No, I just played some last night after an hour shooting bullet sponges. They go down after a couple rifle rounds. Or maybe I didn’t notice a slight difference in faction to explain the health difference. Anyway, it’s actually kind of refreshing.
WarrenM
1842
Save bullets and melee the mutants. Seriously, it’s more satisfying to rifle butt them all in the face. :)
It was pretty fun to mow them down with the Authority machinegun. I wish the engine could handle twice the amount of enemies for moments like that.
The actual interior shooting bits of this are fantastic IMHO. The driving is perfectly ok… but I doubt it would be much missed if it weren’t there, and the pacing of the RPG bits is weak. It’s strange that so much effort has been lavished on every aspect (the card game, the bots, the wingstick, holo & knife games) but they never managed to massage the drivey-RPG bit into something stronger.
It’s interesting to compare this to Precursors, which starts on a loading-screen-free desert & city world where as well as your buggy you have air travel and indeed space travel to some different worlds. A tenth of the resources and 10 times the ambition.
If I were planning a patch for Rage, I’d think about taking a tip from my Bethesda stablemates and include some fast travel options for the early stages. Got the foozle? Teleport back to the quest giver. Need a foozle? Teleport to the garage and head out. Back with a foozle? Teleport from the garage to the quest-giver. Something like that. Perhaps that would be practical and would remove just a couple of the journeys that seem head-shakingly arbitrary early on.
Sorry, man, that’s one of those gamer game design ideas that make the rest of us thankful you aren’t in charge! You might not miss the driving if it was gone. But I enjoy it, especially on my X360 controller with the upgraded Cuprino. It’s a nice diversion since I rarely play arcade racers.
If fast travel existed, I’d be tempted to teleport around instead of enjoying the outdoor scenery – which is the best part of the game along with the shooting. In RPGs fast travel actually makes me hate FedEx quests more because I never have time to let the game breathe.
I would also include the gamer-designed attach-fast-travel-options-to-character-profile system so you could be shielded from your weak nature. But my view is that the exterior scenery is not IMO of a very high standard, compared to the interiors. I know other people disagree, but in general I don’t see it. The settlements look good from the outside though.
As Letho would say, I guess there’s no accounting for taste.
While we’re on the subject of architecture, so far my trip to DCity was the first and only time the game got close to that quiet Zen of post-apocalypse exploration. Especially looking out from the hospital. But it only made me wish I had more freedom, or that I was playing STALKER.
I’m letting that one age a little longer. Is Wesp still working on it?
Believe so, yes but it was stable when I played it with a 5850 a while back.
I think I’ll call it Russian Rage from now on. Now with MegaCrazy or something.
What’s not to like?
I like the car races and car combat, and the little travels between mission and mission seeing the cool landscape, it breaks of monotony.
That said, I can see the “open world” part as one of the weak parts of the game. There is not enough exploration, the action in that part is poorly tied to the rest of the game, it’s too much like having two games.
I would have liked for id taking more inspiration in Stalker, indeed.
WarrenM
1852
Oh, SO totally agreed. As much as I loved the Dead City though, I too was frustrated at the lack of exploration space. You really couldn’t shake the corridor you were forced into for the most part. Just open up those side rooms, let me wander a little - come on!
I think I know what happened and it’s probably the same thing that happens to us. Every time they bring people in to play the game, they say they got lost. So we remove choices. Then the next group gets lost. And we remove more choices. You repeat this cycle until even a complete dullard could find his way through the game and ship it. I wish we still had the ability to wander around in levels but I think that door is closing unless you’re doing an open world game. :-/
How does it look to you as a designer Warren? Do you think the various tradeoffs have been worth it?
To be fair, even though some of the Rage dungeons are basically circles, I have a couple of times failed to see the exit and gone back around in either direction wondering where the way out is. I am possibly the idiot from your focus groups :|
Bioshock, Singularity, DeadSpace and some of the UTs all have that ingame trail which can be briefly summoned to point you in the right direction, which is a nice solution to this I think.
WarrenM
1854
It’s just a pet peeve of mine. I think we do way too much hand holding of players these days, as a whole, in games. IMO there’s nothing wrong with the player getting a little lost and having to get his bearings and find his way after a little thinking. Obviously, the game needs to facilitate this with lighting and graphical clarity - if you cookie cutter all of your geometry, people WILL get lost but for all the wrong reasons.
I can’t speak for Rage because I don’t know what the trade offs were. Maybe this is how id wanted it from the start, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s BAD from a gameplay perspective, I just wish we had more ability to roam. Take Quake 2 for example - that first level offered lots of exploration and multiple paths to the end goal. Rage? It’s a corridor dressed up as a level.
We’re just as guilty of it in Gears, don’t get me wrong. I’m not bashing id, just lamenting. :)
I actually get angry when I get lost in an overdesigned corridor shooter. It has to be one of the two extremes: non-linear or flawlessly tested so I never get confused.
Back to the driving: it’s made me want to find another open world arcade racer where I can zoom around over varied terrain. Jim at RPS linked to his 2009 article about an eight hour drive around FUEL. I remember shrugging at the demo, but maybe I could just skip the races and start driving around.
Have you think that maybe they didn’t want to make a game about exploration?
This is id we are talking about; exploring a more open Dead City would have been very cool, but I am not exactly surprised for the fact that is was a linear experience, as the rest of the levels.
Every level in Rage is about using weapons on enemies, there is no puzzles or anything. I mean: exploring. What are you supposed to explore in Dead City, in first place? You need a strong game system behind your game, like in a rpg, so the exploring part makes sense.
Maybe in Rage 2? They have received tons of this feedback: People don’t like fake openness, make a more closed game like HalfLife if you want a linear fps, or make a true open game, but don’t play to looking like a open game if it isn’t really.
Expectations are a bitch.
It’s interesting that they had the confidence to pour resources into a mix of game elements that isn’t really tried and tested elsewhere*. As Carmack said himself, they would have been happier if they’d been able to do something less ambitious after three years, rather than this after six. It’s tough on the bleeding edge.
- Maybe Far Cry 2 is the most similar thing?
As far as exploration in first person shooter goes, Stalker Call of Pripyat nailed it 100% perfectly I think. That game was so much fun to explore…
It is interesting that these russian/european games have usually much more ambitious design…
Hopefully Dishonored/Prey 2 will have some freedom + exploration aspects at least.
Yes.
Expectations are a bitch.
Careful, you sound like hong!
I know what they wanted to make. But then they put me in front of a window looking out at Dead City, and a lobby with revolving doors I tried really hard to get through. I forgot all my expectations and just wanted to go outside.
There is something… ironic? curious? in the videogame trends in the industry, related to genres and fps.
First, every game have to be a fps. A new Xcom, a new Syndicate? Not as strategy games! Every game is now a FPS! One genre to rule them all!
But second, you can’t make not whatever kind of FPS. For all the new stuff put in Rage, id still fall short in the expectations of lots of people of what it is a modern game, still making at the core their corridor shooter they know and love. The subgenre ‘in’ right now is the FPS/RPG, with different ratios mixed in.
Examples:
Dead Island (open landscape to explore at your pace, character skill tree, inventory & trade)
Deus Ex Human Revolution (more emphasis on the city hubs which are the most rpg parts of deux ex, character tree, inventory, side quests, etc)
Borderlands (character skill tree, focus on random loot like in arpg)
Stalker series (full fledged exploration, inventory, trade, quest structure, random battles, survival)
Fallout 3/NV (more RPG/FPS than the other way, but somehow it fits in the trend of the type of game that is loved now by the gamers, they are million sellers)
I don’t like the homogenization of the industry, where it seems that now every game have to be the same, following an specific formula. That said, I also love these type of fps/rpg, mixing two of my favorite games. And some of the games of that list showed is a great combination, mixing the visceral action of the fps with the more purposeful gameworld of RPGs.
