14 DAY TRIAL // What we know
RAGE is a new first-person shooter from id Software and Bethesda, built using a brand new engine and set to deliver a hardcore shooting experience that is broken up by vehicle-based sections.
The game takes place on Earth after the impact of an asteroid that pretty much destroyed the world and create a society where groups of humans band together in order to salvage the limited resources that are needed for survival.
id Software has created a beautiful world for RAGE and the action seems to be more fluid than in contemporary shooters, with enemies that use the environment to their advantage and the familiar corridors of all id made games.
The car driven section of the game should not reach anything like simulation level, with Motorstorm from Sony and Burnout from Criterion being the titles that the developers cite as having the biggest influence on them.
RAGE is using the new id Tech 5 engine and the graphics, both at the Gamescom presentation of the game I attended and in screenshots released since then, are looking really impressive, managing to deliver crisp quality while delivering a sense of how barren the world the game is set in has become.
Why it matters
RAGE has been in development for a long time and, for a lot of titles, this means that expectations from gamers go up significantly faster than the abilities of the development team to actually deliver.
This seems not to be the case for the id Software-developed first-person shooter that looked impressive in the public showings it has had so far.
The main bet for RAGE is that it’s in a lot of ways a very traditional shooter, relying on level design and tough enemies to create a challenge, in many ways a throwback to the simpler times of the Doom or Quake series.
The launch date is set for the fall, when we will find out whether traditional shooters still have a place in modern gaming.