Microreview [video game]: RAGE 2 by Avalanche Studios and id Software (developers)

No One Asked For This

I’m terribly disappointed in RAGE 2 so before I go on and on about why I think it sucks, here’s what I liked, in bullet point form:

• Enemy heads have a huge hitbox and pop in a satisfying manner
• The ground punch attack feels great
• It looks good and there’s no loading once you’re in the world
• The cars sound meaty
• Exploring the world can be fun even if a lot of the map markers are just boring “kill everything” activities

The game starts off okay, with The Authority (the primary antagonist in RAGE) razing your fledgling community. After this tutorial (and honestly, who needs a tutorial in a FPS anymore?), you’re given a car and an open map and set to work. The work is meeting three characters that will help you overthrow The Authority. You gain their support by completing open world activities.

Minus the grinding to build support, the game is more or less just 7 story missions. It’s amazing how short the story is. There was just so little in the narrative to keep me interested. The open world activities are mostly just “kill everything”. There’s one ally whose support is gained through search and recovery missions, which I found to be not only the most interesting but the most rewarding. There are arks scattered across the world, where the game dispenses either a new weapon or a new ability. Since they’re so rewarding, they’re well worth searching out and they build your support with one ally. I finished the game with that ally’s support maxed out and all the others only half full because their missions are just slogs through enemy nests that give you resources to buy things. 

The problem with dispensing abilities and weapons through open world activities is that if you never find that ark, you miss out on something that makes the game more fun. When I finished, the map revealed the rest of the arks I hadn’t found and I finished the game without three weapons and two abilities. Considering I found use for almost every weapon and ability I did have, it’s baffling that the game was perfectly happy with letting me finish it and not give me the tools to make the game more enjoyable. I specifically sought out arks because they give gameplay-affecting tools, but I guess that was my bad because I could’ve finished it with just a pistol, an assault rifle, and a shotgun. I’m really curious what the bare minimum of this game you have to play before hitting the credits.

Beyond taking away the things that make the game fun and hiding them on an enormous open world map, the travel between points was worse than boring, it’s a waste of time. Driving from one area to another in an open world wasteland should be more dangerous, but I was rarely attacked, and everything that attacked me was easily shrugged off or ran away from. At one point I unlocked a flying motorcycle that just hovered high enough above the ground to make all ground obstacles pointless and I couldn’t be attacked, so I was making straight line flights from one point to another. I may as well have had fast travel.

So most missions are a grind, exploring isn’t necessary, and travel is a waste of time, but how’s the shooting? It’s okay. Nothing has the id Software signature feel to it. Enemies are mostly bullet sponges unless you aim for the head, which is comically easy to hit. It’s like bullets are magnetically attracted to their skulls. I found that most fights boiled down to whether I shoot them in the head at a distance with the assault rifle, or run up to shotgun them in the torso. I had a rocket launcher that was useful for big enemies, and a pistol that shot rounds that would catch on fire that I didn’t find particularly useful, but, again, I didn’t find three of the weapons in this game. Maybe they were super cool. I’ll never know!

The worst part of RAGE 2, the unforgivable part of it, is the bugs. Holy hell. One location never flagged as 100% complete because I opened a chest, died, and the chest remained opened but the counter locked it at unopened. There were a handful of times when the game just hard locked. Once the game crashed my OS. One time I beat a boss but died at the same time. It played the “you beat the boss” cutscene, but I came back dead and had to quit to restart it.

I didn’t think RAGE would ever get a sequel, and I question what this is doing for anyone. The original wasn’t a great game by any stretch but it was better than this one in almost every measure. There’s a lot more to do in RAGE 2 and the open world aspect might appeal to some people, where RAGE was more of linear game, but more to do isn’t a benefit when what you’re doing isn’t fun to begin with.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 the bullet pointed list adds up to one bonus point

Penalties: -1 baffling weapon/ability scavenger hunt, -1 grinding for rep is the bulk of the game, -1 BUGS

Nerd Coefficient: 4/10 (not very good)

***

Reference: Avalanche Studios and id Software. RAGE 2 (Bethesda Softworks, 2019)

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Microreview [video game]: Doom by id Software

Hella Good

It's a little funny that this is the fourth canonical Doom game, yet the second to bear the simple name of Doom. Doom has been in the works as far back as 2008, though it reportedly was scrapped at least once and remade from scratch. Id also lost one of its principal founders, John Carmack, during Doom's development, along with several other key team members. Another warning sign was that there was a poorly received multiplayer beta, and review copies of the game were not made available until the release date. These types of circumstances often lead to Duke Nukem Forever levels of bad video game, so I was absolutely skeptical of Doom. My skepticism was for nothing. Doom is fantastic.

Mars and Hell look pretty good.

Believe it or not, Doom has a story, and it's exactly enough story and of an appropriate tone for a Doom game in 2016. You are Doom Marine (yes, that's one of your names), and you wake up chained to a table in research base on Mars and surrounded by zombie-like monsters. After you bust out of your restraints and kill the demons, you find your armor looking like it's been excavated out of a block of stone. You then learn that Mars is suffering from a demonic invasion and you're the only solution. Kill the forces of Hell and stop the invasion. 

There's a lot conveyed in the first 10 minutes of Doom that set the pace and tone of the entire game. Doom 3 started with upwards of 30 minutes of tension building and place setting. In Doom, you're immediately surrounded by enemies, handed a pistol, and forced to fight. Before the talking head finishes telling you about the demonic invasion, Doom Marine violently shoves the LCD monitor away, breaking it. Then you fight a handful of demons in an enclosed area where you learn about Glory Kills. Glory Kills let you execute a weakened enemy to regain health. You ten find the shotgun, the talking head tells you that everything leading up to the demonic invasion was for the good of humanity while you look down on a mutilated corpse, and then title screen hits. 

Even in 2016, there is no lack of Satanic imagery in Doom.

Like the classic Doom games, Doom is about skilled movement and aggressive action. It is not Call of Duty. Doom Marine can take a lot of punishment and easily dodge around enemy fire. If you're low on health, hiding in a corner will do you no good; there are no regenerating health mechanics. You have to get back in the fight, and violently murder demons with Glory Kills to regain health in combat. Doom also gives a good reason to use the chainsaw in combat. Killing enemies with the chainsaw causes them to pop like a pinata full of ammunition. This is a core gameplay loop of Doom; kill demons to reduce their numbers, Glory Kill them to refill health, chainsaw them to refill ammo. 

It's a little blurry, but yes, I am punching the jaw off of this imp.

It's not perfect, but the problems are fixable. It has bugs. I've experienced more than a couple of crashes to desktop. If you're playing with keyboard and mouse (as you should on PC), you'll find that some of the really good flavor text is unreadable because there's no way to scroll through it. The scroll wheel, which you'd expect to do that, doesn't. It has a multiplayer mode that's fast and fun enough, even if it isn't particularly interesting.

As a single player game though, Doom is incredible. It does what may have seemed impossible; it takes the classic games and gives them a 2016 upgrade. It's undeniably Doom from beginning to end. Where Wolfenstein: The New Order was great for reimagining what Wolfenstein could be in 2014, Doom largely keeps the original's formula and adds some smart modern improvements without harming what made the original games great to begin with. 

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 9/10

Bonuses: +1 fast, brutal action like few games can pull off

Penalties: -1 some minor bugs mar an otherwise great experience

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 (very high quality/standout in its category)

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Reference: id Software. Doom [Bethesda Softworks, 2016]