So I went to Quakecon, got to play Rage and see demos of Prey 2 and Skyrim.
Rage was honestly better than I expected. The visuals are really impressive, especially since its running at 60 FPS, there are few games even in the same league. The only complaints I can find are LOD(texture pop-in) and the lack of AA. Both of which are amended in the PC version, I played the 360 one since I prefer the controller, but saw the PC version and it looked visibly better. The gun play is great, you can hold up to four guns at once, with some guns having alternate fire. The AI is also robust, I died several times in the harder level I played through, the soldiers reminded me of the Elites from the Halo series, which is a very good thing. They flank, roll, take cover, and rush in when you start to take damage. I also played a racing segment, which was also fun, reminded me a lot of the racing in the Jak games. The only problem I found with this is that it seemed like sometimes the game would tell you a rocket is coming at you, but you can't do anything about it. I died right before the finish line and that sort of angered me that they dont have some sort of move to get rockets off your tail, since they are so abundant. Overall Rage seemed like a really fun game, but nothing more than a rental for me. The multiplayer is only races and deathmatches in the buggies, which I don't imagine will bolster a lasting community and the gameplay, while competent, does nothing to set itself apart in a sea of shooters, other than being really good looking.
On to Skyrim next. They showed us an extension of the E3 demo we saw, I assume the press has already seen this. The guy playing went through a started on a mountain, went through a village, a dungeon, and ended in a dragon fight. The graphics are greatly improved from Oblivion, the animations specially almost look a generation ahead of what Oblivion had. There was a lot of different weapons and magic shown off, along with some new dragon shouts. You can mix and match different spells, resulting in some cool effects. There is a spell that lets you see all living things in the immediate area, coupled with another that sends the enemy into a rage and it will kill other enemies. He mixed and matched a lot of other things, I can't put it all in one post, just ask and I will tell you what I know. I dont know if they have showed off glass weapons before, but they look like the ones from Morrowind more than Oblivion, which I like. They didn't show any new races.
The Prey 2 demo wasn't near as expansive as Skyrim's, unfortunately. It did show off some new interrogation stuff, threatening people, and interacting with NPCs, whether saving them or killing them. We were shown capturing a new bounty alive and then the demo they showed off at E3 kicked in, albeit played a bit differently because of AI. You can ask me questions about this, but they really didn't show anything new. Im still really excited for it though.
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