I can use another ability to force enemies to float in the air, pulling other items toward them as if by the gravitational force of a very small black hole. I can use one ability to fling enemies backward, slamming them into walls or each other. So why can’t I get the game out of my head? Laid back slaughter The game’s structure suggests a linear, relatively short Doom-style single-player game that is only cosplaying as an open world title. The game’s marketing may try to push the idea that this is a punk-rock, neon-splattered celebration of rebellion, but the systems of Rage 2 don’t allow for much creativity outside of selecting the order in which I visit each area. Cliffs and bottomless pits make sure I’m rarely able to paint outside the lines. Rage 2 is ostensibly an open-world game, but upgrades and weapons are given out at specific locations, and trying to explore by driving off the indicated path between each outpost is futile. Each challenge basically requires me to drive to a specific place, kill the people there, collect currencies and items from various crates, and grow in power. There aren’t traditional levels, and there are very few missions.
#RAGE 2 GAMEPLAY SERIES#
I can power up each gun, vehicle, ability, and secondary item like grenades or health packs using one of the game’s many tech trees, and then modify them again using a second series of menus that are strangely hidden behind the first. The game would clearly rather I spend my time slaughtering mutants, collecting various currencies, and upgrading my soldier to god-like status. It’s best not to think about any of this too hard the setup and mainline missions are just a thin excuse to justify my magical powers and array of weapons and send me off into the open world. What seems like Rage 2’s prologue is, in fact, the entire thing.
Once I do those favors, the game’s practically over. In this protracted intro, Walker puts on the armor of a fallen Ranger to become the most powerful soldier fighting against an authoritarian force called, what else, the Authority.Īs Walker, I travel across a comparably small open-world map, searching for Arks - huge techno-chambers from (I believe) before the apocalypse (the story isn’t always clear) - that unlock new abilities and weapons, which I can then use to kill the many, many bandits and mutants who make this world unsafe for anyone without a gun.Īfter I complete the intro, I am told to visit a few characters across the map so we can work together to fight back against the Authority. I play as Walker, who can be a man or woman, depending on my choice at the story’s beginning. Rage 2 exists as a collection of unoriginal, but well-executed, ideas held together by a structure that can just barely be described as an open world.
#RAGE 2 GAMEPLAY UPGRADE#
I could list the game’s inadequacies and describe its bizarre menus or upgrade structure all day long, but the more I talk about the game the more I find myself preferring to play it instead. Remember that weapon from Dark Sector? Or that monster from Gears of War? Or that setting from Borderlands? Or that color palette from Sunset Overdrive?Īnd yet Rage 2 is so satisfying in action, so totally shameless, that I find it hard to put down.
Good games, bad games, nearly forgotten ones.
The game’s designers didn’t just borrow ideas from a couple iconic first-person shooters They cribbed from the genre’s entire history. Rage 2 is one of the video gamiest video games I’ve ever played.