#rage 2

In a turn of events that will shock and appal anybody who knows me personally, I'm in love with a polarising game.

"In love" is too strong a term, perhaps. The thing is, every 'RAGE 2 is shit' take I see on the Internet, the harder I wanna double-down on being a fan of this game. And its prequel, yes, I am one of the three who love it.

What we have here though, is an awkward marriage between Avalanche Studios' openworld design a la the excellent Mad Max and id Software's trademark (if you ignore DOOM 3, as I often do) brand of satisfying shootybangs. It works as much as it doesn't, so I'm gonna go through the good, the bad, and the ugly right here.

The Good

Oh for crying out loud, RAGE 2 is a beautiful game. Although sadly lacking some of the stylisation of the original game (which reminded me personally of those late '90s fully-painted 2000AD strips and covers, niiiiice...) but now we have colour! And absolutely oodles of the stuff, including my beloved pink; used to great effect to draw attention to and highlight important interactables or areas. This lends itself to a visual clarity that supplants the gunplay excellently.

And of the gunplay, oh, I have some words. They're all good words. RAGE was no sloucher in this department itself, so build upon that absolutely solid base with a bunch of Nanotrite-fuelled abilities to spice up battlefield agility and strategy and we have ourselves one hell of a fun time. Even the vehicular combat has seen a welcome shot in the arm, although it's not quite as satisfying as that seen in Mad Max, it's still pretty fun to take down the endlessly-respawning convoys across the wasteland.

The Bad

That aforementioned wasteland. 'Waste' is indeed the operative term there; for there's a lot of empty space. Now, I don't play a lot of openworld games at all (RAGE, Mad Max, and the Arkham games are basically my entire diet) so this could be par for the course. But so much of it's just

s t r e t c h e d - o u t

and lulls between that satisfying gunplay can be pretty large sometimes. Especially stings when engaging with the openworld is pretty much the meat of the game's filler content, even when playing for a minimal 'see the ending' run.

This is lessened somewhat with certain lategame vehicles (I'd have gone insane were it not for the Icarus, I tells ya) but still. Look, I've already said I like this game a lot, are you expecting a whole itinerary of complaints here?

The Ugly

Not literally ugly, as this is a great-looking game through and through. But there are bugs. Ragdoll bugs, floating prop bugs, frozen physics object bugs, enemies stomping the player through the floor bugs, invisible NPC bugs; even a particularly-heinous game-breaker that can happen literally as the final mission is supposed to trigger that so far, fingers crossed, I've managed to avoid on both a casual playthrough and a completionist one. But hey, I guess this is technically A Bethesda Game™ and I gather that pretty much goes with the territory at this point.

Also it's worth noting that the game fucking loves the Cyber-Crusher boss and there are a few of those. They don't get any more difficult each time either, it's just the one boss again. And again. And so forth.

Conclusion

It's good! I like it a lot! Even love, to spite The Internet in general because I love to cheer on any underdog I see; imagined or otherwise. It's got some flaws but I was very much willing to overlook these things for a game that, although I couldn't say was unilaterally-superior to its prequel, does nonetheless take some steps to improve upon it. And it has a proper final boss encounter as well, instead of, well, just a room that the original game had.

I just beat Rage 2. Played on a Playstation 5 but it's most likely available on Xbox too.

In a nutshell: It's Fallout Lite. A first person shooter with very mild RPG elements. Let's not expect a Shakespearean level story. The plot is pretty simple. You are Walker (male or female) the last Ranger on this post-apocalyptic world. You wake up in the middle of an invasion from "The Authority". A gaggle of robot/mutant hybrids motivated on murdering every human on sight. Not sure what kind of authority they plan to enforce if everyone is dead? But I digress...the Authority is led by General Cross. This dude with a gnarly robot body with a generic, angry, bald white man head on top. Like if they screwed on Jeff Bezo's head on Megatron's body? Basically you have to travel across an open world and do mini-quests for 3 different resistance generals and defeat the Authority once and for all. I appreciate how simple that premise is. But does it stand out against all the post apocalypse cliches and derivative FPS elements? Long enough for me to beat the game at least.

The Good:

I like Rage 2 because of it's simplicity. It's an open world first person shooter. So you roam the world and shoot shit. That's it! Almost like a 3-D version of Contra with more NPCs. With a wide selection of vehicles to roam the wasteland. It's literally a giant sandbox to play around and blow shit up.

There's a modest variety of weapons and bionic superpowers in your arsenal. And there are plenty of missions sprawled around to keep your trigger fingers busy. You can even download extra missions through DLC. The game is called Rage, but playing through beginning through end didn't make me mad at all. Rage 2 was actually kind of fun! Which is a good quality to have in any type of game.

The Bad: This game would be great, if there weren't 500 other games exactly like it. Even if you don't compare it to every other first person shooter, the Rage 2 open world is rather shallow. What good is exploring a vast ocean if the water is 2 feet deep everywhere? I don't mean that literally. Like, there are only 3 types of enemies: street punks, immortals and authority mutants. With like 3 types of missions to host them all: shoot a handful of enemies here. Shoot a handful of enemies until the timer runs out there. Shoot a boss in between amd collect nonsensical items to level up your weapons and abilities. Speaking of which, most of the weapons and abilities were pretty useless. What's the point of harnessing  and perfecting telekinetic floating powers or power slide across the floor when I can simply shoot the shit out of a bunch of badguys with less effort? I usually like to grind through and get all the weapons and special items in a game before beating it. But none of those weapons or items really mattered in the long run or made a difference in the end result. After a while, I just wanted to get the game over with. I like how you can defeat the final boss and keep playing around in the open world. But I didn't see the point. Rage 2 has a nice open world worth visiting but it's not deep enough to warrant an extended stay like other open worlds have to offer.

Overall: Rage 2 was OK. It felt like a dumbed-down version of Fallout. The environment is similar. The gameplay is a lot faster and more intense. But not enough depth for a truly immersive experience. Rage 2 is like a brand new bag of Utz potato chips: looks delicious but it's mostly a bag of hot air with a handful of tasty bits. And not much else. It's not the worst thing to eat but you certainly have a wealth of better options out there.