Hands-on with id Software’s Rage shooter

Last year, one of our favorite games at the E3 video game trade show was Rage, the first-person shooter game coming from legendary game studio id Software. The company, which is now part of ZeniMax Media, hasn’t shipped it yet, so we’ve taken another look at it. By September, consumers will finally get their hands on it.

I played through an early mission in the game, and I wasn’t disappointed. The game has stunning graphics and smart enemies. The sci-fi genre makes Rage a little different. If anything, it resembles the Mad Max series of Road Warrior post-apocalypse movies.

Up close, the game seems so real. You can walk up to characters and they will start talking to you. You have to try to accumulate valuable junk to make trades with the various scavengers. Early on, I picked up a “wing stick,” a boomerang-like device that can behead enemies. I tested it out and it was wonderful, but I was sad to see it go into disrepair as it beheaded so many enemies with ease.

Using the latest game engine of graphics guru John Carmack, the game looks beautiful. It brings the characters to life in a way that resembles the outstanding graphics and physically accurate movements in Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves game. The visual effects, from smoke to the movements of human faces, will make your jaw drop. I feel like Rage improves the state of the art in a tangible way. Nothing looks as real as this game does.

Carmack’s id Tech 5 engine uses what Willits calls “ MegaTextures,” built from the ground up for each of the powerful game systems: the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and the PC. A MegaTexture is a single image that replaces a bunch of others and thereby reduces the amount of computation needed to create beautiful imagery. There’s also more minute detail in the images. The clever thing about this that it saves id money — it can create its art assets once and use them across multiple platforms.

Willits said the game combines the best of shooting and car combat genres into one game. As you travel through wastelands, you have to enter competitions to get parts for your vehicle, which you can then use to race and slaughter other rivals.

The world seems original because it looks like a mash-up of the Road Warrior, spaghetti Westerns, horror films, and id’s own previous games. And it all runs at a speedy 60 frames per second, which is lightning fast.

You can use some very different kinds of weapons in the game, such as a crossbow that shoots electric darts. If you fire it into the water, you can electrocute the mutants standing in it. You can also toss out a razor-lined boomerang and decapitate an enemy. You can roll along a radio-controlled car to your enemies and then blow up a bomb via remote control. You can also set up spider drones to attack anyone who comes at you. I had to use a kind of electric stun grenade a lot in order to get around different electricity-operated gates.

I played through two full levels of the game and had to go find a rival clan in the shadows of a ruined dam. Once I got inside, I had to methodically kill off enemies until I found a character to rescue.

When you shoot at some of the mutants, they actually dodge the bullets using acrobatics. The enemy movements are very fluid and smart, allowing them to evade your shots and close in on you. The animations look scripted, but the enemy movements are dynamic, meaning they aren’t the same every time.

There’s a wide diversity among the types of mutants you have to fight as you scrounge for things in the desert. You can build your own “lock grinder” from parts you collect, much like in the recent Borderlands game from Take-Two Interactive. You have to collect parts to put together a cool vehicle.

Check out our latest video interview with Willits.