Hi there! The past few days I have been delving into my backlog of games and took a stab at playing Rage 2 and never stopped until now (well, except when I had work to do and stuff like that). Anyway, let's see what makes this game awesome.
The first thing that struck me is the fact that there is no multiplayer option. You can choose to either start a new game or start ironman mode (aka your save gets deleted when you die). Of course I chose the normal game option, I'm not that masochistic...yet. The game begins and it lets you choose your gender, you can either be male Walker or female Walker. After your choice, a door gets blown off its hinges and crushes the character you didn't pick for yourself, which was pretty funny.
After a tutorial section which pits you against the Authority, the main bad guys of the game, you get let loose into the Wasteland to find three people and do some missions for them. Or, you can do what any player does and start exploring. The game is made by Avalanche, the guys behind the awesome Just Cause series and the Mad Max game, the latter being suspiciously close in theme to this game. To be fair, the first Rage was also heavily inspired by Mad Max (the movies), so I can't think of a better team to make the sequel. Of course, the developer isn't the only thing which changed between games. Rage, being made by id Software, of course, ran on id Tech 5 and, to be frank, that game also looks stunning to this day, while Rage 2 runs on Avalanche's proprietary engine, the Apex engine.
The main draw of Rage 2 is the gameplay. It is a fast paced first person shooter. The game starts you off pretty simple, with no special abilities and equipped with only a handgun and an assault rifle. You gain more weapons and new powers by exploring the world and finding Arks (analogues to the Vaults from Fallout, but with no malicious intent). You unlock a dash ability similar to the one in Shadow Warrior, an area of effect downward punch which pulverizes enemies, a shockwave which also blasts enemies, a power which lets you lift enemies and shoot them while vulnerable and one more which I did not find yet, so I can't talk about it. The weapon roster is quite small, featuring the aforementioned pistol and machine gun, but it also includes (from what I collected) a shotgun and a rocket launcher. There is also the Overdrive, an ability which charges when you kill enemies. In this mode, you regenerate health, deal more damage and are faster. Fun!
The game also features vehicle combat, which is pretty simple. You can boost, side swipe and shoot mounted weapons from you vehicles. You will engage in car combat mostly when chasing a convoy through the world, dismantling it car by car before facing the lead vehicle which is massive. Aside from the combat of both humanoid and car varieties, the game encourages exploration, as it always leads to you getting materials to upgrade yourself and your car. Add to that that there is a mandated minimal amount of side activities you must do to unlock the second tier of main story missions. It is basically grind, but it is done in such a way that it is satisfying, mostly because of the meaty combat.
Story-wise the game is pretty light. As mentioned before, you are Walker, the last Ranger, a club of deadly peacekeepers with pretty awesome armors which turn them into superheroes. You want to stop the Authority. There is some backstory, as the first game took place 30 years before this one and a few characters returned from that game, but the rest of the game is you and the Wasteland.
All in all, if you are into open world games or into fun first person shooters, I would say that Rage 2 is a pretty nice way to kill some time, especially seeing that nowadays there seems to be a lot of free time.
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I think you may be one of the few people that still remember this getting released. It got shoved onto the side by Bethesda's marketing for some reason. Kinda like they did with Prey. I'm getting the feeling that there's some lack of love in there for some projects that aren't part of their holy pantheon of Doom, Wolfenstein, Fallout and TES.
Yeah, it really is a shame, because the combat in this is just as fun as Doom(2016) and the 80s style attitude really fits the game.
Another game they threw to the wayside is The Evil Within II, which is also really nice, but I haven't really heard anyone talk about it.