Game #1067: Rage 2

 It did fill me with rage, Gamer Rage. 

 'twas but a few months ago that I played Rage and I friggin' adored it. It was fairly simple and straightforward, but I felt that it did what it did pretty darn well. And the reason I wanted to play Rage... was because Rage 2 looked pretty fantastic. In the end... it's better in some aspects, but failed pretty hard in others.

 The first thing you'll notice is the bright pink that highlights pretty much everything in the game. They went with this 80's pink and blue synth-wave theme that hilariously enough makes the game a bit more forgettable. Rage was accused of lacking a personality, but if you ask me, giving Rage 2 a personality... actually robbed it of one, as this theme feels very cliched and it's not used in very interesting ways. Eventually you just forget about it.

 While Rage 1 had an open world the game didn't really revolve around it, as it worked more as a tool to immerse the player in the game. Rage 2 says screw that and went full open world, the game is MUCH larger than the original, and it's plagued with busy work that gives you negligible rewards but is framed in a way that hits all your dopamine receptors. As a matter of fact, there aren't true side missions in the game, but rather, optional busy work. Liberate areas, destroy Authority Turrets, Find the Arks(The only ones worth a damn, as they hold new weapons and powers), etc. Thankfully the combat is a load of fun so it doesn't feel as repetitive as it really is. What will really annoy you is that you'll spend hours searching for chests in order to fully clear an area, and they are pretty well hidden. You can unlock an ability that gives you a radar, but it only tells you if you are close to something, so you'll still waste a ton of time hunting for these dumb chests.

 Combat is what should've made the brunt of the game and not the open world, for it's where the game shines brightest. At first, it's your basic first person shooter, with a proper, oldshool lifebar, but if you explore the Arks you'll obtain powers that run on cool down. A quick dash that can turn into a dash punch, a deployable barrier, a grenade that blows enemies into the air leaving them in stasis so that you can pick them off at your leisure, a ground pound(Super useful and fun to use), extreme dashing and a shockwave. Using these powers is SO much fun, and as you level them up you'll make them even stronger and with shorter cooldowns. It's so good that it's a shame how much time you'll spend driving from one point to another, or searching for dumb chests, as fighting enemies is so incredibly enjoyable, and the weaponry you get is pretty fun and it's fun to use.

 Racing returns, but, to be honest, driving in this game didn't feel as good as it did in the original game. It's not bad, it simply feels a bit wonky, so after I finished the mandatory race in the main story I avoided racing entirely.

 Another thing I liked is that doing all the optional busy work will reward you with different forms of currency or points, and you get a ton of different things you can enhance. The abilities your suit grants you, the Predator Vehicle, your Weapons(And you can equip them with Mods to specialize them in different areas) and even more global skill trees tied to the three major allied characters in the game. Heck, you can use some special items in the Wellsprings town to get buffs to your health or strength. Getting noticeably stronger as you go through the game feels SO good and rewarding.

 Well, but the game has two big issues. Firstly, the framerate, it can take a hit, at least on base PS4, and it does so often. That alone I could live with. But the other problem is much worse, so much so that I couldn't finish the game. At this point I had two manual saves and various autosaves. I was playing normally and I skipped a cutscene... which made the game stutter all the time. I exited and loaded my save and... the problem persisted, so I completely closed the game, upon booting it up again... all my saves got corrupted and the game deleted them. All of them. I had sunk in over 10 hours into it, I had done most if not all of the side-content.... Yeah, I'm not playing it again.

 While Rage 2 is much better when it comes to combat I think that Rage 1 worked better as a whole. The open world wasn't as intrusive, the driving was better and I liked its personality, or lack there of, much more than this one. But what really killed me was the corrupted saves, and I looked it up and I wasn't the only victim to it. Bethesda should've done better.

 6.0