Rage 2: Big guns for Big boys
Rage 2 is a game where you shoot people, but you look cool doing it.
You play as Walker, who can be a cute game girl or cute gamer boy. Walker is/was a wall Rat, second generation ARKists that defend the walls of Vineland, a city founded by Ark survivors.
Play the first one, its kind of complicated.
Vineland is attacked by General Martin Cross, the leader of the newly revived Authority, the big bads of the last game but now cool looking and gross. After some chump in a ranger suit gets messed up, you take his suit and put it on, basically making you a space marine with more stompy powers.
Some more people die, including your adopted mom, who was also a ranger, and you go out into the world to kill anything that moves. That about sums it up.
Rage 2 is a first person shooter with open world elements. Created by Avalanche Studios, who make the same game a bunch of times but add or change just enough stuff that its still pretty fun. Rage 2 looks and is basically a more insane Mad Max, which makes sense since Avalanche made the 2015 Mad Max game and Rage 2 looks suspiciously like the Mad Max game.
You go from area to area and beat up raiders and mutants, slapping them around with all your cool guns and powers so you can increase reputation with other factions. You need to get each faction to a certain level before you can complete their story and move on to the end of the game.
The game relies almost entirely on filler, but the gunplay is just good enough that you might forgive it if you're a more patient person. I actually kind of accidentally beat the game, having two of the factions already to the necessary level before I even met them simply because I was too busy doing extra content.
Angry 2 relies entirely on it's gunplay, which is fine because the gunplay is sick. All the weapons are fun to use and have a nice crunchiness to their shooting. Heads explode good, people turn into bits when they take too much damage, you can light suckers on fire, if I were describing anything else like this I'd be in in the loony bin.
Now you take these fun guns, and add fun suit powers. Double jumping, armor breaking, floor slams, sliding, holy moly you got yourself a run and gun. I heard a bunch of people found this game boring, but all the footage I've seen of these people were playing it kind of like Call of Duty, using cool downs when they could and sticking to cover as much as possible.
Don't do this, you stinky, incredibly handsome person.
You gotta go fast, like a coke fiend on a rush. Keep moving, only stop when you gotta pee. Every weapon and power can also be upgraded, do extra kinds of effects, and all of it stacks. By the end of the game, or even the mid point and earlier you become an unstoppable killing machine.
My biggest problem with Rage 2 is one of the bosses is just a reskin of another enemy, and the last boss is really lame. The open world part also kind of dragged on me, the car's weren't really all that fun to use, if only because you didn't have Chumbucket in the back yelling religious phrases about your car at you. Instead you had a sexy car voice, which is also fine.
Other than that, the game is a blast, I was surprised by just how good it is. If Avalanche didn't rely on it's usual open world game design and made it a tighter, more concise package, it may have been a contender for game of the year. But since it relies so much on it's open world, you basically only have 10, not that long missions padded out by grinding locations and raider spots.
What does help is that there is enough variety in raiders that you don't really get bored blowing them to tasty chunks. The Goon Squad is the more Mad Max, crazy war boy faction who like to hit grenades at you with baseball bats and charge you with make-shift shields and maces.
The Immortal Shroud are fucking cool, basically the Culter Dei from E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy but with cars instead of broken French.
Rage 2 gets a big score out of a larger score. Not perfect, but still pretty fun.
Now that that's done I can talk about something. Hey, remember when Andrew W.K. Had a live performance at the Bethesda E3 for this game and the crowed just kind of sat there confused?
Yeah, the Sultan of partying just showed up to rock out, better check my phone and look bored. Fire all of these guys, just have me at E3 events instead. I'd have lost my shit.
The Black Death still kills people to this day.