Rage 2 | A Trashy, Late-Night Good Time
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/BethesdaSoftworks/comments/8jct4l/rage_2_wallpaper_3450x1566/
Rage 2 surprised me. Of course, it's a first person shooter primarily developed by Avalanche Studios. It's gory, intense, and most importantly a joy to play. However, i wasn't expecting a campaign comprised of only a handful of missions with little structure or cohesiveness. I wasn't expecting a game that features a confusing upgrade system and hides away various unlockable weapons and skills you may not find until after you've completed the main story. Most importantly, I was surprised at how "unfun" the story was and how uninteresting and uninspired its characters were. Really the only thing that met and exceeded my expectations was the gameplay.
But that was just the boilerplate to this ammo chest full of opinions I had on Rage 2, so let's actually dive in.
I'm not going to be facetious and try to say I completely understood the main narrative of this game. The story isn't necessarily explained well at all, and maybe that's for the better. It's a fairly cliché "Old Enemy Returns After A Period Of Time And You Must Stop Him" story wrapped in extra bits of lore that just arent interesting enough to invest in. What I will say is that at least the game has the courtesy to not waste your time with an extraneous and dull intro sequence. In about 10 minutes, you're pretty much in the thick of it. Enemies swarm you and you're quickly up to speed and kicking ass in the game's open world.
At first, I tried playing this game like I had been playing Days Gone, where I focused on doing the main quest line and worrying about side content as I happened upon it. I noticed that this was a major mistake on my part once I reached and completed each three encampment leader's respective starting mission. Once I did those I spent a few minutes trying to figure out where the next main mission was, but then I realized "Oh, the side content is the focus of this game."
Source: https://attackofthefanboy.com/guides/rage-2-how-to-fast-travel/
In order to pregress in the campaign, you must complete side content within each encampment's respective region. You'll go through and do fairly standard busy work: destroying fuel tanks, killing enemies, opening up gates, and so on. It's trite and bog standard, but it's fun. Once you do enough of the side content, you'll unlock main missions to complete.
In some ways, the game is structured eerily similar to Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It feels like the team behind Rage 2 however didn't fully understand just what made that game so special. Breath of the Wild's world is a character in itself; mysterious, lively, and full of secrets. Rage 2's overworld is almost completely at odds with that design philosophy. The world feels lively with its enemies roaming the wasteland, but it's environments are bland and designed very poorly. There's a lot of verticality to the world that isn't cohesive for the player to understand. I often struggled to make my way to higher structures and landscapes because of how close everything feels in the world.
The wasteland also doesn't do a good job of inviting you to explore its world. Rage 2 never feels interested in having you explore what's just beyond what you can see. This is no more apparent than with the locations of the Arks scattered throughout the game. These Arks hold various new weapons and abilities for you to use, and a lot of these are incredibly useful as you take on more difficult enemies. The problem is Rage 2 never properly explains or hints at where there at. It's so bad that after I had already beaten the main quest line, I still had 2 abilities and 3 weapons yet to unlock. In a game that's biggest strength is its combat, this is simply unacceptable and one of the game's biggest detriments.
Another pain point for me was its driving mechanics, and oh man they suck. Your main vehicle drives like a weird Warthog from Halo, except instead of just using the analog stick to control acceleration and movement, you use the triggers and the analog stick. It's a weird tank-like feeling that never feels quite right, especially when you're trying to make sharp turns (something you'll be doing often in the more dense environments). Secondary vehicles you'll find in the world range from marginally better to exceptionally worse, and none just ever get that driving sensation just right.
Going back to the game's story - haha just kidding, there seriously isn't one. But something that is in the game are the upgrade trees. I have to emphasis the plural on that because holy shit there are upgrade trees for literally everything. Weapons? Upgrade tree for each one. Abilities? Upgrade trees for each one. Your primary vehicle? Upgrade tree. Your… camp leaders? Fuck it we need an upgrade tree so you can get extra, miscellaneous perks.
It's super overwhelming at first, and it’s a design decision that bothers me so much. I don't think I'd be so bothered by it if everything didn't have some unique arbitrary set of "upgrade points". Want to upgrade your weapons? You need nanotrites and weapon mod pieces. Abilities need feltrite and nanotrite boosters. Camp leader projects require its own arbitrary pieces, and the same goes for your vehicle. It just feels so pointless and screams of pieces being added one at a time without ever circling back to see if it actually made sense or not.
Despite all of this negativity I had towards the game, I continued on playing regardless. Why? Because it's just so damn fun to play. The game feels so similar in terms of gunplay to 2016's Doom, which is arguably the highest praise you could give to any First-Person Shooter in the modern age. The game runs at a silky smooth 60 FPS in the open world (at least on PC and Premium Consoles), and it rarely ever skips a beat.
Rage 2 may be formulaic and full of classic missteps, the one thing it does right - its gameplay - it does near perfectly. If there's ever a need to demonstrate a perfect case of a game's core gameplay elevating all the meandering bits around it, Rage 2 is that game. Don't come here for an enthralling narrative, but an escape to a desolate hellscape where you can down a couple beers while playing the night away.