Rage Your Way Through Jackal Canyon

[Andy Chalk]

Rage Your Way Through Jackal Canyon

​

Bethesda has unleashed a sixth and final pre-release Rage gameplay video of a pleasant drive and invigorating hike through Jackal Canyon.

Rage [http://www.amazon.com/Rage-Xbox-360/dp/B00354NAYG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317400091&sr=8-1] is just around the corner so to keep you interested until it actually gets here, Bethesda has put out this seven-minute-long video showing off a little bit of everything the game has to offer. You've got some conversation, a goal to accomplish, a little bit of driving and a run through a bandit camp with plenty of flying bullets and exploding balloons. That's right, exploding balloons. I don't know exactly how they work, but they sure are cute.

As the saying goes, I'm sold. The previous Road Warrior [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/113091-New-Rage-TV-Ad-Makes-the-Burned-Earth-Look-Sexy]-esque machines and plenty of funky, faux-future weaponry. That's the kind of program I'm willing to sign up for.

Rage comes out on October 4 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.


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[Waaghpowa]

I'm waiting for reviews, I'm not going to spend 60 dollars a PC game when there's so much else coming out without knowing how good it is. Yes, it looks good, but a lot of generally bad things have looked good as well.

 

[Still Life]

I'm waiting for reviews, I'm not going to spend 60 dollars a PC game when there's so much else coming out without knowing how good it is. Yes, it looks good, but a lot of generally bad things have looked good as well.

I think Bethesda foregoing review copies is a frustrating move. People should be given a bit of time to consider a purchase, especially in a bloated AAA year of releases. Still, I made my mind up a while ago.

 

[ZeZZZZevy]

Still so excited for this game.

Can't wait for Tuesday

 

[go-10]

I don't know about this game it intrigues me because it looks so much like Borderlands but yet I'm afraid because it might not be Borderlandish enough

 

[sshakespeare]

nice of bethesda to make make borderlands 2 for gearbox

 

[dmase]

If your gearbox are you pissed that bethseda pretty much ripped off your game or pissed that they made your game better.

I don't know if it will be better than borderlands but from the trailers and hype it looks like it might.

 

[spanielcheckers]

Eh. I was hoping for something a little more tense and gritty. It looks like every other AAA shooter.

 

[Saulkar]

As good as this game looks I cannot help but notice the game's art style seems to have drifted more and more towards the style of Borderlands. Most distinctly in the area of textures. Might be just that particular area but I cannot help but make the connection.

 

[SmugFrog]

Reminds me so much of Borderlands every time I see trailers for it. I too will be waiting for reviews.

 

[Shru1kan]

nice of bethesda to make make borderlands 2 for gearbox

If your gearbox are you pissed that bethseda pretty much ripped off your game or pissed that they made your game better.


I don't know if it will be better than borderlands but from the trailers and hype it looks like it might.

AFAIK id had RAGE in development long before gearbox made borderlands. Not knocking one or the other but released sooner != in development for longer.

 

[screwvalve]

It's really a letdown that they're only giving out the double shotty to those who pre-order. That's consolifying a game. I'm dissapointed that Zenimax turned this id software game into a console port. I'm skipping it.

 

[r_Chance]

nice of bethesda to make make borderlands 2 for gearbox

If your gearbox are you pissed that bethseda pretty much ripped off your game or pissed that they made your game better.


I don't know if it will be better than borderlands but from the trailers and hype it looks like it might.

AFAIK id had RAGE in development long before gearbox made borderlands. Not knocking one or the other but released sooner != in development for longer.

Id started on Rage about the same time Bethesda started Fallout 3. After they booted Doom 3 out the door. Brand new engine and all for Rage. Id Tech 5. In short they have put a lot of time into the game. It shows. Rage should be good.

 

[Callate]

Forgive me, I just don't see how this is bringing anything particularly new to the genre. It's pretty enough, I guess, and I'm sure it will be a perfectly solid game, but I feel like I ought to be able to expect more from id. Things like the seeming failure of enemies to respond to Newton's laws of physics as they beeline toward the player continue to bug me. And I can't help but feel that consigning the new engine to basically stretch as far as the current console generation's hardware but no farther was taking a step backward- when Doom 3 came out, it looked great on the current hardware and supported features that couldn't even be accessed on the hardware that was currently out (like textures that required a gigabyte of video memory.)

There are a lot of shooters, and a lot of games, demanding my attention right now; it's disappointing that id seems to be content to compete with similar games on the market rather than dominating them.

 

[Still Life]

Forgive me, I just don't see how this is bringing anything particularly new to the genre. It's pretty enough, I guess, and I'm sure it will be a perfectly solid game, but I feel like I ought to be able to expect more from id. Things like the seeming failure of enemies to respond to Newton's laws of physics as they beeline toward the player continue to bug me. And I can't help but feel that consigning the new engine to basically stretch as far as the current console generation's hardware but no farther was taking a step backward- when Doom 3 came out, it looked great on the current hardware and supported features that couldn't even be accessed on the hardware that was currently out (like textures that required a gigabyte of video memory.)

There are a lot of shooters, and a lot of games, demanding my attention right now; it's disappointing that id seems to be content to compete with similar games on the market rather than dominating them.

This is a point brought up quite often and while I don't question that you have proffered a valid opinion, I have to contest its foundations. I perceive certain comments/opinions on the foundational elements of Rage to be based upon an ideological perception rather than an empirical. This leads to a number of queries:

How isn't id Tech 5 a technological innovation?

Why is there a perception that a new engine should simply add advanced new visual features? How is mega-texture streaming on this level not an advanced feature?

However, most notably:

What is id competing against? Fallout 3? I don't see 1950s inspired art-work, Oblivion inspired gameplay and black humor. It's not even a shooter. Borderlands? It's not post-apocalyptic; Borderland's visual aesthetic is cartoonish rather than the stylized realism of Rage. Borderlands doesn't line up thematically and visually. Neither do outside of a certain color pallete and that is an extremely superficial parallel to draw in judging a game.

Half Life? Valve takes its cues from the template set by Doom, and puts its own spin to it.

What about the other AAA shooters on the horizon? Military shooters? Multiplayer oriented? Where is the parallel there, aside from an arbitrary genre convention/demarcation?

Let's take a step back. What has id created and what are they known for? Doom? Quake? The original AAA FPS games all of which are violent, gritty, brown shooters. Why is it that id has to step out of the very style they created and patented when other developers are deriving from id's ideas? id have taken what they are known for and added more depth and complexity to the experience. That is new for fans of id games.

There's lots of FPS games out now, sure. I check on Steam and there is a wide and vibrant variety of RTS and RPG games available through that service alone; a burgeoning indie scene, modding scene, high(er) quality availability of F2P and MMO gaming. Casual market? No lack of variety there.

I would argue that the less than desirable perception of FPS by X number of individuals is contingent upon the types of marketing around action games. I feel that this misrepresents the diverse variety currently available in FPS/action games at this point in time. Rage bucks certain marketing trends by focusing almost entirely on the singleplayer experience as its major draw card.

Don't like Rage? Cool. But the arguments and observations posited by certain people who feel obligated to grind a blunt axe through their faded keyboards are riddled with logic gaps and show a clear absence of analysis. I'm not attacking you, but attempting to make a broader point here. I feel that people are becoming trapped by marketing representations, the flame wars/tribalism and misrepresentations they create, thus losing sight of the broad scope of experiences offered by modern gaming. They have never been better.

 

[Crypt_Smasher]

This game had so much potential, yet as I watch these videos I feel less and less excited about it.

 

[Callate]

snip

Some not unreasonable points, but I should point out that I did say I thought it would be a solid and attractive game; I just didn't know what was likely to make it stand out from the crowd. I still don't, honestly. I'm glad that they're focusing on the single-player aspect, and I agree that's unusual in the current field, but it's not unique. And while megatextures are certainly an interesting addition to the toolbox from a designer's perspective, they aren't the kind of feature one tends to site on the side of the box.

We can tick off various boxes against other games in the genre depending on how broadly we want to cast our nets- does the setting resemble Fallout or Borderlands, do the role-playing aspects have more in common with Bioshock or Metro 2033, are the run-and-gun mechanics more like those of Serious Sam or Call of Juarez or Resistance 3? We can mull over whether the razor boomerang resembles the remote batarang of Arkham Asylum or if the remote-controlled cars owe a debt to Grand Theft Auto. But none of that matters that much to me. You've pointed out that id is largely responsible for the creation of the genre; games and their genres evolve over time, and it should hardly be surprising that games borrow and adapt from one another, even wrapping back around to id taking bits and pieces from others who have left their own footprints on the genre.

As I say, I'm sure Rage will be a perfectly competent FPS, probably one that many people will enjoy.

But here's the thing: comparatively speaking, I'm a pretty old gamer. I played Catacombs 3D, and watched the evolutionary steps that took place through Wolfenstein 3D, Doom (and the myriad of games that used the same engine), Quake, Unreal, and so on, up through the present day.

As a relatively old gamer, I can totally bear witness to the massive step between Doom and Quake, and even between Quake and Quake II or Quake III and Doom 3. Up until the somewhat lamentable Quake IV, one could count on id to revolutionize the technology with each major game; John Carmack has always seemed more interested, quite frankly, in pushing the boundaries of technology than in sheer game design, something which may have precipitated the break between himself and individuals like Hall and Romero. In a sense, this was good: id made the games that made others amazed at what was possible with the technology, and others would fill in the gaps to show everyone what else was possible using that technology to make fulfilling game-play.

So now we have Rage. And it looks like a competent FPS, but not like an evolutionary step. Not like something everyone is going to be cribbing from next year. If I had to choose between it and Bioshock: Infinite and Serious Sam HD, it wouldn't be a clear choice by any means. I wouldn't be afraid of missing a milestone of the genre.

And the other part of being a relatively old gamer is I do have to make choices like that, because I probably simply won't have the time to play all three.

It would be fair to say that I have nothing against Rage; I'm just haunted by the specters of what id Software used to bring to the table.