Reviews Rage PC Review

With John Carmack devoting a large chunk of his cybernetically enhanced brain to the art of building rockets instead of crafting rocket jumping simulators, we've been decidedly cautious about the upcoming Rage and its reliance upon id Tech 5. Id games are known first and foremost for their technological prowess, so has Rage suffered from Mr Carmack's obsession with sending passengers into orbit? More importantly, has id finally rediscovered how to create truly great game experiences, rather than excellent tech demos for their licensed engines?

Despite Carmack's attention being less than undivided this time around, Rage is still a technological tour de force… for the most part. It's equally at home rendering vast desert planes as it is crumbling post-apocalyptic cities and subterranean havens cramped with detail. This is a graphics engine that excels at environment and character models, but it's not quite at home with the small stuff, such as fluids and smoke effects. Nor does it churn out dozens of dynamic light sources like many of today's deferred rendering engines. Considering its greatest strength is the use of a technique called megatexture, it's surprising that its greatest weakness is the appearance of textures at close range. Stand with your virtual nose pressed against any of the game's surfaces and they devolve into a blurry mess, lacking the microtexturing that other engines do so well (and yes, we did enable the texture hack on our dual GTX 580 powered test PC). Still, overall we're pleased to report that Rage is generally an amazing game to look at, especially when you're standing at the foot of a mountain range or city.