I haven't wanted to explore a game world like this since San Andreas. It ain't perfect, but it's immersive and a "game!"
While this does serve as a tech demo for idTech5, it happens to be a fully fledged game first and foremost.
Sadly though, Carmack's vision is too big and far reaching for the here and now. All that talk he gave us about how beautiful the game was going to be... it's true it is very impressive, but the sad part is we still got a heavily compressed version of it on PC. How compressed? The textures are the same size as the console versions. The game itself is no better than what console gamers got, we just see it better based on the grunt of our respective rigs.
In alot of ways this takes alot of the "extra" beauty out of the world because you're looking at this landscape that really looks and feels like a painting come to life... yet so many textures make you think "that's abit too low a res for 2011"... or just the general blurriness of some.
It's not horrible, but it's not like the teaser screenshots we were shown. Fair enough though considering current hardware/media/bandwidth can't really accomodate a single game that would take up 1TB of space if it were shown in it's true form, or maybe 200GB at a slightly less comrpessed rate.
BUT.... graphics issues aside (and remember, this thing is bigger than Crysis 2 and still runs way better).
The visuals are truly brilliant. Many may point to it being an homage to classic post apocalyptic films, but those that grew up with 2000AD comics will see it as having the style of a specific artist that had work appear in 2000AD and Heavy Metal... Simon Bisley. In particular he worked on Judge Dredd, Slaine, ABC Warriors...
Just the visuals and the theme with that Bisley style... it's very alluring.
Children may point to this being a cross between Borderlands and Fallout... and on a primative level you could make that comparison too.... but this would be what both those games are not.... a true game with absolutely NO grind.
Visually, again, I haven't felt myself smile regarding the pleasure of playing a 'game' with such a successful sense of atmosphere since Max Payne 2.
And I haven't truly wanted to openly admit that a particular game world is something I'd want to count as part of a "life experience before I die" sort of thing... not for quite awhile.
I'm quite happy to say I got to know Vice City and San Andreas very well, several times over. I get the same vibe from Rage.
But it does happen to have that iD stamp to it too. The gameplay mechanics are quite brilliant. When we're dealing with repeatitive rail shooters like CoD 4.whatever or Action RPGs like Borderlands and Fallout and even Skyrim that can't escape the RPG=some-form-of-grinding mentality. Rage has that feeling of newness the way most iD games in the past have had when they came out. Wolf 3D, Doom 1, Quake 1... even RTCW.
It's that fun factor. And, in my opinion, it's so fun that it makes you want to find everything that can be picked up. That classic obssessive compulsive mechanic to searching for every hidden item/room/etc.
The main game mechanic and the variety of minigames. It's all very well integrated into a story that doesn't bore you with excessive cutscenes or backstory moments that kill the flow of gamePLAY.
There is a downside though, and this will make most people wonder why it still earns such a high rating considering this serious issue.
The controls are console centric.... and I'm talking about the PC version.
Twiddle with the mouse sensitivity and to get a decent flow of movement while in FPS mode... you'll find that it makes getting back into cursor mode kind of awkward.... when you navigate your inventory or just clicking "Accept" for a mission... the sensitivity ends up being so high that you have to inch with care the cursor to a spot near to what you want to click because often it will overshoot your intended click target.
Insignificant detail considering it doesn't interrupt actual gamePLAY, but it's an artefact nobody gaming on PC likes to see... fallout from having to retard code to be console friendly.
And believe me, this smacks of X360 controller coding.
The other thing is vehicle control. It's keyboard friendly, yes, but considering the scope of this game, the brilliant nature of the actual technology behind it... it feels alittle too arcadey in alot of ways.
Kind of skill-less if you take my meaning. It's not undriveable, it just could have offered a LOT more satisfaction from getting the hang out of it.
BUT... and I have to bring up CoD because they are the worst culprit for this. Hitboxes. Once you get your mouse to a point where it is as comfortable as you can get it too (I feel it gets to like 98% precision... something tiny feels missing), Rage still has proper hitboxes. Shoot your crossbow bolt just a pinkie finger to the side of a mutant's head?.... there is no inbuilt aimbot crap pointing your shots to the NPCs, nor are there ridiculously exagerated hitboxes (ala CoD and friends) that make headshots easily attainable.
If you want a headshot you have to have the skill to aim for a mutie right between the eyes.
Saving? There are automatic checkpoint autosaves to take care of careless gamers that get carried away on their missions, but thankfully this is REAL PC game in this area, so you can save when you want, where you want, as many times as you want.
It's kind of sick to think that such a simple feature would seem so refreshing. Sick when you think that's how far many other developers have strayed from using "intelligence" in their game designs, or there ability as coders to add that 'feature' into the PC versions of their games.
All in all it's a hefty chunk of game, both in content and disk space.
The AI of the normal, human sized enemies isn't without its faults, but it is quite possibly THE best example of artificial INTELLIGENCE in an FPS game to this day. Larger enemies are easy to kill with a basic tactic of "keep moving/keep shooting"... but even though it's a game and I do like a challenge as often as is possible, I do appreciate a certain degree of logic too. Large hulking mutants will inevitably be less nimble to a normal sized humanoid. It makes sense, it's believable. Well done iD for not pandering to the logic of retarded children on whatever ADHD drugs they're taking these days.
I could go on and on... there are other minor things that I found irksome in the game, but I can't help but feel like this is the most satisfying singleplayer game I have played in way WAY too long.