Rage 2 is an unfunny, empty, sad sequel to Rage and just barely scrapes by as an acceptable to play game. I had a choice, Coming off of the fallout killer The Outer Worlds and Call of Duty Modern Warfares excellent campaign I was looking for a casual fun enjoyable game where I could sit back and have a blast mowing down enemies and causing chaos so Rage felt like the obvious choice. It was coincidentally available on Xbox Game Pass so I eagerly downloaded and booted it up. For the first few hours it felt ok, not strong by any means but acceptable. The story felt non existent but thats fine aslong as the gunplay was great I told myself. At first the guns felt smooth and reacted well, the new abilities felt decent enough but as time passed the distinct lack of new and exciting guns became noticeable and the abilities on a higher difficulty were pointless and you stayed behind cover only to peak out and shoot every few seconds. The loot was stale an hour in and the menial repetitive tasks such as destroying large towers scattered throughout the map wore on me. The towers only have direct line of sight meaning you hide behind a corner and wait for it to fire, once it stops you peak out and empty your clip then hide again, repeat 4-5 times till the tower is destroyed and you get some meaningless instantly forgettable loot as a 'reward'. Does that sound like fun to you ? The driving feels sloppy and poorly executed and the overall map when not shooting towers is just a few camps that all require the same tactic, take out enemies in the same way, loot the same containers and then repeat at the next camp. The story as previously said offered no real depth of any kind and was simply an after thought to developers it seems. Characters felt bland and generic, and the ending was so abrupt it was actually funny to witness, ironically being the only time I laughed during the whole game. Overall if you like Doom you'll feel at home with Rage's gunplay but you will probably still agree on the lack of story and map diversity. But for me to go from playing this to then playing the absolutely fantastic, funny, witty, looty, shooty Borderlands 3 it was such an eye opener on what a solid alternate FPS should be. Cant in good faith recommend this game unless you want to sit on your couch with the same stoic facial expression playing a quick 8-12 hours of bland story and pointless activities all to laugh at an awful ending to a game and feel a sense of regret you even invested any time at all. 5/10
Review of Rage 2
