Snotnarok said:
Also I'm surprised you didn't mention anything about the inconsistent textures, some look fantastic then you look right next to it and the texture looks to be off a N64 game. Especially character detail vs the area right around them it's shocking the difference in quality. However this might simply be more obvious on PC.
I think this is actually an issue with the way the game streams textures, and not the textures themselves. Remember, the engine was designed with a couple assumptions in mind:
First, that it would run at 60 FPS on anything. It does this by using very low quality textures, and then loading in better textures over them as the system allows.
Second: It was designed with the idea that it would be running on a system with 256mb of Video and system memory, and that it would be running on a system with 512mb of shared system/video memory.
Finally, and probably most critically: it assumed it could skip loading textures into memory by storing them on the disk and pulling that into video memory in real time. This will work really well on a system with a high speed data transfer rate off the drive, something the PS3 and 360 posses (since it's actually pulling from the game disks) but in the case of a PC title, it's pulling from the hard drive, which tends to have a much slower transfer rate. Mix these together and the whole thing spiraled apart into an unplayable mess on launch, where if you turned around, you could watch the textures load in.
I saw a little texture pop in during my playthrough, usually doors, when making abrupt 180s, but this is a very system sensitive thing, so it really does not surprise me that systems out there are having trouble with the game.
Sorry, that may be a more technical answer than you were after.
EDIT: Also, I don't mean to say, "I didn't see this problem so it doesn't exist", I've absolute confidence that it does exist, and was actually quite surprised I didn't run into something along those lines during my playthrough. Though, when writing a review, I'd rather stay away from wild speculation, which is the same reason I didn't bring up my Fallout 3 game design theory in the review.
Sgt. Sykes said:
Why is every good-looking game a tech demo? Quake 3, Max Payne, Doom 3... yeah, all tech demos. I wonder why I've played Q3 for 5 years, replayed Max Payne 20 x and loved Doom 3. Probably just to show off the tech.
Honestly, Doom 3 was a tech demo. ID was saying, "here, look at our neat lighting engine, don't you want to license this?" To an extent, so are Quake 3, and the Unreal Tournament games. The issue is, this only becomes a pejorative statement when the game fails to deliver elsewhere. Quake and Unreal have been pretty solid series, but, Doom 3 doesn't have a fantastic experience to fall back on. I like Doom 3, but it really isn't a good game. As for Max Payne, it's been a few years, but I thought that
was running on the Unreal engine.
The difference here is that with Doom 3, the weapons felt meaty, they had punch, there was a satisfying quality to the shooting, even when you were dealing with the bullet spongy enemies like Hell Knights. Here that's lacking. So that by the time the Minigun wielding heavy enemies wander out, you're left with the feeling that your weapons are weak, rather than the feeling that you're dealing with a serious badass.
Honestly, the combat, and a lot of the design decisions remind me of Fallout 3. It feels to me like someone plopped that down in front of ID and said, "this is what sells now, make this." And the promptly pulled the high level spoungy combat and some peripheral stuff, and ditched the rest.
As for the Racing? I don't know. For me, that was the only thing that really engaged me in the game. To be fair, I disliked the racing, but I chalked that up to, I don't like racing games in general. From a design standpoint it seemed to be the most coherently assembled element of the game. And the one part I actually willingly went back for more of.
I'll admit, initially I thought of the shooting as solid, then competent, then passable. By the time I crossed the 12 hour mark, I was actually loathing firing up the game, in large part because of the combat, so it may be a taste issue, but the sponginess just killed it for me.
EDIT: In retrospect the game I just finished for my next review, Space Marine, also has quite spongy combat at times, but it really does serve to generate a good contrast between these two. In Space Marine headshots are fatal to normal or minion enemies, body shots are fatal to fatal to minions. But the contrast is that the base line enemies are 40k heavy infantry, so, an Ork should be able to (and can) take a couple bolter rounds to the chest before dying. Where as Rage features enemies who are literally wearing only leather pants and a gas mask that can soak up half a mag from an assault rifle before dying.
Pimppeter2 said:
One of the better reviews I've seen in a while. I like it. I feel like you would have benefited from a lengthier intro that would draw me in a little more.
Yeah, it's shorter than I thought it was when I was typing it up. In general I was trying to keep an eye on the total word count, but you're right, and thank you.
The tech side of the game is fairly interesting, especially to see in progress. It was designed with the consoles in mind, so it uses relatively little memory, and seeks to adjust video quality dynamically to keep the frame rate in the 60s regardless of what your system is doing. In practice this means spinning around too quickly will reveal unloaded textures loading into view. The caching issues the game had at launch have been mostly fixed, but the phenomena does still occur.
