People expected too much of it. The shooting was solid, the racing fun. The problem was people expected fallout 3 with doom or quake style shooting. They got an oldschool shooter but instead of putting each level after an other you had to drive in an empty open world to get to the next level. Also the hype was too big and it was release too late.

Final nail in the coffin: the graphics. I though they were really good but the texture issues at launch and the fact that even when the issues were solved the textures were still really low quality. The animation and overall look were amazing though. Problem was they were talking about these megatextures as if it was the next big step in graphics and when you finally played the game, well the texture were a huge step back (visually, I don't know much about the programmig side of it), so people were very disappointed.

I personally loved it even though it was too easy and it fell into the same difficulty trap as so many shooters these days: Putting it on nightmare isn't so much a step up in chanllenge as it is in frustration. The hardest difficulties these days feel cheap and unbalanced, but maybe that's just me.

is the story in Rage any good? Are there fun side quests that give you some 'mini' story?

EDIT: @xxxIndyxxx thank you for the info :)

They got bought up by ZeniMax.

Working on Daikatana 2:D

And yeah, i know that the IP belongs to Eidos!

No. There is hardly any story at all, in fact, and the world felt poorly fleshed out for me.

Fat chance, with Zenimax at the helm.

Because it's shit.

I can only speak for myself here, but Rage has a poor story, bad writing, unbalanced weapons, unnecessary RPG elements, a tiny and entirely unnecessary sandbox, a terrible texture pop-in problem even on powerful systems (this can be fixed, but the game scores no points for that as far as I'm concerned), and probably the most abrupt ending to any game since Xenon 2, and so on and so on. I admit that the visuals are great and that I liked the art style in general, but a turd encased in sugar coating does not a cake make.

What story?
- Here's some bandit place. Go through it killing everyone in your way.
- And here's some evil military place. Go through it killing everyone in your way.
- Here's the ending. Press three buttons, while dodging laser monkeys.

I was glad, you could skip dialogues by running away from the questgivers.

Oh, and most sidequests are just second runs through the levels you've beaten, with a different reason given and slight layout changes.

The weapons can be divided into "Sniper Handgun with One-Hit-Kill Bullets" and "Some other shit, you have spare ammo for"

Well that's bed. The game so much potential (I generally like apocalyptic themed games but if there is no story or at least goof mini stories then it turns into a dumb shooter :s)

Yeah story wasn't all that great, but still in my opinion the shooting is far superior then most shooters on the market. Sure the rpg elements weren't necessary and underused but they didn't detract from the experiece. The core gameplay as far as I see it: the shooting and the racing is fun. Everything else is mediocre.

Never got the hate for the ending though. When i played it: the last level really felt like a final level and when i was at the end it didn't fell abrupt or sudden to me. How the game was structured and how the story was going, there wasn't much room for a different kind of ending. A bossfight against a huge mutant would feel out of place at this point in the game. Only thing I can think of that might have been better that would have still fitted was a halo 3 kind of ending with the buggy.

Strangly enough endings are weird these days. People tend to dislike bossfight but if a game doesn't have one: they complain. Or you get some setpiece which looks interesting and spectacular but isn't so interesting gameplay wise. And an ending with too many waves is the worst. At least the ending in rage doesn't outstay it's welcome with endless waves and then a sudden stop...

The racing is very basic, really. I replayed the game on nightmare once, and I've beaten the necessary plot races without doing any optional races or grinding for upgrades. I got through the area on the way to the final level without even upgrading the armour.
The dumb shooting part isn't too bad, yes. It's everything in between that could use trimming.

The main story isn't all that interesting but the world itself kinda is even if it's underdeveloped. How the world is build up and the little details in the levels and hubs are interesting even though the game doesn't do anything with it. I loved how the details tell heir own story and how the world has "evolved" and going into abandoned cities that still look like cities now but deserted was really fun. If they ever make a second one i really hope they flesh out these things a lot more do a lot more with it without touching the shooting.
The racing is easy, yes. But the car handles extremely well, but also very arcady. I usually feel like vehicles are not so fun in games but here it's so basic and focused on not annoying the gamer that i really enjoyed it. Sure if you like something more complex, this will not be your cup of tea. But I never bought Rage for the story or the racing or the open world. I bought it for the shooing and the oldschool shooting in rage just doesn't disappoint. There are few shooters in the last 5 years that have more fun shooting the rage for me.

Aren't they supposed to be rich by selling the world's most popular games? And then maybe buying another gaming companies and grow?

Well, as I stated already, there didn't really seem to be a story anywhere in the game so the "everything was building up to this" thing flies right out the window. With that gone and brained at the pavement, the ending boiled down to mindlessly firing the shotgun and trowing wingsticks at everything - the exact same thing I had been doing for about ten hours anyway. Then suddenly the credits rolled, I uninstalled the game and dumped it into my "Never play again" Steam folder.

That was a long time ago. The world, the competition and technology have moved along, and id is no longer at the cutting edge like they used to.

Yes, one would have thought that the sale from their games and licensing their engines should have enabled them to avoid the likes of ZeniMax.

ZeniMax do not hate the idea of DRM-free, they just believe that the only people who want to play computer games are criminally minded. So they opt in on DRM.

One day I'd like to read the book Masters of Doom. It's supposed to be a great read.