Rage 2 (2019)

The original Rage is one of my favourite games, so I was really looking forward to playing this. Compared to the original, this was a bit too colourful but they used it to good effect by making the open world more beautiful. The way the colours transition as you move from one region to another is impressive.

This game probably has the best combat ever in an FPS game. Once you boost your abilities with nanotrites, the combat becomes an absolute treat.

The main story is a big disappointment, it is too short and uninteresting. In comparision to the original, a lot of things were added which are excellent in themselves but a lot of things that made the original great have been discarded. This is one reason I deducted one star.

Intro

You drive around a desert-ey alien planet and shoot stuff. You get new abilities, weapons and vehicles along the way - all of which can be upgraded.

The Good

• It's fun.
• Solid gameplay.
• Lots of upgrades give a good sense of progression.
• Some of the abilities and weapons are really neat.

The Bad

• The setting, story, characters, etc. are all utterly forgettable. And i mean that literally. I played this yesterday and can't remember a single name.
• The defibriliation tutorial is so bad i had to look up how to complete it. Turns out, i was pressing the buttons too fast. This isn't explained at all.
• Objective markers can't be disabled (AFAIK) and show from the other side of the map.
• Save system uses checkpoints. Christ.
• If you lose your ride you have to fast travel to a trade town or walk.
• Fast travel uses fast travel points and there's only a handful.
• After completing the space port mission i couldn't fast travel back to the relevant character because the objective marker completely covered his location.
• The crafting system has a huge delay for some insane reason. You literally have to hold F for several seconds to craft a single item.
• No "sell all junk" button. There's a sell 20 button but no "sell all" button despite not having any purpose other than selling.

Conclusion

Rage 2 is basically Borderlands 3 except with an even worse setting and far less enemy variety, but also without the shitty upgrade systems and the toxic F2P inventory bullshit.

If you just want to ride/walk around and shoot stuff this is a perfectly okay option. The dash bash and jump smash are fun, as is the weapon that lets you drag an enemy towards any point.

PS: I played this game for 17,5 hours but didn't finish it because the shitty Epic Launcher lied about my cloud save being newer than my disk save so i lost 6 of those hours and i just uninstalled. So i guess it doesn't really have replay value, lol.

Game Summary

Game starts with your city under siege. Adoptive sister runs in to tell you. Run out there and fight! Giant monster. Badass Ranger runs in and attacks the giant monster! Badass Ranger is killed. You take his armor! Adoptive mother isn't happy about it. Big bad guy lands! Kills your adoptive mother. City is in ruins. Get out there and get revenge! I put as much effort into summarizing this as the writers put into creating the story.

Review Portion

The gameplay is extremely fun. Varied weapons with interesting twists, such as a pistol that you shoot rounds into enemies with and then remotely detonate them at your convenience. Interesting powers like the defibrillation power to bring you back from the brink of death. Upgrades also add to these, like the defibrillation power gaining damage reduction after a revival or adding a radius of damage after revival. More thought was definitely put into this aspect than anything else.

The world is varied, with different habitats, but the enemy and mission areas in each do not. Bandit nests are bandit nests, regardless of region. They are varied in structure, but aesthetically they're all the same.

No mission struck me as creative. The combat was fun, but every mission was essentially "kill all the things".

The story is VERY basic. Big bad guy wants to rule the wasteland. Resistance wants to stop him. Help them out and take him on. Grizzled veteran is your combat guy, mayor of the main city, and a mad scientist who has more personality than everyone else combined. Notes around the world were far more interesting than the actual story or dialogue. The ending was so anti-climactic and unsatisfying that it immediately went down a point in my mind. A post credits scene helps a little bit, but it still feels like a game cut off in the middle expecting a sequel that will most likely never happen.

One final technical gripe, the game lets you prioritize frame rate or resolution, which I appreciate. However, it also lets you alter the field of view. It's not properly implemented though, as the game's HUD does not properly fit on screen, even after adjusting the setting in the system settings to try and make it work. Multiple times it would take a few shots before I could tell if I was actually hurting an enemy because the health bar was off the screen.

Summary

Want an open world with very fun combat? You're in luck! Want any sort of decent story, variety in missions, or interesting dialogue? Look elsewhere!

Personal Score : 8/10

"Objective" Score : 6.5/10