The driving to places doesn't bother me much, but it really sucked there wasn't any point exploring since everything is locked anyway, and areas that look like they might have been interesting to explore are clipped to hell.
The races are what I disliked. Being forced to do them and having them be non-trivial (so that I had to expend effort in something I had no interest in) annoyed me the most.
The game seems to promise things but doesn't deliver:
look and feel of an open world game -> no point exploring anything 

All in a matter of minutes(< 60) :(

It was 20 years ago style find keys/items, unlock door ad nauseam. In this decade a game being made should present more than 1996 Quake wrapped in MEGAtexturing!

At least, in.my.mot.so.humble.opinion. 

Hating on Id is the cool new thing right? 

 

but the points people are making completely valid.

This huge world should have been more interesting to explore, but it's barren of any real content (other than looking very pretty).
The levels were really nice too but the gameplay suffered a little because the majority of enemies were very samey.
The lost city should have been so much more.
The big boss fight about half-way through the game was neat but a little simple.
No big boss at the end was a huge huge huge disappointment.
The racing parts, while I enjoyed them, shouldn't have been mandatory. 

I think you have to give a game a bit more than less than an hour to judge it. not that i've played rage, yet. 

It was 20 years ago style find keys/items, unlock door ad nauseam. In this decade a game being made should present more than 1996 Quake wrapped in MEGAtexturing!

This is a complete fabrication. 

Games should definitely present in-depth stories and emotional characters, lengthy cutscenes, quicktime events, immersive real world scenarios, plenty of puzzles / combat complexities / RPG elements ....cos all those things are essential for a good shooter. 

Why do you guys even install games anymore? You want Quake, so just play Quake. :) 

I enjoyed playing Rage.

I like lots of modern FPS games, but generally what makes them good are the core mechanics and aesthetics, rather than superficial window-dressing. 

... is that feeling of frustration that comes from seeing something that has the fundamentals down right but falls short of greatness for seemingly silly, trivial reasons. Which is much worse than the frustration that comes from something just being common-or-garden variety crap. 

For an FPS to be great, you need an environment that is properly part of the gameplay, i.e. level design that's not just "shoot blokes". The Half-Life games are the ultimate examples of this, and still by far the best shooters ever made. Quake 1/2 also had it going on, in a more primitive, arcadey way. I long for the golden days of FPS when I felt I was exploring a vast, complex world (e.g. Unreal 1), whilst also having the core mechanics of shooty monstery stuff.

Most modern shooters are just about shooting men with incredibly realistic animations and models, and the only environment elements that enter the gameplay space are cover objects - the rest of the environment may as well be a skybox for all the difference it makes. 

Have you played Bulletstorm by any chance?? 

Worthy? 

ButtStorm is exactly the same (exactly as shit) as, say CoD, the only difference being that the combat arenas are littered with lots of Explo-Barrels (and variations of).

When I'm talking about a meaningful environment in an FPS game, I mean primarily an environment that you can explore, and ideally one that also contains non-combat gameplay.

I think the difference is, with a game like quake or unreal, a level designer typically says "I want to make an interesting (castle/spaceship/magical mushroom cave) with a clever layout and a varied selection of challenges for the player to overcome, and all sorts of things to discover."

With CoD (and most modern shooters, they just say "I want to make a load of guns and a load of men to shoot with those guns. For the levels, we'll just get our artists to make some cool looking shit, and we'll fill the gaps between shooting with cutscenes and QTEs." 

to be more specific, when i was saying 'i just want to shoot stuff' i actually meant 'i just want to do primarily FPS related stuff' (eg: NOT racing game related stuff) which I take to include things like exploration, some small amounts of puzzle solving, admiring awesome looking levels (rage scores 100% on this one). 

I was being sarcastic. Bullshitstorm was exactly the sort of pointlessly pretty environmental cobblers you were on about ;) 

"The Half-Life games are the ultimate examples of this, and still by far the best shooters ever made."

I puked a little reading this.

Half-life was pretty cool when it was originally released and still a nice game, but to me it didn't age as good as a doom or quake or other classic style (I call them "good style") fpses. If you are a modern gamer, hl1 - 2 are not going to provide you with something that different from your average fps, while doom and quake have a fresher gameplay.

Hl2 is just pointless and boring in my opinion. You just know the developers thought the focus was the inane plot and the inane dialogue cutscenes (oh they are not cutscenes because you can pointlessly move gordon around), I think rage is funnier to play than hl2 and obviously cooler to look at. The gameplay in hl2 in particular is so unfun and boring and unchallenging that you feel they actually worked overtime to make it so dull. Also all of the weapon seem so damped in power (with ridicolously low ammo clips, hours to reload, low ammo capacity) to make you use the gravity gun (a pointless gimmick, in hindsight) as much as possible. It's like they actually feared the player would have too much fun using guns to just pick up crates and toilets and toss them at the few, unharmful monsters 

HL1 was cheesy and overrated.

HL2 was everything the first game should have been, slick, stylish and atmospheric. The gameplay wasn't as visceral as other shooters but it was certainly enough to make a great game. 

kind of was like the old horror films back in the early days. It was pretty unique at the time. It was definitely the right game at the right time, I fully recommend anyone play Black Mesa (it's free!).

Yeah it was kinda cheesy but this is part of the charm 

That's what I didn't find it. The vibe and atmosphere were straight out of X-Files / any other government paranoia production, the interaction was a small evolution from stuff like Unreal that had already taken some fine steps in that direction. It was well-executed and a good game but underwhelming compared to the hype. Xen was cool though. That was fresh. 

When I said unique I meant amongst videogames. It definitely drew a lot of inspiration from films and TV 

"That's what I didn't find it. The vibe and atmosphere were straight out of X-Files / any other government paranoia production, the interaction was a small evolution from stuff like Unreal that had already taken some fine steps in that direction. It was well-executed and a good game but underwhelming compared to the hype. Xen was cool though. That was fresh."

That was fantastic. THAT is how you bald faced troll with a straight face. Masterful, sir. 

I feel like an idiot now!

http://archive.4chon.net/edu/11467/src_1346802035875.png 

Straight up truth and you know it.

Conversely, something like Deus Ex totally lived up to the hype and did exactly what it promised. Quite a rare thing in games in general. Well apart from these days where many of the big name FPS shooters promise to be vacuous shite, and indeed are.