I've spent four hours playing Rage today via the Xbox Series backwards compatibility. (Is it emulation or real hardware?)
Anyway, for an Xbox360 game I think this looks really good and still holds up today. The speedy loading times certainly help as well.
I did try and play a while ago on the PS3. I don't know if Rage was pushing the PS3 to the limit, but as you turned around, you would catch models and textures loading in. Apparently you could alleviate this a bit by installing an SSD but you're still limited by the PS3's older SATA connection.
Having played this on my Series X, I don't know if the Xbox Series is almost void of this because of the modern hardware or if the Xbox360 version was actually the better machine with this game engine.
I completed Rage 2 a year or so ago when it was given away free on the Epic Game Store and loved it. The original game is essentially the same but on a much smaller scale. It's a balanced gameplay of driving and FPSs sections.
I LOL'd on my first encounter when I've if the bad guys shouted, "Where's that wanker!" 😆
I wouldn’t even consider PS2 retro. Maybe some of the earliest PS2 games. But for the most part to me it’s pre Y2K.
Thinking about it more, I like to draw the line there as everything after this generation had some level of internet connectivity. Also PC ports started to become common during this time.
Once the internet got involved i think gaming in general started to get worse with all the dlc, and micro transactions.
So the golden age of gaming, for me, is ps2 and earlier which I like to think of as retro.