Rage

I dropped this game near the half of it, right after the Authority takes over Wellspring. I watched the rest of the gameplay in video and counted it as beaten. I guess this game really shows that id software was suffering from I don't know what which ultimately caused them to be absorbed by Bethesda years later. This game is clearly better than Quake IV. It has much better designed levels, art and gameplay. But it still seems to be carrying over obsolete gameplay elements from decades before.

I should praise the environment art and much more than id tech 5 itself. I'm only speculating, but id tech 5 must have created a lot of problems for artists due to its precomputed nature. The megatexture tech traded dynamic lighting for precomputed lighting to achieve 60fps in consoles. I was really impressed by the stunning environment art. There is so much detail, excellent lighting and mood. The canyons, rocky cliffs and terrain are one of the best modelling ever made. Whoever was working with concept art was really good. Without a doubt I see how worse Rage 2's environment art is compared to Rage.

The biggest difference that I see between Rage and Rage 2's environment art styles is the direction that each game took. In Rage I can feel that each location was alive in the past. There was a society there. You notice tables, refrigerators, chairs, beds, etc. All signaling that prior to the planetary catastrophe that destroyed the planet's environment, there were people living there. Now when you see the hideouts of the bandits in Rage 2. They are all devoid of such signs. You don't see beds, bathrooms, hospitals, dining rooms, etc. They clearly designed each place thinking more on combat than on a previous history. I could even say that it's somewhat strange that the environment art in Rage does tell story, whereas the game's plot is almost a single paragraph description.

I don't have any critics towards the interface, level design, animations, soundtrack or voice acting. It's all solid. In particular, the level design is a great lesson. It's rage that taught me about "circular design", where you finish a mission and then take a shortcut to get back to the starting point without having to backtrack the whole level. Each location in Rage has excellent art that also is careful in not misguiding the player to dead ends and has a good sense of direction to not leave the player lost or running in circles. There are always some opportunities to sneak around and take down enemies from behind.

I guess Rage isn't a groundbreaking game with innovative gameplay. At the end of the day all it offers is go to a location, kill everyone, deal with mutants, then go back to the city and repeat for the next mission. It has some minigames, car driving, upgrades, crafting. But it's a pretty shallow game. I think that they suffered from some creativity crisis because if you compare it to other games, Rage lacks something to set it apart from other FPS from the era. The plot is already shallow by itself, because this game tells a story of a devastated world and that's it. There is no quest for redemption, any conspiracies, political agendas or philosophical questions. It's all about defeating some evil organization and setting everyone free from their dominance.

I think that Rage 2 is superior in one specific aspect. The feltrine and super powers made the combat more enticing and more fun. The world in Rage 2 is larger and it offers some more variation than in Rage, but the art is clearly worse and the plot is still the same bare minimum just to have one. There is a comment that I made about Rage 2's terrain that I want to repeat here. If you compare Rage's terrain, it's much more aggressive, rough edges on rocks and cliffs, it conveys a sense of an aggressive environment which is a sign of excellent artists that did understand the atmosphere that Rage's plot wanted to convey. In contrast, Rage 2's terrain is all smooth with rounder edges on rocks and cliffs, it has lost that sense of a harsh environment from the previous game. I learned this in the book "The Hows and Whys of level design" by Hourences.