Rage 2 Review

Rage 2 takes place 30 years after the events in the original title and everything is as calm and as peaceful as can be expected in a lawless post-apocalyptic setting, humanity is in the process of taking back control of the environment when the Authority return under control of General Cross, the major villain of the first game. During an extended attack on the settlement of Vineland in which all of the rangers are killed, you find yourself promoted and sent out into the wasteland to complete Project Dagger which was a last ditch attempt to get rid of general Cross and the Authority once and for all but the project was shelved when the authority seemed to be defeated at the end of the first game. Missions unlock for the three NPC's as you increase your reputation with them and this is earned by completing the various activities or exploration with almost everything you do giving experience to increase your reputation. As well as unlocking the next missions there are also other rewards such as a new vehicle. There are as mentioned loads of activities and lots of camps to take over this gets repetitive as there is no variety in how you take the camps over.

As soon as I finished the tutorial i went exploring both completing the side missions and liberating the maps locations which I did find difficult until i had a few weapons, powers and upgrades under my belt but In feel that this was just because of the way i tried to systematically clear the map. I only went after the story missions once i had done everything i could a few of the areas are story or dlc related and it was at this point i found myself hideously overpowered until the endgame.

Rage 2 gives you a choice of protagonist either male or female both called Walker at the outset of the game and the game kicks off with an awesome tutorial that showcase the great shooter mechanics borrowed from the Doom reboot and as such is a Very solid FPS which just gets better once you unlock your powers and abilities. The Vehicular controls are pulled straight from the Mad Max game which the developers created and improved to fit some of the 17 vehicles that are in the game but i only found myself using 2 of them which were The Phoenix which is an all-purpose buggy is upgradable and loved using it until I unlocked the Icarus, a hover bike which is great for exploration but it has no weaponry. There is a good selection of powers but i found that I always fell back on a few of my favourites and forgot about the others. There is a nice selection of weapons and all have something that makes them unique when you press the alternative fire button for instance the Pistol has a burst fire mode, the Rocket Launcher locks on to multiple enemies but my favourite was the Firestorm revolver which is essentially a flare gun that has the character clicking his fingers and detonating the flares causing even more damage. There are a lot of different currencies in the game and these are used to upgrade everything from Weapons, Abilities and even the main vehicle you are given at the end of the tutorial. Feltrite is the most useful of the currencies and is very easily accumulated with various events such as occasionally a meteor falls which is loaded with feltrite and if you get to the impact site fast enough you can get there before the enemies arrive. The in game Stores have finite resources for upgrading so you have to visit all stores in order to fully upgrade everything. I found that there was little else to spend my hard earned cash on unless i wanted to purchase Gold Weapon skins which were hideously overpriced but i think that this is because those particular upgrades were dlc from the deluxe edition.

When Rage premiered on console in 2011 much was made regarding the new ID Tech 5 engine and its Mega Texture technology which is why the game shipped on 3 dual layer dvds which was unheard at the time and when you started to play you could see why. Metal surfaces had rust and pitting on, the rocks were not just one colour they were made with layers and it was breath-taking, I was hoping that Rage 2 would continue with the technology but Rage 2 doesn't seem to have all of that detailing or maybe it was that because of the general improvement of graphics that have come in the years since the first games release it was not as noticeable. The game still looks great but a large section of the map is just a desert/ canyon area and there is only so much you can do to make a brown landscape look good. The game sacrifices resolution for performance which is always the correct choice in my opinion because i can always overlook a few graphics issues as long as the game is playable. I only encountered a single bug that was what i would call game breaking and that was when enemies would not spawn at a certain camp so it was uncompletable but this was patched whilst reviewing the game.

I feel that Rage 2 is a must buy title and the franchise is in great hands with Avalanche Studios at the helm. They have done a superb job with the development of this title and my only issue is with the length of the storyline which is as I mentioned previously too short but there is still hours of gameplay with all of the side content. I look forward to seeing what comes next from both the developers and I hope there is not an 8 year wait for the sequel.