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Rage: Mutant Bash TV rail shoots id Tech 5 onto an iPhone
Bethesda's upcoming id Tech 5 engine has us pretty excited. It continues the long-standing rivalry between Epic's Unreal Engine and id's storied Doom and Quake engines. However, the battle is very different this time around -- as both engines vie to create the prettiest game for Apple's iPhone. John Carmack showed off a quick iOS prototype at QuakeCon earlier this year, but IGN has managed to secure video of actual gameplay. Rage: Mutant Bash TV is not an exact port of the console and PC shooter Rage. Instead, it's an arcade-styled rail shooter that has you shooting mutants with a variety of weapons. As you'll see in the video (embedded after the break), the game doesn't seem to offer much in terms of nuanced, thought-provoking gameplay. But, that's not really the point, is it? Mutant Bash TV is certainly pretty, an unbelievable accomplishment for cell phone gaming. Oddly, if you have a VGA cable, you'll be able to output the game to your TV and play it on the big screen. Nothing like playing a handheld port of a console game on a TV, right?
Epic Games, Id Software show off jaw-dropping new iPhone games
We've already seen Epic Games and Id Software show off their respective game engines for iOS devices, but they're only now finally giving folks a look at the first actual games that will use them. The first of those to roll out will apparently be Id's Mutant Bash TV, which looks as impressive as the Rage demo promised (although that's aided in part by being on rails), and will cost just $0.99 for the standard version or $1.99 for the Retina Display-enhanced version. Seemingly even more impressive than it, however, is Epic Games' Infinity Blade, the game counterpart to the Unreal Engine 3-based "Epic Citadel" demo that was released back in September. While it may look like yet another God of War clone, it sounds like Epic has something quite a bit different in mind -- the game's creative director (of Shadow Complex fame, incidentally) recently described it as a mix of Karateka, Dragon's Lair and Punch-Out. Head on past the break to check out the trailer, and hit up the link below for Touch Arcade's preview of Mutant Bash TV (no video for it just yet, unfortunately).
Breakfast Topic: Share your ragequit moments
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. Online gaming allows people the anonymity to be jerks if they want to and not face many actual consequences, whether it is trolling, ninjaing a piece of loot, rage-quitting a group because of a single wipe, or getting into a shouting match over Vent. Sometimes we carry real-life events in game with us. We have a bad day at work or break up with a girlfriend or worse, and we are unable to suffer noobs lightly. Sometimes we're rude, telling the guy doing terrible DPS he is bad and removing him from the group, as opposed to trying to help him; sometimes it is far worse. Back in The Burning Crusade, I was in a raiding guild I particularly liked. Good progression, mostly decent people, raid times that fit my schedule well at the time -- I thought all was good. However, there was on officer who I just did not get along with. So one Saturday, she was forming a ZG raid and asked me if I wanted to go. I said no, I was dealing with something in real life and was about to log. I didn't go into details, but we had a death in the family, and I just wasn't able to really concentrate on tanking at the time. I logged off. So a couple of hours later, I logged back on an alt and noticed they were still in ZG, so I asked what's up and how many chests they got. The officer went on a rant, just berating me endlessly, taking out their bad raid on me. I gquit on the spot -- all of my characters. Other officers talked to me later and asked me what happened, and I told them ... but I just could not go back after that. While I am currently in a guild that suits me better, I still wish I had left the previous guild on better terms. So have you done anything in a fit of rage you truly regret, something you actually felt guilty about afterwards?
id: RAGE would've been rushed 'if we weren't part of the Zenimax family'
The acquisition of id Software by Zenimax Media brought with it a slew of strong brands, but perhaps the most important is its 2011 game, RAGE. During an interview with GI.biz, id Software creative director Tim Willits brought up how important the game is to the developer internally: "There is a lot riding on it, we need to make sure it's great. Don't f**k it up!" But it's also pretty important to Zenimax that id be allowed to take its time. "I can tell you that if we weren't part of the Zenimax family, we'd be trying to rush this game out," Willits revealed. "So it's so nice being able to say, 'let's ship it next year, let's get the multiplayer awesome, let's get the game as great as we can make it.' Without their support, I honestly think that RAGE would not be as good as it's going to be." For Willits and id, the game isn't so much going to be a singular experience -- the developer is looking to create an overall experience where the goal is to make the player "feel that things happened before you got there and that things will happen after you leave." Star Wars is referenced as influence, yet Willits also mentioned possible DLC tie-ins and two different iPhone games as additional means to flesh out the universe. Another indication of RAGE's importance internally is how many people id has working on it: over 60 people. "Quake 2 we did with 13. Quake 3 with about 23. Doom 3 with about 38, I think, now on Rage we're past 60, and that's just the Rage team. It's still small, but it's big for us."
id loves the iPhone, but won't bring Orcs & Elves to App Store
Touch Arcade got to speak with none other than John Carmack himself at QuakeCon last weekend, and he had some disappointing news about getting old school id games on the iPhone. While Carmack said that he's excited about releasing Rage on the iPhone, he admits that id's past titles haven't sold up to snuff on the iPhone. That means that Orcs & Elves, originally created for mobile phones and then later released on the DS, won't be coming to Apple's App Store. That's too bad -- you'd think that since Orcs & Elves was actually designed for mobile platforms, it would be one of the easier titles to bring over. But it sounds like Carmack is more interested in bringing new games to Apple's platform. id Software still has a mobile game division going, but it's just not worth porting the old games over when there's so much work to be done on the new ones. I guess we can live with that.
id's Carmack wants to support current franchises, new IPs unlikely
Rage represents a rather large milestone for Carmack's id team. Not only is it the first game to use id Tech 4, it's the first id game to be published by new owner Bethesda. It's also the first new IP from the team in over a decade, since 1996's release of Quake. If a recent interview in the Official PlayStation Magazine (via CVG) is to be believed, it's likely that the new new IP from id will be just as far away. "I doubt we're going to do another IP," Carmack told OPM. "We want to support Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake -- and hopefully we can add Rage onto that. ... Obviously, if Rage is a success then we'll want to do a Rage 2." Considering the lengthy development cycles at id (evidenced by the currently-MIA Doom 4) who knows when the next new IP will bubble out of the company? Especially with that Commander Keen reboot getting in the way, right?
QuakeCon: Rage to be released Sept. 13, 2011 in the US, Sept. 15 in Europe
id Software just announced during a QuakeCon live presentation that Rage will be hitting store shelves on September 13, 2011 in the US and September 15, 2011 in Europe. Kotaku reports on the release date via its liveblog, highlighting one of the reasons the game still has another year of development time -- the Xbox 360 version crashed during the presentation. If you're really itching to jump into Rage's universe, the iPhone/iPad version of the game will launch sometime this year. That could help tide you over until the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC versions arrive next September.%Gallery-99359%
Carmack blows minds with id Software's Rage, running on iPhone at 60fps with 'megatextured' graphics (video)
We're sorry, but the Palm Pixi's rendition of Need for Speed no longer impresses us -- we've just seen John Carmack show off Rage for iPhone. While of course it looks nothing like the PC graphical monstrosity that swept the E3 Games Critics Awards, it's safe to say the 60 frame-per-second tech demo at QuakeCon 2010 shoves the cell phone gaming envelope through a Juggernaut-class brick wall. Where Carmack originally called the iPhone "more powerful than a Nintendo DS and PSP combined," the id Software co-founder is now aiming squarely at the likes of PS2 and Xbox with iPhone 4 hardware. Not impressive enough? He says it still "runs great on an original 2G iPhone" as well. VG247, who liveblogged the event, reports the title will be available in the App Store later this year for a relatively inexpensive price, with a second game available in time for the PC game's 2011 launch. Sadly, there's as of yet no plans for Android owners to get the same megatexturing goodness. Don't miss the video after the break, because this screenshot doesn't do it justice. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
id Tech 5 exclusive to Bethesda-published titles
What's the common thread between American McGee's Alice, Call of Duty and Quake 3? They were all powered by id Tech 3. Like Unreal Engine, id Tech was heavily licensed amongst third parties, used in a wide variety of console and PC games; however, it seems that id (and new parent company Bethesda) is no longer interested in pursuing the middleware market. In an interview with Eurogamer, id's Todd Hollenshead said that Rage's id Tech 5 is a "competitive advantage and we want to keep within games we publish." Certainly, the awards the game picked up at E3 -- including "Special Commendation for Graphics" -- provide testament to that claim. From Bethesda's perspective, the engine is simply too good for anyone else to use. "We're not going to license it to external parties," Hollenshead explained. "If you're going to make a game with id Tech 5 then it needs to be published by Bethesda, which I think is a fair thing." By restricting id Tech 5 to Bethesda games, id has essentially exited the middleware market, which is largely dominated by Epic's Unreal Engine. "Epic's made a good business out of that so kudos to them," Hollenshead said. "But I wouldn't change the way we've done things."
Rage demo'd at 60 fps on iPhone, id games on sale
QuakeCon is going down this weekend in AustinDallas, Texas -- the annual celebration of everything id Software (makers of Quake and Doom, among a few other classic PC titles) features tournaments and panels on some of the hottest PC games around. But there's already been one big Apple announcement: John Carmack has demonstrated id's newest game, Rage, running at a full 60 frames per second on the iPhone. We first heard of this game at QuakeCon a couple of years ago, and Carmack has always said that making sure it ran on the Mac would be a priority, but it looks like he's delivered the goods. The demo was run on an iPhone 4, but Carmack said it worked great on the iPad as well. Carmack said the iPhone version would be out sometime this year, before the full version of Rage arrives on consoles and PC. Oh, and icing on the cake? All of id's iPhone titles are on sale during the show this weekend -- Doom II RPG is down to just 99 cents, along with Wolfenstein 3D. Doom Classic and Doom Resurrection are US $1.99, down from the usual price of $6.99. If you're in AustinDallas, don't forget that QuakeCon is free and open to the public as well. All hail the great id!
QuakeCon: Rage coming to iPhone, running at 60fps [Update: now with video!]
Never one to back down from a challenge, id's technical wunderkind John Carmack has somehow – we imagine with the aid of The Dark Arts – managed to condense its latest game onto the iPhone. Speaking during a live keynote at the annual QuakeCon in Dallas Texas, Carmack announced that id's delivering a version of Rage (replete with MegaTextures and a 60 frames-per-second framerate!) onto the iPhone. While the demo was given on the iPhone 4, he said it could run on 3GS and looked best on iPad. The game came about from an experiment with something on the Wii and, in keeping with that experimental model, Rage for iPhone won't have a four-year dev cycle: It will be out this year, before Rage, and it will be cheap, in keeping with the iPhone App Store's model. A second Rage iPhone game will be released alongside the release of the PC/console release next year, and Carmack is still "spot-surveying" the Android market to determine if it's worth supporting. He said it won't happen "this cycle" but he'll reevaluate in about six months. More news from QuakeCon as we hear it. [Update: Now with video, found after the break! Update 2: John Carmack clarified on Twitter: "The iPhone demo was not "idtech5" on ios, it was from scratch new code. A tool in rage exported custom data for it."]
Encrypted Text: The energy resource system
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, I'm talking about my experiences in as a beta tester. I love energy. Of the three different resources in WoW at level 60, energy was definitely the best around. While death knights may argue that runes are more fun, they suffer from up to 10-second lockouts on some abilities once a particular rune is used up. Some hunters in the Cataclysm beta have claimed that focus is the best thing to happen to their class since pets. That's fine, but energy doesn't require us to play the regeneration minigame to ensure that we're producing enough. Energy is simple to model and even simpler to use; no ability is more than 6 seconds away. The system has seen constant upgrades since its humble origins, though its core functionality has remained unaltered. It's become a crucial part of our mindset, and it defines the experience of playing a rogue. I had an old friend that used to say that all true rogues set their watches to only tick every 2 seconds. What is about energy that keeps it marching on so reliably?
Respawn duo, Richard Garriott speaking at QuakeCon 2010
The official schedule has been announced for this year's QuakeCon, which is taking place August 12-15 in Dallas, Texas. In addition to the usual id gallery, none other than Jason West and Vince Zampella of the newly formed Respawn Entertainment will be in attendance. The ousted Infinity Ward heads will sit on a panel the Friday morning of the conference called "Building Blockbusters," talking with Tim Willits and Tom Howard of id and Bethesda about how to make big games (like the "huge summer blockbuster" they're supposedly working on). Todd Alderman, also of Respawn, will sit on a panel the previous day speaking about "The World of Design" with a few other developers. Elsewhere in the schedule, John Carmack and Richard Garriott will hold court on Thursday evening discussing rockets and space travel, and Friday and Saturday afternoons will bring preview panels for RAGE and Brink. Sounds like an excellent weekend of FPS gaming -- so if you're in Dallas (or plan to be there), the event is free and open to the public.
3DS and Rage are big winners of E3 2010 Game Critics Awards
Just one week after revealing the nominees of the E3 2010 Game Critics Awards, the numbers are in and the big winner is ... Nintendo's look-ma-no-glasses 3D handheld, the 3DS. But wait, the 3DS is just the Best of Show and Best Hardware winner! If you're looking for software, look no further than id Software's look-ma-crab-hands mutant-infested shooter, Rage, which took home the most awards in the show: Best Console Game, Best Action Game and Special Commendation for Graphics. If you think it must've been frustrating to be either Sony or Microsoft, both of which were busy showing off their newest motion-sensitive gadgetry, you'd be mostly right. Microsoft did have one small consolation prize: Dance Central, Harmonix's look-ma-no-coordination dancing game for Kinect, took the well-deserved Best Original Game and Best Motion Simulation prizes. None of Microsoft's first-party Kinect efforts and no PlayStation Move games, first-party or otherwise, made the list. Find the entire list of award winners, with links into our game pages for all of our coverage, after the break.
Rage leads Game Critics Awards nominees for E3 2010
With E3 2010 over and done with, and a glut of outlet-specific honors dispensed, it's time for the annual Game Critics Awards to reveal its list of nominees. Culled from the selections of "31 leading North American media outlets that cover the videogame industry" (including Joystiq!), the Game Critics Awards represent something of an industry consensus on The Big Show. This year, id Software's upcoming post-apocalyptic-'em-up Rage took home the most nominees, scoring five including Best of Show. Sharing the Best of Show nominee space are Disney's Epic Mickey, Dance Central, and Portal 2, each of which received four nominations across the boards. We've got the entire list after the break, and check out the "Fast Facts" breakdown linked below for some flamewar-worthy stats (Xbox 360 leads the platform nominations with 46 versus PlayStation 3's 39). Notably, Electronic Arts had the most nominees for a publisher for the fourth year in a row, earning 15 nominations ... and that's not including the formerly EA Partners-signed Rage.
Preview: Rage
If you doubted that Rage could look decent on the Xbox 360, rest assured it is a beautiful game. During the 30-minute presentation I attended at the Bethesda booth at E3, the "hand-crafted" environments backed up the boasting of the id Software producer guiding attendees through two different campaign segments. First of all, know that the premise isn't the only thing similar to that of the other big post-apocalyptic FPS, Fallout 3. The story is, like, very similar to that of Fallout 3. In Rage, a meteor strike has decimated the planet and the Authority -- the governing body of the world before the apocalypse -- apparently saw fit to bury these arks deep below ground, to house the remnants of humanity who could one day return to the surface after the effects of the meteor strike dissipated. The player's vault ark apparently has a malfunction (water chip malfunction?) and, as the last survivor, you must make your way to the surface for reasons unknown and join the rest of humanity and the mutated, crazed individuals who were once human. %Gallery-92198%
Interview: Jason Kim talks RAGE
What does a video game producer do? Well, the brutally honest Jason Kim from id's RAGE summed it up for us. "I'm just a producer; I don't make anything that actually shows up in the game." So there you have it! Okay, we're kidding (slightly). It's a producer's task on a game to make sure everything is running smoothly, that schedules are being met, budgets being adhered to, all so that one day the game can end up on your system of choice. That's no small task. Kim has been working on RAGE at id for the past several years, and has seen the project move from EA, to being an internally developed project at id, and now on to Bethesda. He's definitely enthusiastic about the project (and the word megatexture), and you can read on beyond the break for the full interview with him were he talks about the game, and why a lot of developers seem to be using the post-apocalyptic realm as a backdrop.%Gallery-92198%
Impressions: RAGE
RAGE is a gorgeous game. The Xbox 360 version of id's post-apocalyptic shooter, running at 60 frames per second, stunned at a recent Bethesda event, and removed any doubts as to whether the idTech 5 engine would hold up nearly three years after the game's unveiling. RAGE's story starts in the near future: a giant asteroid is heading towards Earth, and rather than launch a team of wacky oil-rig drillers at the problem, the governments of the world convene and decide to put most of the population into suspended animation and bury them beneath the surface in giant Arks. Years later, you're revived as the sole survivor of your malfunctioning Ark. I watched a hands-off demonstration a bit further along into the game, but there will be a brief tutorial during your revival process. %Gallery-92198%
Interview: Bethesda's Pete Hines
Two years ago, our discussions with Bethesda were dominated by Fallout 3. Now, the publisher has four new titles in the pipeline: Fallout: New Vegas, Brink, Hunted: The Demon's Forge, and RAGE. Oh, and it also recently announced plans to dominate the world. At a press event each of those four upcoming games, we spoke with company vice president Pete Hines about future plans and, of course, Fallout: New Vegas. Read on for the full interview.
Bethesda sets up offices in France and Germany
A powerhouse purveyor to the discerning role-player, Bethesda Softworks, has announced the opening of two new offices in Europe. Situated in Frankfurt, Germany and Paris, France, the offices will oversee sales and marketing and act as regional custodians for Bethesda's stable of popular properties. Think of them as Fallout shelters that are thoroughly stocked with baguettes and sausages. Bethesda has appointed Frank Matzke -- formerly marketing director for central Europe at Vivendi Games -- as managing director for the German arm, and Julie Chalmette as MD for France (just that office, not the whole country). Previously, Chalmette worked as a general manager for Vivendi Games France.
