That really grinds my gaming gears.

[Jokesound]

The enemy variation is fairly standard but not completely lacking. You have the various clans, each who use various technology. There could of been more depth to each but I think the variation is spot on.

There are mutants, people or cars. About four of the mutants are glowy, but the rest are the exact same and don't change throughout the entire game. People start wearing more armour as you go on, but they all fall to the might of the instant death button. I mean the wingsticks.

I'd argue there are actually too many weapons and this is coming from someone who hates the whole 'can only carry two guns' bullshit that has been thrust upon us. You've got eight weapons, each with up to 4 types of ammunition that need to be switched depending on your fighting. You've then got six 'deployable items' greandes, wingsticks and turrets. The Wingsticks maybe one hit kill on someone enemies but not armoured ones which basically stun them. Even then they break and are basically a tool for taking people down quietly as opposed to full on fighting.

I said lack of "decent" weapons. The sniper rifle is completely useless, both assault rifles are like throwing sponges at Rik Waller, the crossbow is rubbish until you get the mind control thing (which randomly stops working on certain enemies and just becomes another instant death button), and the final gun is basically unnecessary because you use it on about thirty enemies before the game comes to an abrupt halt. The wingsticks instant kill nearly everything except bosses and guys with miniguns or flamethrowers (and even then, three is enough to murder them outright) and they're so cheap and easy to manufacture that there's no reason to use anything else.

The vehicle sections are a little boring at times but it was better then not including it I feel. It adds another layer with the racing, which is all totally optional by the way, you don't need to upgrade the car apart from one or two occasions. The vehicles have multiple unlocks including weapons, engines, wheels, chassis's.

The vehicle sections amount to "races are ridiculously easy, and the rocket rallies are either likewise or like driving into a cliff face first", and the fact you don't ever need to update the cars except for arbitrary plot reasons makes it even more pointless, I'd say.

Had no problems at all with the checkpoint system? So pass on that.

It only autosaves when you enter or exit areas, meaning you can potentially go a whole 45 minutes or so without ever hitting a checkpoint, which somehow makes it even worse than Mass Effect 1's autosave, which I'd previously have called one of the worst this generation. Although dying's not that common, even on hard mode, it's a pisser when you have to go through the same identical gameplay for half an hour because the devs forgot to put it in on the same day they were meant to add anything fun.

The story and structure is perfectly fine? Apart from the abrupt ending. It ain't gonna win an Oscar but then how many games are THAT well written really? In the grand scheme of things the majority of games (historically at least) aren't famed for their ability to weave a tale and act as a very lose frame for an excuse to interact in a given environment.

The story can be summarised as: You wake up with no idea what's going on until John Goodman saves you, tells you to do stuff for him then tells you to fuck off. You repeat this in another town until you're told something called The Authority is bad. You then save the leader of The Resistance, who tells you the Authority are bad and did a thing once. You then do more chores for other people in this new town until you take on the Authority Base for twenty minutes with your instant deathsticks and then the game ends.
The mission structure is often basically just: Go to a place and shoot some things. Okay, you've done that, so if you could go and do this other thing for me, that'd be cool, except I won't let you help me until you get something, so go talk to this other guy who'll make you go back to the same place you just went to in order to shoot more things. Now leave this town forever.
Except once you get to Subway Town, in which case you don't have to go back to anywhere again because there are only five missions.

The post-apocalyptic setting is given its own spin. Its kind of Mad-Max-ish, which a slightly more eccentric story about a resistance and certain people trying to be saved. It's fairly linear, sure, but it has it's own take and it does it well.

It doesn't do anything unique or interesting with it at all, in my opinion. Bandits? Check. Incredible abundance of guns, bullets and vehicle parts despite the fact no one seems to have running water? Check. Weird guy running an entertainment show focused around killing? Check. Band of people trying to take down a shadowy corporation who may have done experiments on people because they're evil? Check. Abrupt ending that doesn't explain or set up anything and leaves the setting a bit redundant? Czechoslovakia.

Sorry Chris, it just left me completely and utterly in the cold. Especially considering its prolonged development and the pedigree of the company behind it, it's an incredibly average shooter that doesn't do anything for me.

[Toffer]

There are mutants, people or cars. About four of the mutants are glowy, but the rest are the exact same and don't change throughout the entire game. People start wearing more armour as you go on, but they all fall to the might of the instant death button. I mean the wingsticks.

There are 9 types of mutant. Some ranged, some up close, some are damage soakers, some are nimble but only require a few hits. These are no different from any other game out there. Not just shooters, any game, any genre. Each has its generic variation on the same type of enemy. Considering you've got nine different types here I'd say that's pretty good for one race of enemy.

You've then got the various bandits; Shrouded, Jackal, Gearheads, and Scorchers. Each with their variations and differences. Gearheads tend to be more armoured, going for heavy hitting weaponry and technology to get by. You can't just use wingsticks on them. You will die if they attack you in numbers and you're just trying to use a wingstick.

Then there is the Authority. I felt they could of done a little more with this, actually provided some real desire for the player to fight them but I was happy with their role.

As I said before, the Wingstick isn't an instant death button. One could argue that it is slightly over-powered but you couldn't just use that and nothing else without dying plenty of times.

I said lack of "decent" weapons. The sniper rifle is completely useless, both assault rifles are like throwing sponges at Rik Waller, the crossbow is rubbish until you get the mind control thing (which randomly stops working on certain enemies and just becomes another instant death button), and the final gun is basically unnecessary because you use it on about thirty enemies before the game comes to an abrupt halt. The wingsticks instant kill nearly everything except bosses and guys with miniguns or flamethrowers (and even then, three is enough to murder them outright) and they're so cheap and easy to manufacture that there's no reason to use anything else.

Sniper Rifle was meaty and satisfying. Shame about the one ammo type but hay, its a Sniper Rifle. The first Assault Rifle is fairly weak but has a larger clip size and does fine against the starting enemies. The second Assault rifle packed a high amount of damage with a small clip size making it ideal against un-armoured opposition at short range. It was pretty useless at a distance but that isn't really a problem.

Calling the Striker Crossbow shit is on the same audacity level as suggesting that Halo is the best shooter of this generation. It packs four different types of ammunition. If you think Dynamite Bolts, essentially the ability to shoot arrows loaded with TNT at people is shit, then you need to re-think the meaning of the word awesome. Which that is. Electro bolts are both good for water and the occasional robot. Steel tipped bolts are good for silent take downs, making this one of the most versatile weapons in the game. Oh and the Mind Control Bolts are fine.

The final gun is brought up too late, no argument there but that doesn't make the gun itself shit. Wingsticks are cheap to make and you could argue that there is 'no need' to use anything else but honestly, Wingsticks were there for when I got caught out reloading. They are a fun little distraction from the main arsenal which is both varied and extensive.

The vehicle sections amount to "races are ridiculously easy, and the rocket rallies are either likewise or like driving into a cliff face first", and the fact you don't ever need to update the cars except for arbitrary plot reasons makes it even more pointless, I'd say.

The vehicles make for enjoyable jaunts between different sections of the map. The races could drag a little but I found the rocket arenas just fine. They were probably the toughest of the lot. Upgrading the cars is a requirement as you face stronger opposition. It makes perfect sense to me? I'd hardly call it arbitrary, you're going to a heavily defended, well equipped enemy fortress. Would you be cursing the game if it just let you go the whole way and make you armour up first? Could you of got into the Authority Stronghold in the first buggy?

It only autosaves when you enter or exit areas, meaning you can potentially go a whole 45 minutes or so without ever hitting a checkpoint, which somehow makes it even worse than Mass Effect 1's autosave, which I'd previously have called one of the worst this generation. Although dying's not that common, even on hard mode, it's a pisser when you have to go through the same identical gameplay for half an hour because the devs forgot to put it in on the same day they were meant to add anything fun.

Pretty certain you can press F5 and quicksave your game OR for console users just pop into the menu and hit save. That's that sorted. If dying isn't that common (and to be honest I agree it wasn't, then ramp up the difficulty. I personally found that as I got older, games got easier. Mainly because they are appealing to a wider market. There is plenty of fun in the game Ed!

The story can be summarised as: You wake up with no idea what's going on until John Goodman saves you, tells you to do stuff for him then tells you to fuck off. You repeat this in another town until you're told something called The Authority is bad. You then save the leader of The Resistance, who tells you the Authority are bad and did a thing once. You then do more chores for other people in this new town until you take on the Authority Base for twenty minutes with your instant deathsticks and then the game ends.

Or in another less sarcastic light; Wake up after an meteorite hits Earth and destroys most living things. Hunted by a shadowy organisations for you're potential and saved by a Rebellion looking to overthrow the tyranny of The Authority, you must set things in motion to save mankind. Or something similar. As I've already commented the story isn't the be all and end all but you're talking like the developers are famous for a great storyline, which they aren't.

The mission structure is often basically just: Go to a place and shoot some things. Okay, you've done that, so if you could go and do this other thing for me, that'd be cool, except I won't let you help me until you get something, so go talk to this other guy who'll make you go back to the same place you just went to in order to shoot more things. Now leave this town forever.
Except once you get to Subway Town, in which case you don't have to go back to anywhere again because there are only five missions.

I refer to my earlier statement. id Software aren't exactly famous for some sprawling fantasy epic with Wood Elves and spaceships. They do linear corridor shooters. What expectations did you go into this with exactly? If this is what we got when we were expecting Mass Effect 3 then you'd have the right to be pissed. But it's not.

It doesn't do anything unique or interesting with it at all, in my opinion. Bandits? Check. Incredible abundance of guns, bullets and vehicle parts despite the fact no one seems to have running water? Check. Weird guy running an entertainment show focused around killing? Check. Band of people trying to take down a shadowy corporation who may have done experiments on people because they're evil? Check. Abrupt ending that doesn't explain or set up anything and leaves the setting a bit redundant? Czechoslovakia.

Bandits?
Abundance of guns?

Fallout 3: Check
Borderlands: Check
STALKER: Check
Metro 2033: Check

Sure these games all have other features but they weren't negatively marked because they had plenty of weapons and a few 'bandits'.

Small group taking down a huge shadowy organisation. This is standard story stuff. Setting the scene around the gameplay rather than setting the gameplay around the scene.

If the world ended tomorrow and we lived in this sort of world, how many people could form gangs and drive around shooting guns. Everyone, regardless of age or ability.

How many could locate, produce and regulate clean, safe drinking water? A mere handful. Not so unreasonable really?

Sorry Chris, it just left me completely and utterly in the cold. Especially considering its prolonged development and the pedigree of the company behind it, it's an incredibly average shooter that doesn't do anything for me.

I would argue that it is exactly what the company produces. It was what they are famous for and if you brought it expecting something radically different then I'm sorry mate but you've been misled by someone. It describes itself as groundbreaking, and I know it isn't. But it certainly isn't average either. Timeshift, Painkiller, Halo (lolz) These are average shooters. This is above average. The graphics are awesome and the AI is top notch.

The 'pedigree' of the company can easily be called into question at this stage. Doom 3 wasn't brilliant and neither was Quake 4. In fact I'd called Quake 4 average. RAGE was above average, a 7/10 as I said. But id has been resting on its laurels for a long, long time. But what they do produce for the niche they basically created, they do very well.

[Jokesound]

I'm literally convinced we played different games, because I didn't notice any of those differences between characters (except they had inexplicable foreign accents considering you're meant to be in Central-North America), found the crossbow steel tips were useless (and stealth take downs were a complete fallacy), anything wearing head armour died on a single wingstick (two if they'd rolled), and I said the final gun was a pointless addition, not shit (if anything it was ridiculously overpowered, making the end sequence even more of a disappointing cakewalk).

See, the vehicle sections for me are odd, because normally I quite enjoy linear games that have an illusion of open world. Final Fantasy for example, is a series that's incredibly linear, but because it gives you that illusion there's more to it, you don't mind as much. For some reason, it didn't work for me and RAGE, and I reckon that's partially why I didn't feel the post-apocalyptic scenario didn't help it any, because you basically drove from one empty expanse of land to another and occasionally shot a bandit (This literally just reminded me of Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass, which were also major offenders of the "travel through vast nothing, but every now and then you'll fight something to break up the tedium"). There were about eight or nine locations to ever visit, and most of those you had to visit more than once, so there was never any real sense of openness, and so the open world aspect just seemed a bit off to me. Plus, I actually sprinted to the Authority Base on the dune buggy and the only significant armour I lost was from crashing the thing into the door at the end, so there is that.

You'd be surprised how often I forget to manually save these days because games normally do a great enough job of autosaving at key, non-frustrating points. Oddly, considering how often I had to fuck about in the other menu to swap guns, forge things and get weirdly stressed out by how long the transitions between each screen were, I didn't automatically think to go "ooh, better save while I'm at it". That's probably my bad, (also because I was using a controller and the controls screen didn't have an autosave button for that setup) but I don't think a game that came out in 2011 that features you taking part in multiple gunfights and conflicts over 45 minute stretches of time would omit such a stress-relieving option, especially considering how constant the waves of enemies are. Plus, I don't think I could deal with Nightmare mode, which is why I had it on hard in the first place.

I'm not saying they're known for a great storyline, I'm just saying that there is no plot at all. As such, you're just a guy shooting things, and the only way I could find an incentive to continue was by pretending I was a parallel universe Isaac Clarke who ended up becoming a post-apocalypse janitor instead of achieving his dream of cleaning toilets in space. Seeing as they were billing it as having some open-world elements, I didn't expect it to somehow be more linear than Bulletstorm (though for the record, I love that game to pieces). There are placeholder stories, and then there's RAGE, which has a story so non-existant I'd laugh if they actually claimed to have 'writers' on the game (I skipped the credits).

As for the bandits/weapons, my point was that you claimed they did something unique with the setting, and my claim was that they hadn't by pointing out how common its elements were, so pointing out other games that do it kind of validates my point. I just found that if I sat down and actually analysed the world of RAGE for any length of time, nothing made sense. There are infinite weapons, some of those use bullets that could only have been manufactured after shit went down (see: anything using feltrite crystals), there's somehow a ridiculous amount of surviving electronics that everyone puts into making cars, weapons and not rebuilding society. There are enemies that have offensively stereotypical cockney/russian accents, but how would they have made it to America? How do any of them survive? All their hideouts barely have anywhere to sleep, let alone drink or eat. You're told the Authority deliberately let all the mutants out to reproduce and multiply, but how do they do that? Why is there a colony of survivors who live a mile away from a central population that can't formulate words?
I'll admit, this point is probably reaching, but I play games for their worlds and what people can make out of them. It's why I was so disappointed by Hoodwink; there's creating a world and populating it, but if you don't really do anything with it, then it all falls apart. Most of the elements of RAGE are just thrown in without any real collusion to how they fit with others or the world, they're just there because the developers thought they'd be cool. It's why I don't think it's a good game, the only thing reasonably solid is the shooting, and the rest is the most obviously thinly veiled excuse to go do that. I don't even want to praise the AI that much, because most of the time they either just ran around me, ran right into me as I fired bullets or wingsticks into them, and whenever they did anything I thought was kind of intelligent, they'd do it right next to another enemy doing exactly the same action at the same time. I did like how the limb damage thing affected them though, so there is that.

Sorry Chris, I'd say you have more right than I do talking about this, because I'm not an FPS guy, but speaking as someone who was weaning off the genre and gave RAGE a shot to try and rekindle his affections for shooting things in the face, I found it reiterated most of the reasons I started trying other games out in the first place.

I feel this is a debate best shared for another time though, lest we fill this thread with massive walls of text anymore

[etherfiend]

I always wanted the Rage version Jessie was playing in Breaking Bad, the one with the lightgun...sadly I ended up with something I immediately regretted paying full-price for.

Right now I'm getting my gears grinded by Skyrim 1.6 something on the xbox. Jumping has gone weird, I could have sworn I used to be able to sprint AND jump. Also now if I'm flush against something jumpable, like a rock or bannister, it won't let me take it, I have to back up first and jump before getting too near. Irritating.

[ZeroMark]

Playing through skyrim again and actually doing shit. Alot more enjoyable that way. Dawnguard is pretty impressive to. The scale of the things they have included is very impressive.

[Toffer]

Sorry Chris, I'd say you have more right than I do talking about this, because I'm not an FPS guy, but speaking as someone who was weaning off the genre and gave RAGE a shot to try and rekindle his affections for shooting things in the face, I found it reiterated most of the reasons I started trying other games out in the first place.

I feel this is a debate best shared for another time though, lest we fill this thread with massive walls of text anymore

I've got no more right then you buddy. One could discuss the possibility that the I've played THAT many shooters, that I've become resistant to when something appears poor but isn't. One could also argue that I can recognise a good FPS from a bad. Based on what you've said, by the same argument, Bioshock would be an equally poor game. Linear, unintresting weapons, lack of enemy variety, it's only bonus being a vibrant and interesting world. Yet that is one of the most celebrated games of its generation. Maybe if RAGE had some extra plot sauce smothered on its bones you would have enjoyed it more.

End of the day, I didn't pay full price for it, and even I can say that I didn't want to do that after playing at Eurogamer. I think I ended up paying £15 and that, for me, was a decent price.

Its by no means id's best but then they haven't been able to beat Doom 2 and that was released nearly twenty years ago (1995) in an age where you couldn't even use a mouse to look around!

I like discussing games though! Really enjoyed that

[Jokesound]

Bioshock isn't that great, the plot twist is amazing for what it is, but it's a bit sixth sense (in the sense that once you know, you just remember the game for the twist rather than anything else) and other games have had much better stories since. What made Bioshock was its world. Rapture was pretty amazing in terms of design, what it meant to the people and to you. The shooting isn't amazing, but I'd gladly go through it all again for another chance of exploring that world. It's a large part of why I liked Bioshock 2 so much (that and it actually had a pretty decent story in terms of redemption etc).

[etherfiend]

Playing through skyrim again and actually doing shit. Alot more enjoyable that way. Dawnguard is pretty impressive to. The scale of the things they have included is very impressive.

Not got Dawnguard yet, just going for the max after it broke a Daedric quest the first time through. It is a bit tougher this time through, at least certainly against the random dragon spawns.

[ZeroMark]

I'm level 21 and I've yet to go through the elf party bit of the main quest. I've not done any of the shrines yet. Might get dawn breaker tonight. Love that sword.

[vinny_v86]

Fetch quests. Now that I'm clean of WoW, I never want to see another fetch quest in any of my games for as long as I live. Fat chance of that happening though, when it's such convenient padding.