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RAGE 2 (XONE)
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Publisher: Bethesda Softworks.
Developer: Avalanche Software; id Software. Released: May 2019. Genre: Open world. Other versions: PS4; PC. Posted 17th November 2023. By Shane Battams © 2023 |
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Rage 2 is a game of two halves, likely due to the combined involvement of Rage’s original developer id Software and Just Cause team Avalanche Software. Rage was a story of untapped potential, an often-raucous time letdown by a handful of serious faults, and it seemed as though the union of developers would give Rage 2 an identity lacking in its overlooked predecessor. However, while the shooting excels, often creating a veritable playground of violent opportunities, the forced open-world, unengaging side activities and a noticeable lack of polish will serve to temper your enjoyment, to an extent. It’s disappointing, but those with the capacity to overlook some lacking aspects may still find solace in its gleefully outrageous combat.
The good news is that id’s penchant for outstanding shooting is on show here, taking elements from games like 2-16’s Doom reboot and adding new kinks to create a brutally satisfying shooting engine. Rage 2 has a sense of speed and momentum to it, allowing you to float gracefully around combat arenas with rapid aiming. This is aided by some outstanding weaponry, including the powerful Combat Shotgun, boomerang Wingstick, flame-spitting Firestorm Revolver and chargeable Hyper Cannon, nearly all of which reduce the slew of goons and mutants to viscera. Combat is challenging at points, often seeing large numbers of enemies on the assault. You have a neat trick in the form of Overdrive, which increases weapon power exponentially. Every tool in the player’s arsenal can be upgraded, adding potent buffs such as extra Overdrive gained from health pick-ups, and secondary weapon fire begs experimentation for those looking to chew through gradually tougher enemies quicker, as once you find your flow, enemies start donning armour and more potent attacks. If we were judging Rage 2 on its shooting alone, it excels.
It's id, so you can be assured the gunplay packs a major punch
Unfortunately, everything else that ties it together feels like quite a step-down. Surprisingly, it suffers the same issues as its predecessor. The open-world aspects of Rage 2 are dull, especially with so much competition within the genre. The dull-brown landscapes, a lack of truly memorable locales and robotic-feeling interactions with NPCs makes exploration unfulfilling to an extent. A litany of side content becomes repetitive long before you complete it all, as you’re forced to clear out similar-looking mutant nests, blast largely indistinguishable Authority towers and take down identical convoys. The sole highlight is Mutant Bash TV, a couple of combat arenas that play to the game’s strength: the shooting. The story missions, while often tightening focus and letting you unleash true power, also require improving your reputation levels – and as a consequence completing side missions – too, something which feels like padding a six to eight-hour game. Even the story itself, admittedly the gameplay’s highlight, does little to keep the player engaged, with threadbare ties to the first game and a generic plot that feels wafer thin.
FOCAL POINT: FREEDOM FOR GROWTH
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While Rage 2 isn’t helped by lacklustre open-world design, its flexible structure does provide room to grow. Ranger Walker earns both new weaponry and special abilities through Arks, located across the districts of the wasteland. Theoretically, you can play a lot of the campaign without touching many of these, but you’ll find exploring Arks and growing your arsenal to be both satisfying and worthwhile. Many of the weapons are completely optional, offering potential for different types of playthrough runs. As for abilities, you can acquire a powerful slam move, a vortex singularity and movement boons such as a double dash and super sprint. So though players could rush through the story, these add some satisfying questing outside of the story missions, and prove the lone highlight in this open-world.
The gameplay is a patchy, as is the presentation. While certain angles can paint a pretty picture, much of Rage 2 is unflattering and sometimes dated, with blurred texturing on key characters coming off as a poor show. Performance is mostly smooth, at least, and some decent fire effects and visually distinct Trade Towns add some personality. Voice work is mostly nondescript, adding little character to the slew of townsfolk you meet, but the garbled screams of mutants and the soundtrack which mixes techno beats and forceful metal tracks are good. However, bugs and laziness such as recycled NPCs, sound cutting out completely and even hard crashes are very disappointing, and do nothing to help Rage 2’s woes.
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Ultimately, Rage 2 is quite the mixed bag, almost like Two-Face in video game form. On the one hand, the visceral shooting is genuinely excellent, with potent upgrades and potential for over-the-top violence proving compelling when at the front. But on the other, Rage 2 is bogged down by a completely uninviting world, one which certainly has plenty to do, just not much of it is very memorable outside of core gunplay. You can only shoot down laser towers so many times before it becomes boring. Those whose enthusiasm for the multitude of open-world games has yet to wane may find Rage 2 does little for them, but if you can overlook its issues, the shooting almost makes it worth slogging through the game.
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VERDICT
"Rage 2 is a mixed bag. It fails to outdo a multitude of contemporary open-world games, but boasts some genuinely excellent, visceral shooting that almost makes it worthwhile." OVERALL: 6/10 |
OTHER BETHESDA SOFTWORKS GAMES REVIEWED
Fallout: New Vegas (2010, PlayStation 3)
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Doom Eternal (2020, PlayStation 4)
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