I just can't agree.
It had a very different focus from other engines, but I really appreciated when Rage brought to the table. The texture variety is unlike anything else out there even though detail suffers at close proximity and the fact that it held 60 fps 99% of the time on consoles was a miracle. Doom 3 on consoles also use id Tech 5 and was a huge leap over Quake 4 and Prey released earlier on 360.
It's certainly been eclipsed by a lot of newer technologies, of course, but it's one of the only engines that was delivering a solid 60 fps on consoles last gen. Even Call of Duty, which I think looked worse across the board, suffered from plenty of slowdown and performance dips.
I actually quite like the look of The New Order myself.
But it was only one game. Now we have this, Doom, The Evil Within, and God knows what else, using this engine on systems that have vastly more performance available to them.
While I think Rage looks bad on PS360 anyway, at least the 60fps had some merit there, it was arguably worth crippling other areas of the engine to provide that performance (an argument I would be on the opposite side of actually), but now what possible good does it provide? We have the same really awful inert lighting and cheap TV studio visuals when the systems have ample performance for 60fps with much nicer visuals.
I wonder what was in the works for Doom originally, Carmack talked about halving the performance on consoles so they could do a lot more with the lighting (if I remember correctly, at least).