As a long time fan of ID, I just have to ask: What? Why?
They tried, and that game is called Rage. Rage has the same top-notch visuals of our time, very great audio, but then, we notice something about Rage. The shooting. The gunplay, whatever you call it. We are given many weapons, blades to throw at enemies, insanely detailed animations, and loads of ammo. But it begs the question, why the hell do I find this boring? The AI, to put it simply, are boring to shoot at, my guns seem to do no damage whatsoever, and I don't have any sense of power at all. This would be fine in a horror game, such maybe as Doom 3, when you have nothing but your pistol and demons teleporting around you; it's the biggest rush you can have in gaming. But this isn't horror, this is just... Rage! That's right, they added a story. Too bad the story is so bland I found that reading a newspaper seemed to be more interesting! Yes, I haven't finished the game, maybe there is a good ending at the end. But a game should be interesting to play at the most after an hour.
It tries to be an RPG, but as I mentioned before, you have ALL the ammo in the world, the only money you use is for near pointless upgrades that barely add any sense of combat. The atmosphere sucks, I don't want to play in some barren environment. Of course I realize the world was hit by a meteor in this story, but my only question is, what the hell kind of a video game setting IS that!? That's just a major excuse to make the entire game a pile of sand. I did comment on beautiful visuals, but by that I mean it just shows the pile of sand better than other games, with honestly some really good character models. Let's look back at Doom II for a second and realize that the map designs were insanely good! The maps were a huge issue for combat, with so many ways to get by, it challenged you to get to the other side, not just running around and shooting in linear paths like Rage. Doom II had only one objective: get to the other side to the Exit. The backstory was 5 screens of text. Yet that story was superior to this fully animated, cinematic story of Rage.
In conclusion, the game leaves nothing for me to care about, no fun in brain dead AI who literally stand and don't even seem to take cover, characters that are slightly interesting but I wouldn't give a crap if they got shot in front of me, terrible RPG elements, and very last, a horrible setting. Why ID, why?