Rage

This is out today - anyone taking a punt on it?

Seen the trailer and it does look amazing

I'll be buying it at some point due to the developer being ID Software, if its anywhere near their previous games it will be a game to remember.

Dass wrote:I'll be buying it at some point due to the developer being ID Software, if its anywhere near their previous games it will be a game to remember.

You reckon? I mean, I've heard good things about this but ID have made more from licencing out their engines than they have from selling games.

BALTIMORA wrote:

Dass wrote:I'll be buying it at some point due to the developer being ID Software, if its anywhere near their previous games it will be a game to remember.

You reckon? I mean, I've heard good things about this but ID have made more from licencing out their engines than they have from selling games.

There's no doubt that their engines have been a massive success for them but on a game front they pretty much defined the 90's FPS genre with games such as Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake before going very quiet for much of the 2000's. This will be their first new IP since Quake in 96 so its been a while and with those past 3 games it has a hell of a lot to live up to but if it can it will be a very good game.

Dass wrote:

BALTIMORA wrote:

Dass wrote:I'll be buying it at some point due to the developer being ID Software, if its anywhere near their previous games it will be a game to remember.

You reckon? I mean, I've heard good things about this but ID have made more from licencing out their engines than they have from selling games.

There's no doubt that their engines have been a massive success for them but on a game front they pretty much defined the 90's FPS genre with games such as Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake before going very quiet for much of the 2000's. This will be their first new IP since Quake in 96 so its been a while and with those past 3 games it has a hell of a lot to live up to but if it can it will be a very good game.

That's what I mean; they've had some defining moments but they weren't in the last decade. The Quake franchise died a death due to a couple of dire sequels, and Doom...well, Doom 3 was pretty dull to be honest and relied too much on nostalgic appeal at a time when FPS games were all trying new and often innovative things. Doom 3 relied on the old 'see ammo, collect ammo, trigger enemy spawn' routine. Return to Castle Wolfenstein I really enjoyed but it came out around the time Medal of Honor and Call of Duty were kicking up a fuss on PC. I'm curious about Rage though because of the things I've heard.

Aye there's no doubt there's a definite case that could be levelled at them for letting the genre pass them by and its baffling that they didn't release more in the 2000's. Then maybe they just decided the engines were making so much money they could sit back a little.

I suppose the point I was trying to make is there initial IP ideas have been big moments in the PC genre where as the sequels and their recent inactivity hasn't been a plus point. The hope is with this being a brand new IP it will bring back the magic of those other IP's first offerings and not the later Doom's and Quake's.

Perhaps. Be interesting to know who's still working there from their earlier successes. Actually, saying that it probably wouldn't be such a good thing. Daikatana, anyone..?

The only one of the initial band that's left from what I'm aware is John Carmack the rest have all moved on to other studios and in some cases quite impressive ones. Carmack is still a pretty big name to have near the top of your company so it should still be interesting.

Daikatana not heard that in a while, thing was it was developed by one of my favourite studios and Romero certainly improved with their following titles Deus Ex and Thief (that's what a stealth game should be like, Assassins Creed take note). Tom Hall one of the other founders just seems to have followed Romero around from company to company for quite a while.

Jay Wilbur who was quite a important figure at ID for a while ain't done to bad for himself either, think he has top job with Epic Games these days which ain't to shabby.

Assassin's Creed isn't really a pure stealth game as such though is it? I like to think of it as Prince of Persia meets Splinter Cell. Thief I never really bothered with but Deus Ex ranks up there in probably my top five games of all time. Maybe even top three. In terms of lasting impression and legacy that game left on me...ah, it was SO good. I remember speaking to a guy at work about "that bit where your brother dies" only for him to turn and say "I rescued him". That for me was such a cool aspect of that game-it was a different game for different people.

There's not much I can say about Deus EX as a game that would do it justice but I will say in Thief they created a game that was as good for me if not better. Bold statement I know but it was just such a terrific experience of playing a game where you had to think about every action and plan your way through, I rate the game extremely highly as you can guess.

My dig at AC was more the fact that as far as I'm concerned if you're an assassin you should be killing silently, not just running around in broad daylight jumping on buildings and mashing a few buttons for the counter system. It could have been so much more with the depth of planning out your kills with various obstacles to overcome instead we got a brainless button masher with a ridiculously easy combat system. Its my eternal frustration at what could have been and what sadly wasn't, it's my own fault for expecting it to reach my own imaginings.

Problem any developer has though is finding the right balance between depth and accessibility, and if they make their game too complex it may well be the best game ever to ten people but that's not gonna pay the bills. I don't have a problem with the killings in AC being less than silent, because at the end of the day a noisy assassination is still an assassination. I think that's what stopped me from bothering to play Thief; I wasn't sure I'd have had the patience.

Bah accessibility is overrated.

I think part of my disappointment and its something I try not to do normally is set my own expectations on what a game should be like as it often falls inadequately short. I think the fact when I played the AC games they almost sent me to sleep with how boring and mundane they were, couple that with a ridiculously easy combat system it just fuelled my rage of what could have been. Plus it also made my already sad feeling of where the gaming industry was going in terms of making games ridiculously easy/simple hit home even more.

Then you have all the praise it gets when its simply a switch of your brain button masher nothing more nothing less and there's nothing wrong with those types of games. AC will just have to except being battered senseless with my seething rage whenever its brought up in a discussion or I decide to bring it up from nowhere to vent against. Its like a stress ball but in game form.

I really only play video games if I know its going to be a challenge, I remember one game being described as having a Everest like learning club you could almost see the glee shining through my face. The top difficulty setting is always on and if its a PC game then I'll stack up on either difficulty increasing or improved AI mods to ramp up the challenge that bit more, I'm a sadist what can I say. I remember hearing that the end boss in GOW II (Zeus) was one of the more challenging end bosses to grace a video game in recent time, so I set out to play the game on that reason alone. He's not that hard its actually a pretty standard fight which was kinda sad in the end but the game passed a few hours.

Thief 4 should be on the horizon and I'm waiting with much trepidation, reboots by Eidos of older franchises haven't went entirely well for me in the past. Tomb Raider has become a joke since the 2006 reincarnation and while the new Deus Ex wasn't as bad as that it still wasn't up there with the original. Fingers crossed they can do it but if they release a hint heavy more action based combat game I'm going to be extremely peeved... maybe even so much to write a strongly worded letter in response.

I can appreciate a game being tough when it's done well but what irks me is when a game is infuriatingly difficult through nothing more than poor or lazy design and/or programming. Battletoads on the NES was a great example of that. A couple of levels were awful and it ruined the game to the extent that I couldn't be bothered to play it further. My enjoyment of it had been sapped.

One game I enjoyed was Steel Battalion. It was an incredibly brave venture, especially for a console release, but the difficulty of the game was off-putting. If your VT suffered too much damage you were faced with two options: first off you could simply die, whereupon your progress would be save to the KIA list-basically a tarted-up hi-score table. Your second option was to eject from your ruined VT and save your life, although you'd need then to purchase a new vehicle, and if you hadn't earned enough credits from the completion of objectives and destroying enemy units then your progress was recorded in the 'MIA' list and...game over. Shame, because it certainly had potential, but the difficulty and the effort of setting up the controller (complete with pedals) was such a bind that I barely played it more than fifteen or twenty times.

Never played Steel Battalion must have missed that one, though I do remember Battletoads and while the game drove me to frustration at points I will also remember the game very fondly for the challenge it presented me.

I'll agree that I prefer a game to provide a challenge through good design and intentions but hey if I can't get that I'll take sloppy design/programming as well to a certain extent.

I'd love to see more games come from Japan from a console perspective as we see only a small portion of the games released there and they seem to enjoy a challenge. If it wasn't for Demon Souls being ported so often we would never have seen the minuscule release we did in the EU or the subsequent release of Dark Souls as a result. There's plenty of other games that never got releases over here that were went to be quite tough, one of the earliest examples has to be the famous "Super Mario Bros 2" debacle.

Steel Battalion was the one with the huge controller that looked like this:

Spoiler:

The gameplay looks like this:

Spoiler:

Suffice to say, now my ex has my original Xbox I no longer have a means to play the game, so it's in it's box in the garage.

I must admit, I'm not a huge fan of Jap games. They've produced some classics over the years, and some I've absolutely loved (Jet Set Radio Future, Mr Driller), but I prefer the more typically western approach to game design. the Metal Gear series bored the arse off me and Final Fantasy has never gripped me. I think it's the proliferation of over-exaggerated physiques and super-spiky hairstyles in typically Jap design which turns me off. I remember playing Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox and noticing that the trees were rigid. I know that's really pedantic but if you're gonna put as much detail into a game as that had, it detracted from my immersion to find the environments were relatively lifeless.

Can't believe that game passed me bye especially considering the controller involved.

I can chop and change between quite easily between western/eastern game types its all about if they offer me a challenge to a certain degree. I can see where you are coming from with the character design for Japanese games, its not my favourite either especially when your struggling to tell if its male or female. Though I rarely judge a game on visual aspects unless its absolutely terrible I'm unable to avoid how bad it looks, Call of Juarez: Cartel springs to mind.

I enjoyed both the series you mentioned, FF on the whole is just solid in you know you'll get your monies worth time wise, some sort of plot and a decent challenge beyond the final storyline boss. I enjoyed the first MGS tremendously due to the heavy emphasis on stealth involved and careful planning and it had some wonderful boss fights. Though I have found the series to be a hit and miss since.

It's not so much judging it on the visual style as it is about how much that affects my immersion and/or enjoyment. It harks back to the invisible boundaries thing I think. It's like how in Half-Life I knew the corridors were just that and that nothing existed on the other sides of the doors along them, but still the universe is fleshed out by things as simple as having the doors there, and perhaps the occasional sound from behind them.

The Japs seem to enjoy what I tend to think of as a more 'pure gaming' take on things, whereas western developers seem to focus more on the realism and immersion, with things like more realistic physics, destructable environments and dynamic lighting & shadows. Of course there are exceptions to each side of the argument, such as Gran Turismo and Space Giraffe, but generally I think there's a noticeable distinction along the lines I mentioned.

Lost Planet and Dead Rising are two recent examples of Jap games which have tried to appeal to people who like the realism typical of western-developed games, but still have traits such as very arcade-y boss encounters and archaic save devices. I don't mind if there are purely fantastical elements in a game (Left 4 Dead for example), so long as the rest of the game world meshes together neatly.

Ah, Dass, I'm right with you there with Thief. Such a technically simple but yet oh so difficult game. Planning every move carefully, making sure you knew where each guard was and plotting the course to have away with him.

Would go as far to put it in the Top 15 of my all time favourites. I haven't played Rage yet as a few games came out at the same time. Gears of War 3 which I could not miss out on buying, Fifa 12 (yes I'm a sad Football oik) and Resistance 3. I don't know what to make of the Resistance series, relatively enjoyable, but a bit poorly made at times.

I got rage and to be honest i'm a little disappointed, it wasn't what i thought it was going to be, traded Dead Island in for it and i wish i hadn't now.

whats wrong with it GG?

The Galveston Giant wrote:I got rage and to be honest i'm a little disappointed, it wasn't what i thought it was going to be, traded Dead Island in for it and i wish i hadn't now.

See, I've heard the opposite; that Rage is good fun while Dead Island is slow, repetitive and not that great.

AlexHuckerby wrote:

BALTIMORA wrote: slow, repetitive and not that great.

sorry thought you were talking about trussman then

I'd never say such a thing. I must admit, the mate who told me that has absolutely zero patience usually so if a game doesn't let him kill everything manically from the get-go he tends to lose interest. I have a bit more patience. Not that it's apparent on here.

I'm getting into the swing of it a bit more now started the game on nightmare difficulty which has been hard, i was expecting a game more similair to fallout in terms of the size and freedom but it's nothing like it. Decent game though.