I remember my first few hours with the first Rage, and remembered how impressive the game looked and even played. The way enemies didn't just ragdoll when they died but stumbled forward a few steps before falling made the gunplay feel impactful in ways that few fps games of the time did. The open world was fun to drive around, jumping off ramps, trying to get collectibles, and just explore. The first third of the game's quests painted a picture of an interesting post-apoc world and seemed to be leading somewhere interesting as you drew closer and closer to the evil Authority.
But that game just stumbles it's way across that finish line, the story falls into nothingness and just kind of ends, leaving the whole experience a large let down.
Rage 2 promised to deliver though. ID seemed to have learned from the mistakes of the first game and promised a more complete story here with a good villian and a satisfying conclusion. On top of improved gunplay and open world adventure.
So in Rage 2 you play Walker, (man or woman) who is part of a military camp of some kind? It's hard to tell what your homebase was before the game starts because it starts under attack, but your character and their friends and mentor are all combat badasses plus you are skilled with guns from the start so it's assumed that you lived some kind of military life.
In the first game the playable character as well as the other people that eventually come from the underground ARC's are established as "Rangers". People basically trained in military, science, and other skills needed to reboot humanity after a big comet ends the planet's lovely lifespan.
The playable character here is a decendant of one of these arc people and through intro circumstances you take over the mantle of being one of these "rangers" setting off to take revenge against the newly reborn Authority. The only way to do that of course is to introduce yourself to three key people from the first game who are now leaders of various hub locations on the map and do busy work for them until they give you the thing that makes the plot continue.
Honestly it's as good of a baseline for an openworld game as any. It's not great, but it isn't terrible either and it serves to get you running around. Yet the problem comes from what happens when you get bored and just plow through the story missions in each hub. Turns out that each of these major story characters only has 3-4 missions for you and when you finish them you can go straight to the Authority base, knock on the door, kill everyone inside, and roll credits. If you sprinted through the game you'd be done in a 4-5 hours and most of that would just be travel time getting from place to place.
So the story is not only insultingly short, it is also pointless. Two of the three leaders basically have you investigate where the Authority is, a task which you as the player could do on your own by simply driving to the evil looking portion of the map and pointing your finger on the spot where the road ends. Arugably the only story missions that matter are the ones where you help a scientist whip up a virus that will stop the evil general from being able to regenerate himself with clones over and over again. Which is two straightforward missions long.
Well if the main plot is short and dumb, then maybe the side activities are fun and engaging and fill out the world to distract from the shitty main plot. Sadly no. While i admit the moment to moment shooting gameplay is extremely fun and satisfying, making plowing through hordes of bandits a blast. Each little point of interest suffers from two problems.
1. The enemies never evolve in anyway. The hardest enemies to kill are the armored ones that take a chip of automatic rifle bullets or three shotgun blasts to the face to finish off, and these guys are introduced in the 2nd or 3rd "point of interest". So once you've seen and deal with them, the game has nothing left to surprise you with.
2. Each area follows the same formula. Kill all the baddies, then open all the tresure chests. Which mean you are hit with a couple minutes of shooty shooty fun, followed by minutes of boring tedium as you scour the area looking for the 1 last chest that your task log insists is around here somewhere.
The treasure chests give you money, upgrade tokens, and weapon parts. All of these are used to upgrade your guns, buy ammo, upgrade your car, or upgrade yourself. Shame that you never need any of it. I beat the game without spending a dime on ammo because every bandit camp leaves enough bullets around to supply a small war. Of the 15 or so cars in the game only one can be upgraded and the upgrades are stupid and pointless because you never actually do anything interesting in your car. Sure there are races, but you don't race in your tonka tank of a car and are supplied with a much faster and much better handling car for each race, which just rewards you with more car parts to upgrade the pointless car so it's pointless inception. Finally each to the city leaders have their own talent trees which provide you with perk points that you can spend on talents to provide yourself with benefits. None of these talents are interesting or even helpful in game with the exception of the three that allow you to carry more ammo than Rambo. Even then it's you could just pick up all the ammo you ever need lying around so it's more of a convenience feature than anything else.
I guess my biggest problem with Rage 2 is that while it is fun from the start, with great shooting and combat. It never evolves to get you more abilities, guns, or different enemy types as you go through the game. Outside of two boss fights in the entire game of which one fight is repeated four or five times with the only different fight at the very end and that doesn't count because it is still the same fight but with an even bigger buggar.
My advice if your interested is wait for a really deep sale, or rent it. Because you only need to put in 3 or 4 hours to get the whole experience and actually getting to the end credits is just a formality that doesn't actually resolve anything in the world.
But that game just stumbles it's way across that finish line, the story falls into nothingness and just kind of ends, leaving the whole experience a large let down.
Rage 2 promised to deliver though. ID seemed to have learned from the mistakes of the first game and promised a more complete story here with a good villian and a satisfying conclusion. On top of improved gunplay and open world adventure.
So in Rage 2 you play Walker, (man or woman) who is part of a military camp of some kind? It's hard to tell what your homebase was before the game starts because it starts under attack, but your character and their friends and mentor are all combat badasses plus you are skilled with guns from the start so it's assumed that you lived some kind of military life.
In the first game the playable character as well as the other people that eventually come from the underground ARC's are established as "Rangers". People basically trained in military, science, and other skills needed to reboot humanity after a big comet ends the planet's lovely lifespan.
The playable character here is a decendant of one of these arc people and through intro circumstances you take over the mantle of being one of these "rangers" setting off to take revenge against the newly reborn Authority. The only way to do that of course is to introduce yourself to three key people from the first game who are now leaders of various hub locations on the map and do busy work for them until they give you the thing that makes the plot continue.
Honestly it's as good of a baseline for an openworld game as any. It's not great, but it isn't terrible either and it serves to get you running around. Yet the problem comes from what happens when you get bored and just plow through the story missions in each hub. Turns out that each of these major story characters only has 3-4 missions for you and when you finish them you can go straight to the Authority base, knock on the door, kill everyone inside, and roll credits. If you sprinted through the game you'd be done in a 4-5 hours and most of that would just be travel time getting from place to place.
So the story is not only insultingly short, it is also pointless. Two of the three leaders basically have you investigate where the Authority is, a task which you as the player could do on your own by simply driving to the evil looking portion of the map and pointing your finger on the spot where the road ends. Arugably the only story missions that matter are the ones where you help a scientist whip up a virus that will stop the evil general from being able to regenerate himself with clones over and over again. Which is two straightforward missions long.
Well if the main plot is short and dumb, then maybe the side activities are fun and engaging and fill out the world to distract from the shitty main plot. Sadly no. While i admit the moment to moment shooting gameplay is extremely fun and satisfying, making plowing through hordes of bandits a blast. Each little point of interest suffers from two problems.
1. The enemies never evolve in anyway. The hardest enemies to kill are the armored ones that take a chip of automatic rifle bullets or three shotgun blasts to the face to finish off, and these guys are introduced in the 2nd or 3rd "point of interest". So once you've seen and deal with them, the game has nothing left to surprise you with.
2. Each area follows the same formula. Kill all the baddies, then open all the tresure chests. Which mean you are hit with a couple minutes of shooty shooty fun, followed by minutes of boring tedium as you scour the area looking for the 1 last chest that your task log insists is around here somewhere.
The treasure chests give you money, upgrade tokens, and weapon parts. All of these are used to upgrade your guns, buy ammo, upgrade your car, or upgrade yourself. Shame that you never need any of it. I beat the game without spending a dime on ammo because every bandit camp leaves enough bullets around to supply a small war. Of the 15 or so cars in the game only one can be upgraded and the upgrades are stupid and pointless because you never actually do anything interesting in your car. Sure there are races, but you don't race in your tonka tank of a car and are supplied with a much faster and much better handling car for each race, which just rewards you with more car parts to upgrade the pointless car so it's pointless inception. Finally each to the city leaders have their own talent trees which provide you with perk points that you can spend on talents to provide yourself with benefits. None of these talents are interesting or even helpful in game with the exception of the three that allow you to carry more ammo than Rambo. Even then it's you could just pick up all the ammo you ever need lying around so it's more of a convenience feature than anything else.
I guess my biggest problem with Rage 2 is that while it is fun from the start, with great shooting and combat. It never evolves to get you more abilities, guns, or different enemy types as you go through the game. Outside of two boss fights in the entire game of which one fight is repeated four or five times with the only different fight at the very end and that doesn't count because it is still the same fight but with an even bigger buggar.
My advice if your interested is wait for a really deep sale, or rent it. Because you only need to put in 3 or 4 hours to get the whole experience and actually getting to the end credits is just a formality that doesn't actually resolve anything in the world.
