It was hard to get excited about the announcement of Rage 2, given the lacklustre nature of the original game. The original Rage promised an expanded id Software shooter in a post-apocalyptic open-world with RPG systems and vehicular combat, to boot.
What we got instead was a game with solid shooting, but almost everything else felt off. Fast forward to more recent times and after half an hour of hands-on time with Rage 2, things are starting to look a whole lot better, and that’s not just in terms of the vibrant colour palette.
For starters, while id is overseeing proceedings, this is an Avalanche Studios game. This makes a lot of sense as Avalanche has a trend of combining gorgeous open worlds, larger-than-life characters, addictive gameplay loops, and tight vehicular combat into a single offering. Naturally, id is on hand to advise on the all-important first-person-shooting elements, but what we played of Rage 2 is firing on all cylinders.
Granted, with only half an hour to play, the focus was more on the new shooting systems than getting lost in the open world, taking down convoys, or taking a deep dive into upgrades. After a short tutorial, the task was simple: blast through an overrun space station and call a mission-critical satellite back to post-apocalyptic Earth.
It’s clear that Doom is an inspiration for both movement and shooting. For instance, there’s a dash button to dodge incoming fire – like hard-hitting rockets and more traditional ballistic fare – or it can be used to close the gap to introduce an outlander to the butt of whatever weapon you’re wielding.
Dash works particularly well hand-in-hand with the shotgun which, despite the armoured goons and subsequent lower lethality of the shooting, still feels fantastic. Part of this is because Avalanche has clearly taken influence from Bulletstorm, in terms of playing with your prey.
A point-blank shotgun blast will often send an enemy flying. Tap the previous-weapon button to near instantaneously switch to, say, an assault rifle, and you can juggle that flying, flailing fool into the nearest wall and into the deadlands. It’s like a new-age version of the ever-potent rocket/rail combo in the Quake series, and it feels fantastic.
Assuming the rest of Rage 2’s arsenal follows suit with intra-weapon synergy, the shooter sequel is going to have some serious clip potential. What the enemies lack in smarts they more than make up for in numbers and aggression. As soon as they’re aware of your presence, they love to swarm and flank.
You might find yourself surprised by a hit indicator from behind, only to discover a flanking foe, or one you put on the ground but clearly failed to finish. It’s not all about the guns, though. Rage 2 marks the return of the gibtastic Wingstick, a razor-sharp return-to-sender gadget that’s like a primitive version of Turok 2’s Cerebral Bore.
Toss it freely at enemies or lock on to nab them around corners or over cover. Watching a Wingstick slice and dice a goon’s head doesn’t get old and the deadly tool is as effective an opener or closer as it is used in the middle of a firefight.
Outside of the Wingstick, you also have special abilities. One of them is the equivalent of a Force push, which is handy for sending bunched-up, point-blank baddies off ledges or into nearby traps. Another is a Halo 5-like ground pound that smashes wasteland grunts and bounces them into the air. These particular abilities feel better suited as fight starters than anything else, but it’ll be interesting to see what other tricks Avalanche has up its sleeve for toying with enemies.
Players will also have an overkill mode that you accumulate over time, whereby your weapons become supercharged, shots tends to lift enemies off their feet, and the time-to-kill gets closer to a Doom-Zombie-vs-shotgun fight. After the first use, though, the only thing it added was the ability to make fights easier, which actually felt like it was detracting from the fun of the gunplay. Fingers crossed it’ll have better uses in the final game.
Despite respecting a lot of shooter norms, Rage 2 occasionally defied the ‘red barrel equals explosive’ trope. Given the flow of the gunplay and the emphasis on the player power fantasy in clearing combat spaces, this felt more like a missed opportunity than a satisfyingly subversion. Then again, it might’ve been a bug.
We were playing early code for a shooter that’s not out until next year, so there was the odd AI fail, blatantly scripted moment, and some noticeable frame drops early on. That said, it was a mostly tight affair and none of these gripes destroyed immersion.
If anything, the biggest disappointment was that the demo focused on what amounted to a corridor-shooting section – something that was a strong point in the original game (slow-motion enemy AI ‘action rolls’ notwithstanding) – instead of letting us delve more into Avalanche’s other strengths out in the open world.
As far as Avalanche’s first foray into first-person shooting goes, it feels great, but that’s not surprising given id’s guidance. The truly exciting content has been relegated to trailers at this point, but if Avalanche can nail an addictive Just Cause-like open-world gameplay loop spliced with Mad Max-style vehicular combat, Rage 2 could prove to be one of those rare opportunities where a sequel to an average starting game proves a franchise has legs and deserves more follow-ups.
