RAGE 2 | Xbox One | Review

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The original RAGE, released back in 2011, was a bit of a technical marvel; it utilised innovative ‘megatextures’ to hit 60 FPS on console and accommodated that trademark id Software freneticism on last-gen hardware. It played beautifully, but everything surrounding that was pretty monotone, resulting in an ultimately forgettable experience. RAGE 2 looks to remedy this by spray-painting the wasteland neon pink and partnering with Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios to inject some vigour.

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by Sam Sant

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@SlamShotSam

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Developer: id Software,
Avalanche Studios
Publisher: Bethesda
Platforms: Xbox
​One, PS4, PC (Steam)
Players: 1

Odd thing is, rather than aping the bonkers Just Cause series to do just that, Avalanche’s Mad Max instead serves as the template here. Mad Max was surprisingly good, but fell into the exact same pitfall as the original RAGE, which means for all its zany marketing and talk of a post-post-apocalypse, RAGE 2 has always been doomed to repeat history. That doesn’t make it an inherently bad game, though. Not by a long stretch.

You enter the world of RAGE 2 as its uncivilised denizens do their best to rebuild, but they aren’t quite out of trouble yet, since General Cross is out to “cleanse” the world by eradicating humanity and claiming the planet for him and his army of weaponised mutants. He’s a caricature villain - the big bad leader of a big bad movement, by the game’s own admission - only really there to motivate you in bearing arms (not that you’ll need much motivation, but more on gunplay later).

Playing as an uncharismatic, power-suited Ranger (male or female – your choice), you’re quickly given free reign to go about making allies and together manufacturing the General’s demise. Narratively things are kept simple, so you don’t need to have played the original, but there are some familiar characters and knowing nods hidden away for the already initiated.

The story serves only to do its job passably, which is admirable in a way, but also somewhat of a shame, since a few strong character concepts fall flat. Anyone that even half paid attention to the marketing of RAGE 2 wouldn’t reasonably expect anything more in-depth, however, since the focus is clearly placed on balls-to-the-wall action. Right? Well, kinda...

Where id Software’s DOOM features tightly-controlled levels and progression to maintain its breakneck pacing, RAGE 2 offers vastly more freedom, but in doing so can counterproductively push its best feature - the outstanding gunplay - aside in favour of weaker mechanics. A lot of your time will be spent driving around a mostly lifeless wasteland in vehicles that lack traction, organically encountering an abundance of same-y side missions to tackle which facilitate acquiring a swathe of character, weapon and vehicle upgrades.

It’s familiar and largely uninspired stuff, but, to be fair, better implemented than in its peers. Speaking personally, I’ve never been a fan of Borderlands and I tapped out on the increasingly tedious Far Cry series years ago, both of which share structural similarities to RAGE 2, yet here I am happily playing Bethesda’s latest for the gross number of consecutive hours which are required for the TV to assume I’ve fallen asleep.

So what’s different here? id Software, to put it plainly. The originators of the FPS are still doing it best, crafting on-foot combat encounters that are giddily exciting. Action is supremely fluid at 60 FPS (which does come at the cost of 4K support on enhanced consoles), allowing for the necessary precision to utilise the wide array of tools at your disposal whilst staying on the move. As in DOOM, defeated enemies drop time-limited health pick-ups, so it pays to remain in the thick of a fight in the absence of fully regenerating health.

The originators of the FPS are still doing it best, crafting on-foot combat encounters that are giddily exciting.

Whether using the exquisite shotgun or one of RAGE 2’s more unique firearms to pop heads with a satisfying squish, devastating active abilities like a ground pound and an essential force push can also be executed as often as their cooldowns dictate, fully encompassing the supersoldier power fantasy. There’s a frankly massive amount of maneuvers to unlock, to the extent you probably won’t remember to implement them all, though they’re gradually introduced in an effort to avoid that and also maintain a constant feeling of growth throughout the reasonably-lengthed campaign and much longer road to 100% completion.

​While there isn’t any concrete incentive to do so, at least beyond boosting your own ego by looking damn cool, experimenting and discovering effective combinations of abilities allows for immense showboating on the level of Bulletstorm. Stringing kills of any fashion together in quick succession will increase your combo and more efficiently charge the Overdrive meter, which can then be activated to massively boost the effectiveness of all your other offensive and defensive capabilities for a short period, filling the screen with a psychedelic techno haze as you go ham.

Outside of Overdrive you can’t always afford to be so reckless, as different factions and the enemy types within them pose different levels of threat, encouraging slightly altered tactical approaches. Using the Focus ability lets you see through walls to formulate plans of attack, which can then be executed against clever AI which appear in numbers and play to their strengths in order to quickly overrun overzealous players. We particularly like the fact that throwing an uncooked grenade at an enemy can prompt them to intercept it and return to sender, then, with a well-timed melee strike, you can even volley it right back at ‘em!

RAGE 2’s first-person firefights are honestly worth sticking out any of the game’s hardships for, and to a lesser extent, so too are the third-person vehicular combat sections. These only really come into play when you encounter and engage a convoy in the open world, which visually plays out like one of the best scenes from Fury Road, but is less exciting to actually control. Ramming riders from their bikes and quickly dispatching the smaller four-wheelers at the rear is explosive fun, but the leading boss vehicles are comparatively uninteresting since you can mostly just hang back, automatically lock-on to their weak points as they’re periodically exposed, then hold down the fire button to win. Convoys were far more involved in Mad Max, where you might need to remove armour plating with a harpoon in order to expose a weak point, then use a specific ammo type to destroy it.​

Swapping out vehicles would help to spice things up a bit, but we’d go as far as to say switching is actively discouraged, despite being able to hijack and even unlock a variety of transports directly to your garage. Similar to the Magnum Opus in Mad Max, only minus any of the context, the Phoenix is your starting vehicle and the only banger capable of being repaired and upgraded.

RAGE 2 ’s first-person firefights are honestly worth sticking out any of the game’s hardships for, and to a lesser extent, so too are the third-person vehicular combat sections.

One benefit of opting out of upgrades would at least be avoiding RAGE 2’s painfully sluggish menus, which hang momentarily whenever you switch between the numerous tabs. Elsewhere there’s graphical pop-in (not great considering the so-so visuals in general), invisible and unresponsive NPCs, we’ve fallen through the floor and had to reload a save, and the audio can cut out completely or persist where it shouldn’t (hearing continuous gunfire from a dead enemy, for example). In fact, the audiovisuals are disappointing on the whole, falling well short of the colourful, Andrew W.K. party atmosphere RAGE 2 was made out to feature and instead sticking closer to your archetypal post-apocalypse.

​Still, if you’re looking for a substantial shooter to enjoy in all its gory single-player glory, RAGE 2 most definitely fits the bill. The game achieves its main goal in being sheer and unadulterated fun - it doesn't take itself even slightly seriously and favours gameplay above all else, to the extent that tackling what’s essentially the same side mission for the tenth time isn’t any bother, because along the way you can spartan kick a dude and then decapitate him with a boomerang as he sits up. What, pray tell, is not to like about that?

Pros

• Outstanding first-person shooting
• Range of enemies, skills and abilities keep encounters varied and engaging throughout
• Smooth technical performer (on Xbox One X) in the face of some demandingly hectic scenes
• Fun, if basic, third-person vehicular combat
• Simple story is all it needs to be...

Cons

• … Though some interesting characters feel wasted
• Slippery vehicle handling
• More regular post-apocalypse than the wacky post-post-apocalypse we were promised
• Menus move at a crawl

8/10