Rage 2 Review - A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure With Over The Top Action

Written by Chris Woodside on May 28, 2019

Reviews: Bethesda ends Spring with a thrilling and silly Summer blockbuster.

One of the greatest aspects of Rage 2 is that the game doesn’t take itself too seriously. Even at the most pivotal and tense moments and at the climax of its narrative of revenge, there are still plenty of moments for humorous dialogue, exploding heads, and other moments of hilarity. Despite its many flaws, I still enjoyed the 20 hours or so that I spent with Rage 2 which ultimately provides players with hours of blowing things up ad nauseum with it all still feeling meaningful in some way.

From the moment you first start playing Rage 2, things begin to play out in a fairly cliche manner with the classic post apocalypse type premise. Following the annihilation of most of mankind from a catastrophic event, in this case an Asteroid, you take control of one of the few remaining humans in a new world that is overrun by bandits, mutants, and other gross science fiction creatures that want nothing more than to tear you apart. Fittingly, in the power vacuum that has been created from the end of the world, a new organization bent on world domination, called The Authority, is in charge and seeks to subjugate all remaining living beings, both man and mutant alike.

Immediately after the first mission is complete that introduces this premise, the open world of the Rage wasteland opens up and allows players to begin exploring right out of the gate. After completing the first three introductory missions to the three major storylines you will be following throughout the campaign, the game then forces you to begin exploring its open world if you have not done so already. Scattered throughout the world of Rage 2 are three types of activities to complete, which all serve as part of the game’s feedback loop and are necessary to further develop the ultimate weapon that will eventually lead to the final main mission in the campaign. Most of these activities either require you to unearth and discover Ark technology to power up your character, whose name is Walker, and gain new abilities with this technology, destroying enemy bandit camps and strongholds, or destroying Authority technology present throughout the wasteland.

While all of these activities are fun in their own right, and test the player’s ability in unique and creative ways, by the time you get through the main campaign, you will have done so many of these activities that they will have become too repetitive and unlikely to have the desire to return to the world and complete the many other activities in each category that are littered throughout the map. Even some of the more enjoyable activities, such as destroying gigantic Ark/Authority weapons, which function as mini-boss battles, becomes repetitive after destroying just a few of them as they all follow the same pattern and begin to pose little challenge very quickly once you figure out the best way to take them out. Some more varied twists on these smaller mission/activity structure would have improved not just the pacing of the main narrative, but also the enjoyability and motivation for the player to explore every nook and cranny of the open world.

”Rage

Despite the title, the gameplay itself seems to have been specifically crafted to both maximize the ridiculous adrenaline rush you get from blowing up hundreds of mutants, while also minimizing the amount of rage you feel at some of the smaller details which could have been ways to create some frustration. So many of the effects when shooting enemies or using your “force” abilities have the potential to send enemies flying to ridiculous lengths and often into walls, boxes, and other objects scattered around the world. Early on in the game, I had a hard time knowing if I actually killed the mutant or the bandit I was shooting at, particularly if they went flying into a patch of grass and it made it difficult to see if they stood up. Thankfully, the Rage 2 combat system flashes a skull on the screen where the enemy corpse is when they have finally died, which helps to ensure I am not wasting bullets on an enemy that was actually dead, or turning my back to an enemy who still has some fight in them mistakenly thinking I had killed them.

As fun as the combat is (which, throughout almost the entire game, is extremely fun) there were a handful of moments that sucked a lot of the fun out of the bigger battles. The bosses in particular were all incredibly similar to each other, even the final boss battle. All of the bosses follow the same sort of pattern of needing to weaken them, destroy some vulnerable power sources on them, and then unloading into them. Once you figured out the pattern, and how to dodge their attacks, every single boss fell incredibly quickly. Rather then having this feeling of awe after blowing off the head of a monster ten times my size, I felt relief instead just to leave the fight with some ammunition still left after having so many battles that felt more like giant bullet sponges than any real cause for concern. These giant boss battles do require enough ammunition that more than a few times I died, not because the creature bested me, but because I ran into battle with too little ammunition.

From the early preview days of Rage 2’s development, one of the main focuses on the game was your ability to drive anything and some of the vehicular combat available in the game. While other options are available for you to drive (and sometimes require it) later in the game, I spent most of my time in the initial vehicle that Walker is given. Unfortunately, there were only a handful of times where I actually desired to use my vehicle for combat. Most of the small skirmishes that you run into the open world are usually goons fighting bandits or other goons. While initially it was fun to blow them up with abandon and trying to target explosive barrels or crates near them for added fun, that quickly became boring and repetitive. With most of these goons on foot, there was never really any danger of them dealing enough damage to my vehicle to actually destroy it. On top of that, even if your vehicle does break, it doesn’t explode or cause you any damage. It simply auto-ejects you from the vehicle and has you fight on foot, giving you essentially a second life. Once the battle is over and you have a reprieve, it also can be repaired fairly easily by using your force abilities. For an added challenge, it seems like it could have easily required you to find some parts out in the world exploring in order to repair the vehicle, rather than being able to do it at will. While there were certainly some challenging combat moments on foot throughout the narrative of the game, it was these chance encounters in the world that really sucked me out of the game. Part of the appeal and premise of a game like Rage 2 is how dangerous and lawless a post apocalyptic world can be with threats around every corner, but I felt near invincible while I drove around and discovered the wasteland around me.

Rage 2 feels like a return to form from Bethesda. The game is not anything incredibly special or even as good as the original Rage, but what is there is a satisfying and meaty experience. Rage 2 does a fantastic job of not being held back or destroyed by the flaws the game has, but one that succeeds because of them. Even when you get later into the game and learn the systems and mechanics and it causes the game to go from moderately challenging to shockingly easy and simple, the game does a great job of then giving you new toys to try out. The best way to counter a combat system that begins to feel too easy is to give you new weapons to create new and hilarious opportunities you hadn’t yet seen before and keep things fresh. Even when its not perfect, Rage 2 succeeds best at being exactly what it tries to be: an action packed and silly summer blockbuster that may not have a deep meaning or message behind it, but is still a thrill ride I enjoyed.