Rage 2 review round-up: Critics assess Bethesda sequel
Reviews go live ahead of release
Rage 2 reviews have started to go live ahead of the game’s PC, PS4 and Xbox One release this Tuesday May 14.
Co-developed by id Software and Avalanche Studios, the post-apocalyptic shooter takes place in a world where 80% of the earth’s population has been annihilated by an asteroid.
It sees players take on a diverse range of enemies including ultra-violent thugs, swarms of mutated experiments, samurais and cyborgs, which can be destroyed in plenty of satisfying ways.
Critics seem to agree that the combat is the game’s star, rather than its story or open world. To give you a better idea of what they think, we’ve rounded up several reviews below, plus short excerpts from the verdicts.
VGC’s Rage 2 review is currently in progress and will be published this week.
The sites listed below reviewed the PC version of the game, which at the time of writing has a score of 73 based on 21 reviews featured on review aggregation site Metacritic.
- IGN: 8/10 – Though Avalanche hasn’t quite figured out what makes a world feel alive and dynamic or how to make good use of its vehicles, it absolutely nails the moment-to-moment combat thanks to a Doom-inspired energetic pace that few shooters manage to pull off.
- USgamer: 4/5 – It’s the synthesis between id Software’s 2016 reboot of Doom and Avalanche Studios’ Mad Max, bringing together some of the best ideas from both.
- Game Informer: 7/10 – For all of its attempts at garish glitter, Rage 2 is a muted, cliché, and uninspiring experience that’s propped up by spectacular shooting and neverending battles that sometimes live up to the promise of a carnival of carnage.
- GameSpot: 6/10 – Rage 2 is at its best when you’re given the chance to keep up a gratifying momentum in combat, but struggles to setup the scenarios its combat deserves.
- Destructoid: 8/10 – I was pleasantly surprised with the shooter chimera that is Rage 2, which ended up being open world mini-Doom 2016. It’s not going to make anyone a believer the free roam format, but folks already predisposed to those vices will find plenty to sink their teeth into.
- PCGamesN: 7/10 – The pace of id and Avalanche’s FPS is neutered by a dull open world and thin story but, in an unbridled whirlwind of gruesome gibs, you probably won’t care.
- ShackNews: 5/10 – As much as I wanted Rage 2 to work, it just doesn’t deliver the best that it could from the two top-notch studios working on it. Right now, I can’t rightfully recommend picking it up at full price, as I just don’t feel there’s enough content here to warrant what they’re asking.
- VG247: (No score) – The interplay between the AI, your abilities, the physics of the world, and your guns is some of the best I’ve seen, and I never thought I would be saying anything like that about a sequel to Brown Shooter: Apocalypse.
Bethesda recently detailed plans for Rage 2’s post-launch support, including free and paid DLC coming to the open-world shooter in 2019.
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