RAGE 2

With super-satisfying combat and an ever-growing arsenal of weapons, powers and abilities, Rage 2 is one of the best-feeling singleplayer shooters around. Its inconsistent tone, ho-hum story and uninspired open world missions keep if from achieving true greatness, but it never stops being a whole lot of fun in the moment.

RAGE 2 is a game that is easy to recommend to people who like and are in search of good open world shooters. A masterpiece it is not, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth playing. Although it’s not as great as I was hoping, I enjoyed my time with this sequel and am glad that I played it. It might not be a masterpiece, but it’s a fun way to spend ten or twelve hours.

RAGE 2 held plenty of potential, but even considering how great the combat is, falls well short of that goal. The sequel is hampered by the same issues that cropped up in the original. The campaign is a non-factor and the open-world needed more life in it. Third time's the charm?

RAGE 2 is a really great game and easily one of the top shooters of this generation, but it fails with its open world approach.

RAGE 2 offers a tight open-world FPS experience, with a satisfying gunplay and a totally loading-free experience. Too bad for the forgettable story and lack of HDR and 4K support, two factors detracting from its overall value.

Rage 2 isn’t the biggest game in the world. Nor is it the prettiest, or the most polished. Once you’ve explored its tame open world enough to open up your combat options however, it doesn’t really matter. In the heat of battle, the only thing you’ll be experiencing while playing Rage 2 is sheer joy. And it’s good enough to make all the boring bits in between feel worthwhile. It’s not perfect, but it shows that id’s brilliant brand of combat can be enhanced and implanted into an open world.

RAGE 2 is a pure power fantasy and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. It serves up some awesome powers and skills at an irresistible pace and makes the player feel like they're ready to take on the whole wasteland in one go. The problem is the story is over so quickly that you're soon left with nothing to do but exactly that — drive around the world, stop at every icon on your map, blow up everything inside, and move on. The amazing gunplay and combat of RAGE 2 shouldn't easily get so stale, but because of an open world all too familiar and a story that hardly gets going before it ends, players are left to rule over a kingdom of dirt.

Rage 2 might be fun for newcomers or fans of crazy shooters, but it certainly disappoints the fans of the original Rage.

Rage 2’s main drawbacks sit with its uninteresting story and its awkward, convoluted structure of progression. If you’ve both the forgiveness and the patience to overlook all of that, a shooter that deals in explosive action and sheer depth awaits. Rage 2 is all about having a mindless blast, and between its vastly varied combat, its interesting world, and its diverse gameplay, it certainly delivers on that front, and then some.

Rage 2 shines in its gunfights, driving sequences, and from the fun perks and upgrades that you can use. The open world is an invitation to exploration but still sometimes feels a bit empty.

RAGE 2 is DOOM's bastard. A rewarding and brutal action that minimize the problems generated by the open world and repetitive nature of its activities. It is the best shooter you can find today, but its open world could be much better.

For everything Rage 2 does right, there’s another thing hindering it from being great.

Where RAGE 2 truly shines is its relentless, unapologetic, apocalyptic violence, which has long been id Software's forte.

Rage 2 is above all else just a big dumb fun time. Sure it has a lot of shortcomings, but the minute-to-minute game play is so well-polished I couldn’t help but have a great time. So much so that I found myself going back and completing areas in full even after credits rolled. It is the kind of game I shut my brain off and just go into a zone and lay waste to all enemies in front of me. The combat feels great, the powers are incredibly fun, and so much of the game just made me feel like a total badass. I can finally forgive the end of the first game, Rage 2 is simply put, a blast.

An unbridled joy to play, RAGE 2 is something that puts an onus on having fun and has no pretenses of being anything else beyond that.

If all you’re looking for is good shooting mechanics, the game has you covered.

Even after 8 years, the Rage series is still having an identity crisis. It has all the signifiers of an open-world game, but it lacks the overall narrative that makes the world compelling, and its best bits—that is, its gunfights—take places in either small, complexly designed arenas or in hallways, like a linear shooter. The greatest irony about Rage 2 is that it might have been an even better, more interesting game if it was more like the first game with a fresh coat of (pink) paint. What it is now is just a bunch of sound and fury, which can be fun for a while, but it’s ultimately an empty experience.

Combat is by far the biggest selling point of Rage 2, and Avalanche Software should be proud of a title that continually draws comparisons the super-tight Doom reboot in my mind. I live for combat within Rage 2 and get sad when I have to get into whatever shitty vehicle I’m driving to get to the next combat experience. The open world represents boredom and padding to me, but it’s worth the slog for the combat.

Rage 2 is presented as a wild ride through a post-apocalyptic playground, with people invited to attend a festival of blood, guts, and spray paint. Wacky characters and bright colors adorn the box art and marketing materials, but the reality of the game is much less colorful. Were the outside trimmings more accurate, they would feature a grey supercop holding an assault rifle. The pizzazz and graffiti are merely background decoration for a collection of tropes and mechanics we’ve seen elsewhere, done better by the same developers to boot. It’s certainly fun to play, and shooter diehards who love open worlds will likely have a blast checking off objectives and discovering new powers, but anyone looking for more style or substance will be disappointed.