actually figured that was what you meant, but didn't really notice it so much in Doom 3. Other games have this in much higher quantities. No, when I think of Doom 3, I think of only one thing:

Go into a room, it goes dark, various lights show monsters teleporting into the room so you shoot at random, hoping you actually hit something because it's too dark to make out anything, your muzzleflash is curiously muted so it doesn't show much either, your space marine is apparently not smart enough to tape his huge flashlight to his shotgun and fumbling enough not to be able to hold both his pistol and flashlight at the same time. And for all the high tech weaponry lying around, night vision goggles are curiously absent.

So after killing everything in the room, the door miraculously opens, you walk through some corridor, enter another room, which again goes dark, locks all doors and spawns in some more monsters. Rinse and repeat. Although I have to admit that occasionally the game does manage to surprise and throws in a few rooms that don't go dark and lock themselves as soon as you enter.

To summarise the Doom 3 experience in a single word: Dark.

 

Touche.

Some things I thought Doom 3 did well:

The story. A bit more elaborate than original Doom, but not too much. No wild and crazy (and uneccesary) deviations, just a pretty straightforward "It's teh demons - were DOOMED!" affair. Just a handful of significant characters who are usually far off somewhere (like Sarge while he's still your buddy, safely in the HQ, or a squad of marines moving through a section of the base but separated from you by plate glass or something, and Dr. Betruger, just out there 'somehwere'), furthering your sense of isolation.

The sound design. This was really spectacular imo, and unprecedented. The music soundtrack was minimal, but the audio ambience was very immersive. And I don't just mean creepy wooshes or clangs. If you pay close attention, you will hear that oftentimes the base's sounds of humming machinery will slowly resolve themselves into a low end, simplistic melody (always ominous). It's done so transparently and gradually that the player probably doesn't know it most of the time, but you do integrate it subconsciously. The end result is subconscious tension, a feeling of menace that is ill-defined. The base itself becomes something of a character in that sense, always unknown and somewhat untrustworthy. I appreciate that kind of effort and attention to detail.