Zero Punctuation: Rage

[Fenix7]

Thank you Hal10k!

 

[Metalrocks]

i dint like borderlands my self. found it pretty boring. and rage seems to look the same. and since the game has bin poorly optimized for the pc, i surely give it a miss. this game also never got my interest.
and rage asks me to waste 25GB which you will finish over the weekend??? there is surely something wrong here. good looks doesnt make a game good.
i have spend a more time on deus ex: HR and mass effect 2.

 

[Chadling]

Well, I had a feeling that Rage was going to be completely unimpressive the moment I saw it demo'ed at a game store.

 

[Von Strimmer]

Great review, I agree that the effort on visuals means that they put less time in making the game long and really compelling even though it has three discs.

Anyways, I wonder how the hell is Yahtzee going to review what comes from here to the end of December. Just in October releases, there's still Spidermand Edge of Time, Dark Souls, Batman Arkham City, Battlefield 3, X-men Destiny, Forza 4, and Ace Combat Assault Horizon. And that's without counting the other, smaller ones, like Kinect titles he most certainly won't play.

November won't get any better, with Skyrim, Sonic Generations, Serious Sam 3, Assassin's Creed Revelations, Modern Warfare 3, Rayman Origins, Lord of the Rings War in the North, etc, etc. I wonder if he'll start reviewing two games at once, if he'll review the remaining ones next year, or if he'll just ignore more than half of the releases.

My bet is he will play them all and then condense it into a top 5 of November sort of thing :s or more likely just ignore most of them.

Good review, still trying to decide if I want this game though.

 

[Nomanslander]

Something tells me Yahtzee won't be reviewing Dark Souls....lol

OT: Great video , wasn't even thinking of getting it , but now i won'T even get it when the price drops.

This, right here, is everything wrong with Yahtzee fans. You take an online cynics word as gospel and don't try anything for yourself.

Even though you make a good point, Rage isn't worth it. I personally have played Rage and have found it one of the most boring and lackluster shooters of the year. Every point Yahtzee hits on what's wrong with Rage is on point, although I agree for an FPS the length of the game is pretty good (even though it still sucked).

 

[ChupathingyX]

Fallout: New Vegas featured jeans, shirts and jackets.

It's kind of like Resistance 3's argument. It's a graphical upgrade on a good game rather than a new exciting game that merely borrowed some references from the previous good game, only Rage is based on Fallout 3 while Resistance is Half-Life.

Uhhh no, Resistance is a grittier, FPS version of Ratchet and Clank, both of which were made by Insomniac Games.

 

[UnnDunn]

Am I the only person who doesn't completely despise this game? To me, it's actually kind of refreshing. It's the sort of game that is just quintessentially id Software. Monster closets. Big guns that go boom. No inane battle chatter, no lengthy cinematics, no "checkpoint reached." Just the simple fun of killing things, fermented and aged to a fine vintage. I thought it was a lot of fun... at least until the game glitched and I could not continue it.

 

[Razorback0z]

Well pretty much exactly what I thought when I saw the news about the Bethesda QA tester ripping through Skyrim in like 2.5 hours.

How the hell are these games improvements or worthy of our money when they just seem to be slipping further and further backwards on any sane measure of quality everytime we get a new one.

I have just finished playing through Dragon Age for about the 5th time and I am giving serious consideration to playing through again so I can play an Arcane Warrior because I havnt done that yet. At the same time I have Space Marine (extremely dissapointing) and Killzone 3 sitting on the floor barely touched.

The point of saying that is, some games are of such a superb quality level that you cant stop playing them (Oblivion, Battlefield 2, Deus Ex1, Fallout1 etc) and some are so average you dont want to play them past the first 20 mins. I like pretty much all games so its not like Im saying I prefer RPG's or anything. Im saying developers are releasing products that are just so half assed its really sad.

For me the prime example of this fall in quality over time is the Fallout series. Fallout 1 was such an amazingly brilliant game I still open it up now and then for a little reminder of its total awesomness. Fallout 2 was pretty good too. I dont still have it installed but I got many many hours of excellent gameplay from it over a period of months. Fallout 3 was a complete dissapointment. When I finished it without even realising I was about to finish it in about 15 odd hours I was gobsmacked. How can you take such an epic storyline as the first game and miss the point of that so totally in FA3. FA3s main storyline was like a FA1 sidequest.

Now it seems I better get used to that feeling because games are declining in quality and long term playability in an almost linear progression. 1995 your average RPG is like 100 hours of play, 2005 its like 40 hours, 2011 its like 10 hours. So whats 2020, pay $100 to look at the box art and walk out the store with a memory?

I guess I shouldnt give them ideas.

 

[Soeroah]

Did you just say that FFVII is a "bad example" of a long gaming experience, Yahtzee!?

C'mon, man, I knew that you were an elitist sod with a chip on his shoulder about damn near EVERYTHING, but only an idiot would say that Final Fantasy VII was any sort of bad.

Even the FF6 elitist fucks I've tangled with have admitted that FF7 was a groundbreaking masterpiece, they just said that it's incredibly overrated whereas FF6, the the Final Fantasy series in general, was only moderately popular in the States prior to 7's advent.

Say what you will about FF7 being a "bad example", Yahtzee. It's still damn near my favorite game of all time, only coming CLOSE to being ousted by MODERN games like Mass Effect 2 or other such great games.

Personally, I think you just hate 7 because 7 was the game that solidified the FF series' place as a cornerstone of RPGs, which would eventually give us the travesty that is FF13...

Yo dude calm down man! We don't need to get up in arms about Yahtzee no liking a game. I love FF6, FF4 and FF7, but it is possible that people just don't tend to like it. Not because it was groundbreaking, but because not everyone is invested into RPGs.

No need to try and RAGE against Yahtzee (Hehehe it's a Pun). He has his preferences and we have ours. Love and Tolerance bro

Sorry if I come off as angry. Yahtzee's blatant elitism just pisses me off, sometimes.

I took it as 'bad example' refering to how he said "A game on the PS1 could last weeks" while showing an image of a JRPG, which can be great fun but are usually long by their very nature, and how he compared it to a modern FPS game. The two genres aren't really comparable, so FFVII was a bad example in that context.

 

[ScrubberDucky]

Okay, okay. Rage's review wasn't GREAT, but it was good. I was smirking and giggled a little. I won't withdraw the my statement on Hard Reset that I was afraid of you jumping the shark, but I will officially state that I don't believe you have hopped over said fish as of yet (becuase my opinion matters on these sorts of things).

 

[Don Reba]

I feel satisfied with having been right about the game when the showed us the trailers.

 

[ExtraDebit]

Have to agreed with the review here, this game is grossly overrated. The gameplay really are very very old shit and it doesn't even feel fun shooting stuff. At least in soldier of fortune they got gore and it was fun blowing legs off. In the original half life it was fun painting the walls with enemies' brain. But this it totally boring.

This is an open world game that doesn't let you have fun experimenting since it's model after a rail shooter but at the same time it's a rail shooter that doesn't have it's shit glue together properly like a story or fun scenarios.

In addition the gameplay is one dimension as it gets! At least in tetris you can turn the blocks. But in this game it's just shoot stuff....that's it! Unless you're a new gamer which you'll be impressed by just being able to move pixels on a screen alone (I know I did when I was young, spend hours on pong) you'll be bored to tears by this shallow title that looks good.

Hell I just got a epiphany...games are much like women. There are the ones that are deep and you can talk to but doesn't look as good:- betrayal at krondor. Then there are women that looks good but couldn't have a 5 minutes conversation with:- all the recent shooters.

And then there are the whores who only want your money, pleasure you for a very brief moment in your life and you'll forget about in just days:- all of EA's games.

 

[Breywood]

Wasn't the reason for the awful graphics glitches due to the "focus on the story?" Rage looks like their old Doom or Quake games where there's just a few tidbits of text thrown in to make it seem like there's a storyline. At least in Doom 3 there was enough color and background to seem like there was a story.

 

[Savryc]

Well pretty much exactly what I thought when I saw the news about the Bethesda QA tester ripping through Skyrim in like 2.5 hours.

You know that was a speed run right? As in complete the main quest as quickly as possible? Considering you could do the same in Morrowind (2002) in about 7.5 minutes I think we're gonna be ok. But hey don't let facts get in the way of you shaking that stick on your lawn.

 

[Lamnidae]

Nice review, as always!
This is indeed a bit of a question this game is...
It looks nice, though it takes 2 seconds toe load the details in the environments(It's a wonder that this issue wasnt mentioned in this review, aswell as the pistol-sniping).

I saw the trailers and it seemed to have some nice encounters with enemies.
But when I played it it was more of a disappointment.
The character behaviour is indeed quite realistic when talking with npc's and when shooting at foes. And the Spider Drones you can unleash are also quite fun to look at...

But I REALLY MISSED some good bossfights... The only Bosstype of enemy you fight is the gargantuan mutant and that it! DISAPPOINTMENT! And the 'last battle' is also quite dissappointing!
So overall I'd say it isn't worth the full release price! Wait 'till it drops! I liked the magic inspired minigame most of the entire game. And it's quite fun to see the enemies limp as you shoot the limbs. Outer that it's boring...

Borderlands was way more fun with the decent bosses that actually gave the idea of a decent bossfight... With Rage there's none... NONE!
You just visit some nice looking places and shoot some banditgangs(Authority is also bandits but governments are legally criminal as they always have been) and mutants.

And can anyone please explain how someone can snipe enemies with a binocular in your left hand and holding a pistol with your right?

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

I liked Borderlands, love Fallout enough to lick it's boots [read: buy arbitrary dlc] and was hoping that Rage would be another pleasurable wasteland stroll. But first the technical issues held me at bay, and now this. Sadness washes over me.

 

[ilion]

RIP Looking Glass Studios

 

[jpoon]

Haha! Excellent review, funny stuff ZP. Well done! I haven't played Rage but at this point I'm pretty sure there's no reason for me to even try to play it, especially on PC. Maybe once it has hit the ultra-bargain bin.

 

[honshuwolf]

You can pretty much beat the whole game by just throwing wingsticks. That right there tells you there is something wrong.

 

[floobie]

As someone with rather little time to spend on playing video games, I'm not going to waste my time playing something this mediocre, especially when a massive list of good games I haven't played yet is accumulating.