Verno wrote on Feb 1, 2012, 10:19:
Lots of extremes in this thread.

Rage wasn't a terrible piece of shit by any stretch of the imagination and if anyone actually believes that then they've made some extremely good choice in buys over the years or have no idea what a bad game is actually like.

That being said Rage was definitely a very mediocre game with no real ambition. The megatexturing work was certainly an achievement but it's one that has little bearing on the gameplay experience. Rage imitated other titles readily but never really hit a stride of its own. The best things I can say about it was that the animations and AI were very good. Contrast that with shallow mechanics everywhere else, a non-existent storyline and little characterization made it fairly boring. The racing felt like a tacked on mini-game and the areas are oddly transitioned between traditional FPS levels and quasi-open maps filled with invisible walls.

Borderlands was more modest in its approach to that stuff and while it suffered from similar problems at least it tried to make its own way with the loot mechanics and humor. Rage was "bad" because it was so long in the making and such a let down, particularly for the money. People don't scoff at $60 in this economy and last year was filled with standout titles that Rage pales in comparison to. I feel bad for id in a way, the rest of the industry "grew up" and they're still making barebones FPS titles with pretty engines. We've got plenty of those as it is unfortunately which doesn't leave much room for them anymore and I think that's reflected in Rages soft sale figures.