作者：Benjamin Quintero

如果不考虑纹理的问题，《狂怒》确实是款美观的游戏。id Software大胆地选择了Megatexture，当面临放弃帧率还是纹理的问题时，idTech5选择了放弃纹理。这种选择显然令那些抱怨者感到很不满意，他们觉得自己宁愿体验15fps但纹理较佳的游戏。然而，我有时在想，这些人是否真正了解自己的需求。

我在射击游戏中投入了大量时间，但是我玩主机射击游戏的时间很少超过3小时。通常情况下，如果时间过长我会觉得自己动作变得僵硬，而我在最低帧率为60的PC平台几乎不会产生这种感觉。我在Xbox 360上玩了很长时间的《狂怒》，丝毫没有因帧率和镜头而产生不适感。从开始到结束，游戏呈现出流畅的体验。在当代主机游戏中，牺牲纹理的选择似乎因祸得福，因为几乎所有高质量主机游戏都以30fps的帧率运行。

在理想世界中，当代主机可以显示4000的分辨率，帧率可以达到240fps，拥有1太字节的1THz RAM，同时只消耗1W的功率。但现实世界不是理想世界，必然需要折中和权衡。

这也并不是说Megatexture是完美的。我回想起当自己首次走进Dead City时游戏呈现出的糟糕场景，那里的环境看上去像是顶点着色而且未经润色。我确实找到了个大型的开阔峡谷，旋转镜头希望能够查看它的全貌，但这并非一般游戏体验所采取的行为。许多玩家现在更重视游戏的纹理。在多数使用纹理动态的现代引擎中，它只是用于改善加载时间，而非限制不可能占用内存的资源。《狂怒》所做出的改变可能需要点时间才能让玩家接受，因为这是种目前其他开发商部分采用的技术。或许我们会看到其他游戏也采用类似的大范围地域或角色纹理，但是从统一解决方案的角度上来看，idTech5采用的可能是行业内特立独行的做法。

Rage gameplay(from falcatatimes.blogspot.com)

游戏玩法

id已经很长时间没有发布像样的游戏了，《狂怒》可以算是他们到目前为止游戏体验最精妙的产品。游戏中的每种武器和每种弹药似乎都有专门的用途。这种武器和弹药的组合，再加上制造系统，使玩家可以在游戏中使用的战术更加丰富。对某些道具的使用，我感到很棘手，比如炮塔，但是幸亏游戏提供了其他的攻击方式。尽管我认为游戏中的射击系统设置得很不错，但是装备方面略有不妥。

游戏中所有东西似乎都是一次性的，我认为这是游戏的不当之处。这样，游戏就不能让玩家同道具和资产产生情感维系。任何可以制造出的道具也会很容易损坏。对于汽车炸弹之类的多数道具，这样的设置确实是恰当的，但是我希望炮塔和哨兵机器人的设计更富有战略性。我希望在某个地方使用玩炮塔后能够将其回收，放置在其他需要的地方。我希望能够回收几近死亡的哨兵机器人，以比重新制造武器更低的价格将其修理。这是游戏设计的小疏忽，但着实令人失望。

玩家所驾驶的汽车也成为一次性的道具，这又是个问题。游戏不应该总是给玩家提供新的车辆。他们本可以对车辆进行奖励性的升级，使它变得同奖励的车辆同样强大，就像武器和弹药那样。我不知道是否可能将自己获得的首辆汽车升级成同其他汽车一样强大的交通工具，我也不介意在游戏中加入竞速模式。我很欣赏游戏针对某些玩家设计了汽车竞速的元素，但是我通过杀死敌人获得的竞速点数似乎永远也无法将原本的车辆升级成与通过故事获得奖励的车辆同样强大。

结局

尽管我事先已经从评论中得知该游戏的结局被大大缩短，但是当我亲自体验到的时候依然感到震惊。首先跃进脑中的想法是：“其他的内容呢？”于是，一瞬间我理解了，为何他们将游戏命名为《狂怒》。这样的结局的确让我很愤怒，幸亏我是在其发布很长时间后才通过促销购买游戏。我完全理解了为何许多玩家对游戏的结局如此反感，但是我也花了点时间更深入地思考游戏的结局设计。

现在，我对《狂怒》结局的反感度与之前相比已经大大减轻了。游戏需要有结局，就像是在合适的时候需要合上《狂怒》这本书一样。但是，我觉得他们可能在书中所打开的门数量过多。我觉得，Dead City中的BOSS战斗更像是游戏的结局，但是或许他们认为游戏玩法的长度不够，所以构建了另一半的游戏内容。

结局之所以令人困惑，我觉得另一个原因是，你与所有角色的交谈都让你相信游戏中将有更大的事件发生。伊丽莎白用游戏语言很严肃地表示会看到更大的东西，也就是说存在最终BOSS。游戏甚至还奖励给你一把BFG，而这把武器在随后的游戏过程中毫无作用，因为在你走向游戏结局的时候，还囤积着大量武器和机器人。尽管保存了大量装备，但是你却发现自己并没有面临威胁。

那么，可以通过什么方法来解决这种结局问题呢？我的意见是，可以用难度提升来呈现游戏结局的来临。《狂怒》呈现了一个很大的世界，让你产生自己未曾体验诸多事件的失落感。玩家原本可以很容易地意识到，这个世界中每个地方都在发生着各种事情，但是并不意味着它们会完全发生在你所处的小世界周围。你本可以返回城镇，获得当地人的感谢，然后继续探索那些支线任务或休息片刻。

结论

《狂怒》让我产生出多种情感，“狂怒”只是其中的一部分。尽管存在不足之处，但是我仍然很喜欢游戏为我呈现的冒险历程。id Software在这款游戏中充分展现了他们设计射击游戏的天赋，尽管游戏的故事存在瑕疵，但是许多粉丝依然很欣赏他们在射击方面的设计细节。

从总体上来说，《狂怒》算是我今年重温的最佳游戏体验之一。尽管不算完美，但是游戏的视觉效果和产品质量都值得褒奖。每个角色都有配音对话和手工制作的动画，游戏有《辐射》系列的潜力，产品质量堪比《使命召唤》。从id Software历史游戏作品来看，游戏中的环境设计是最棒的，敌人设计也恰当地融合了无脑僵尸型敌人和战术类敌人。我希望能够看到《狂怒》续作，已经迫不及待地想看看idTech5接下来会怎么做，毕竟这个团队现在已经懂得了如何扬长避短。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

RAGE: Revisited

Benjamin Quintero

I’ve been pretty busy lately and my roster of freshly shrink-wrapped games has been growing larger each month. After some unfortunate car trouble I was confined to my house for the weekend, and what better way to wait out the weekend than to break open one of those games? The game that sat on the top of my stack was Rage, a title that took a lot of crap for its texture issues and questionable ending. This is one id-fan’s opinion of Rage and how small tweaks could have changed its reception.

The Elephant in the Room

Say what you will about the texture streaming, Rage is one beautiful game. id Software made a bold choice with Megatextures and their gamble was a simple one; when the question of dropping frames or dropping textures came up, idTech5 chose to drop textures. This choice clearly did not sit well with a vocal group who would rather play at 15 frames per second than 60 but I sometimes wonder if those same people really know what they are asking for.

I’ve played a lot of shooters in my time, but I can rarely play console shooters for more than 3 hours a day. I typically get very motion sick, something that I rarely experience if I can play it on PC at a frame rate of at least 60 or more. I just played a marathon of Rage on Xbox 360 and not once did I feel nauseous or ill from overexposure to jittery frame rates and jostling cameras. It was a silky smooth experience from start to finish. This alone was a rare blessing on the current generation of console where nearly all high production console games are running at 30 frames per second.

In a perfect world, the current consoles could display 4k resolutions and run 240 frames per second, and have a terabyte of 1THz RAM, and only consume 1 watt of power. This is not a perfect world, and tradeoffs had to be made.

That’s not to say that Megatextures are perfect. I recall an especially bad scene when first walking into Dead City, where the environment looked like it was vertex-colored and it never improved. I did find a large open canyon and spin my camera just to break it, but I would hardly call that normal behavior for your average game experience. Megatexture as a technology for the future has an uphill battle. Many gamers are predisposed to the way that textures currently pop in for most games. In most modern engines that use texture streaming, it is only used as a method of improving load times, not limiting resources that couldn’t possibly fit into memory. This shift is something that might take some time for gamers to accept and it is likely a technology might only be used in limited capacity by other developers. We may see something similar for large scale terrains or maybe character textures, but as a uniform solution, idTech5 may stand alone.

The Gameplay

Man, I forgot how fun it was to play an id Software shooter. It has been a long time since id has released a proper title, and Rage is easily one of their most complete experiences to date. Every weapon and each type of ammunition feels like it has a specific purpose in the game. This combination of weapons and ammunition, mixed with the crafting system, allow for a fairly wide array of tactics. I may have my person gripes with certain items, like the turrets’ inability to take any kind of damage without falling over, but there are thankfully plenty of other recipes for destruction to pick from. Though I have nothing bad to say about the shooting in the game, there are kinks in this armor.

Everything in the game feels disposable, which I felt was a misstep. There was a missed opportunity to give the player some emotional connection to their items and their property. Any items that can be crafted can be easily broken as well. For most objects like bomb cars this makes sense, but I would have liked to see a little strategy put into turrets and sentry bots. I would have liked to reclaim my turret and place it elsewhere once it has served it’s purpose in one place. I would have wanted to reclaim a bot who is near death or perhaps spend money or feed it small objects to heal the bot at a lower cost than building a new one. This was a small but disappointing oversight.

Another issue of disposable goods was in the cars that the player drives. There was no reasonable excuse to keep giving the player new cars. They could have simply awarded upgrades to your only car to make it just as powerful, much like the weapons and their ammo types. I don’t know if it was possible to upgrade the first car to be as useful as the other vehicles but I also didn’t bother with many races. I can appreciate that the races are there for some people, but I earned my point by killing bandits and there never seemed to be enough racing tickets to upgrade the original vehicles to the same status as the gifted cars you received throughout the story.

The Ending

Even knowing, from reviews, that the ending was cut short I was shocked by the sudden cut to credits. The first thought that came to mind was “where’s the rest of it?” And suddenly I understood why they called the game Rage. I was genuinely upset, and thankful that I bought it on sale much later after its release. I can fully understand why people would be so upset over the end of the game, but I did take some time give the ending a little more thought.

I don’t mind the ending of Rage now as much as I did when it happened. The game needed to end, it felt like the right time to close the books on Rage but I feel like they may have opened too many doors in the story. I feel like the large boss battle in Dead City was meant to be the real end to the game, but maybe they felt like the gameplay wasn’t long enough and set out to build another half of the game.

Another reason why I think there was some confusion about the ending is because everyone you talked to was leading you to believe that something big was about to happen. Elizabeth from the resistance quite literally said to expect something big which, in gaming language, translates to a final boss. You are even awarded a BFG which never gets used because you’ve stockpiled so many wingsticks and sentry bots by that point that you end up walking through the ending like a stroll in the park. Pimping out bots, turrets, and tossing EMP grenades like beads at Mardi Gra, you rarely find yourself in a life threatening predicament. I had a harder time fighting the Authority tanks outside the building than I did once I was inside.

So what could have fixed this ending? In my opinion, it could have been made less offensive if there was a “game+” mode, a way to continue the game, even if the story is done. Rage is a big world, leaving you with the empty feeling that you’ve left a lot of stones unturned. It would have been easy to assume that “stuff” was happening at all of the Arcs around the world but that doesn’t mean they had to happen for you in your little part of the world. You could have returned to town, gotten a few thanks from the locals and continued to take on side quests that were left alone, or finally relax and play a game of cards; you did your part to save the world.

Conclusion

Rage took me on a roller coaster of emotions, but strangely “rage” was a small part of the bigger picture. It was sad to leave the game on such a sour note but I still enjoyed the journey all the same. id Software flexed their shooting muscles in this game and its easy to see why fans still appreciate their attention to details when it comes to the gun-play, even if their story has some wrinkles to work out.

Overall, the experience was one of the best I’ve had this year. It wasn’t perfect, but the game was a visual eyegasm and the production quality was top notch. Every character had spoken dialog and handcrafted animations, hinting at the potential of a Fallout game but with the production quality of a Call of Duty. The environments were some of the best level designs I’ve seen from id Software in their history of making games, and the enemy encounters had just the right blend of mindless zombie types with tactical military classes. I am hopeful to see a Rage 2 and I can’t wait to see what idTech5 can do, now that the staff is well trained to take advantage of its strengths while avoiding its quirks. (Source: Gamasutra)