Can the SIZZLE code from D2D be used to purchase RAGE too?

Yes, the SIZZLE code is applicable to RAGE as well, but you'll need someone to help you get the game since it's region-locked to the US & Canada only.

For the full list of games under the D2D Summer Sale, here's the link: http://www.direct2drive.com/promos/weekend/

Bethesda has revealed free upgrades to the Anarchy Edition of Rage if you pre-order it with select UK retailers which include HMV, GAME and Amazon.

This special edition includes four in-game items to enjoy once you're playing id Software's latest shooter. These include two weapons, armour and a vehicle.


"Today we’re excited to announce that if you pre-order 'RAGE', you’ll automatically get upgraded to the 'Anarchy Edition', which adds four downloadable in-game items to your post-apocalyptic arsenal," read a Bethesda press release.

Rage uses the all-new id Tech 5 engine to deliver a first-person shooter and action racer. This pre-order deal is available with HMV, GAME and Amazon in the UK.

• Double barrel shotgun
Wasteland settler design and ingenuity! Features compact form factor with plenty of muscle to take out everything from mutants, bandits and maybe even a lone Authority Enforcer.

• Crimson elite armour
This is the most sought-after armour in the wasteland. Constructed of hardened plate armour, this gear was created specifically to withstand the toughest wasteland battles. It also features larger component storage, allowing you to carry more parts that will aid in the fabrication of advanced engineering items.

• Fists of rage
A classic weapon for close quarters combat. When you've run out of ammunition and fists are the only option, these razor sharp knuckle blades will give you that combat edge.

• Rat rod buggy
Improve your odds of survival in the wasteland with this vehicle that comes equipped with a front smash guard and durable protection.

Rage releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC September 13th in the US, 16th in Europe.

Rage is yet to get booted out the id Software doors and into our laps but tech wizard John Carmack is impressed with the "very beneficial" features of the game.

It isn't all running and gunning like id's previous efforts, as its got "towns, driving and exploration" that "doesn't detract" from the action. Rage 2 seems certain.


"While we have corridor shooter maps in Rage, there’s much more to it. It has all of the driving and the exploration and the towns that come in,” said id's technical director John Carmack, named by Rage's creative director as the most important guy in the industry.

“It doesn’t detract from the shooting at all. It can still be an incredibly fast, guns blazing action shooter, but when you’re taking a break from that you can kit yourself out with extra stuff. All of the towns, driving and exploration have turned out to be very beneficial to the game. I’m very excited for where we’ll go with this in Rage 2,” he continued.

Rage releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC September 13th in the US, 16th in Europe. A ton of gameplay footage has been showcased at E3 this week - check some out below.

Last year, id Software confirmed that it would no longer license its engine technology to developers outside of the umbrella of corporate parent Zenimax, which also owns The Elder Scrolls developer and publisher Bethesda Softworks.

The move was a surprise -- id had become known for licensing its tech for games ranging from American McGee's Alice to Call of Duty, even releasing its tech for free after a few years. Technology sharing, whether through licensing partnerships or through a free release of id Tech, seemed to be part of id's DNA, and the studio's acquisition by Zenimax helped put an end to that.

But id co-founder and lead programmer John Carmack told Gamasutra at E3 that he's happy to be out of the engine licensing business, as the studio concentrates on finishing id Tech 5-powered Rage and continues work on the further-off Doom 4.

"It's interesting when you look at our technology licensing -- it was never really a business that I wanted to be in," he said. "In the very early days, people would pester us, and we'd just throw out some ridiculous terms, and we were surprised when people started taking us up on it."

"I didn't want to be in the process of supporting a lot of outside teams, because you feel beholden to not make radical changes when it's going to pull the rug out from lots of other people," he explained. "When it's your own team, you can make the sensible decision that [a big change] is going to be worth it, that it's going to suck for a while, but we make our way through it. But you don't want to do that to other people."

Gears of War developer Epic Games is a dominant force in engine licensing in this console generation, and Carmack acknowledged that company's success in that area.

"Epic's done a really good job of building up a support structure for [engine licensing]. The market was ours to keep, but we abdicated because we weren't willing to put that effort into it. We didn't want half our company to be about managing technology licensing. Epic has gone and done a great job with it."

"If you have a team that's up to speed and going great with Unreal technology, I don't care at all. It's not a personal affront to me if somebody wants to choose a different technology to build a game upon," he said.

He added that id Tech 5 is "not magic," and the engine is good for certain kinds of games such as Rage, but not as much for games such as Grand Theft Auto that render cities with lots of surface area.

"The megatexture direction [in id Tech 5] has some big wins, but it's also fairly restrictive on certain types of games," he said. "It would be a completely unacceptable engine to do [Bethesda's Elder Scrolls V:] Skyrim in, where you've got the whole world, walking across these huge areas."

id Software creative director Tim Willits said in a separate Gamasutra E3 interview that dropping engine licensing was a welcome change. "For us, it was such a burden off our back. Licensing is a big pain, it really is. ... We always wanted to focus on the games, so it was a nice relief for us not to have to do that."

"... But John is still very active in open source," Willits said, "and we're the only ones that release our source now to such an extensive level, and the PC version [of Rage] will have the SDK ... all that stuff will be available. The spirit of [Carmack's] sense of sharing and working with the community, that's still pretty intact. I wouldn't stress too much about it."

i just can hope this game will be more interesting and have a long good story line that will not boring players!!

The official site for id Software's upcoming open-world shooter seems to have stealthily delivered some bad news for those anxiously awaiting the game's release. It now says the release date for RAGE is October 4th, a full three weeks later than the previously listed date of September 13th.

So, it's not anything major, but October is becoming PACKED. There are at least half a dozen other big titles already scheduled for that month, including Battlefield 3 and Batman: Arkham City.

John Carmack of id Software reveals that as soon as Rage is completed, he and the other "core tech team" members will be focusing everything on Doom 4.

While singleplayer on consoles is 30 frames per second so they can have "30 demons crawling all over," multiplayer will kick it back up to Rage's 60 FPS.


"...as soon as Rage ships, the core tech team moves over to start making things happen on the Doom 4 project," revealed id's John Carmack, the studio's technical director.

"There's me and the systems programmer types that have been on Rage for so long. We're going to move over to the Doom team and a lot of resources are going to migrate over there." It's how a big studio like them must operate now, he explained.

"The only thing I've really talked about on Doom 4, technology-wise, is that we did make the decision that...well, my biggest pride and joy about Rage is that I won the fight for 60 frames per second on there, but it involves significant trade-offs."

Those 'trade-offs' are not having huge numbers of enemies on screen. "You can't have 30 guys crawling all over you at 60 frames per second at this graphics technology level because it's painful. It's a lot of effort to do that," explained the veteran programmer.

"But, we did make the call that for Doom 4, the single-player is going to go 30 frames per second on the consoles. So we can have 30 demons crawling all over you on there. But the multiplayer is still going to be 60 frames per second, so it has the quality feel that Rage has." Are you looking forward to Doom 4? It releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

First-person shooter poster child id Software believes Rage will be outgunning PC sales by quite the margin, at least according to the "napkin math" of it all.

CEO Todd Hollenshead feels "two-thirds plus" will be the likely split between console and PC. The studio "forbid anybody" using keyboard and mouse first.


"I'm not in the sales forecast business, and I don't want to be making projections for the company on the basis of that. But if we're just going to do napkin math, that's as good as any," said id Software co-owner and CEO Todd Hollenshead.

Rage is leading on the consoles as id follow the math. "Maybe it's 70 per cent among the consoles and 30 on the PC, or maybe 75, 25. But we're still talking two-thirds plus of the sales being on PS3 or Xbox 360," he continued.

"In game development, you have to tailor your gameplay to where you expect people to play it on," he said. "So, while we're developing Rage on the PC, we forbid anybody from playing it on a keyboard and mouse until we've played it first on a console controller."

"We pull the keyboard and mouse out and put in a USB 360 controller, even on the development staff. That's not just the testers." Porting from the PC version to console is the old way of thinking and it gets you into trouble he observes: "That was the way we did it in the past. Ultimately, we learnt that's not the way you should do it."

"We had the discussions early on with Rage about what platforms we were going to go on. If we're going to expect one third, one third and one third of sales to be across those three platforms, so that means two-thirds of our sales are going to be on console, we're going to make sure we have that gameplay feel tight first."

Rage releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC October 7th.

"Strong factions internally" at id Software fancy returning the Quake series to its roots and the Lovecraftian-y stylings of the original Quake, id's technical wizard John Carmack has told Eurogamer. However, he makes quite clear, "Nothing is scheduled here, people are not building this."

"We went from the Quake II and the Quake 4 Strogg universe. We are at least tossing around the possibilities of going back to the bizarre, mixed up Cthulhu-ish Quake 1 world and rebooting that direction," Carmack said. "We think that would be a more interesting direction than doing more Strogg stuff after Quake 4."

"We certainly have strong factions internally that want to go do this," he explained. "But we could do something pretty grand like that, that still tweaks the memory right in all of those ways, but is actually cohesive and plays with all of the strengths of the level we're at right now."

The first Quake was a Doom-y shooter set in a moody fantasy dimension with Lovecraftian references, populated by hordes of demons. However, it also had plenty of industrial complexes, soldiers, and military weaponry. The mix-up stemmed from shifting focus during development; originally is was to star a Thor-like character with a mighty hammer, and feature RPG elements.

"I looked at the original Quake as this random thing, because we really didn't have our act together very well," Carmack said. "But because it was so seminal about the 3D world and the internet gaming, it's imprinted on so many people. It made such an impact in so many ways. Memory cuts us a lot of slack."

1997's Quake II had a whole new setting, pitting players against the techno-organic Strogg. Quake 4 continued the Strogg story in 2005, after 1999's Quake III: Arena largely did away single-player to focus on multiplayer.

id CEO Todd Hollenshead added, "People shouldn't worry that we're ever going to orphan or abandon Quake. We are huge fans of the game internally."

id's next game will be Rage, which is headed to PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 4. Beyond that, id has been teasing Doom 4 but not yet revealed it.

New RAGE Behind the Scenes trailer: Legacy of id

If Doom 4 is the true sequel of Doom 1 and 2 series (tons of monsters to shoot, getting surround by them, tons of weapons to choose, HEALTHPACK and ARMOR, Intense and Fast Multiplayer deathmatch, dedicated server support, MODS).... I think I just had an orgasm.