Rage 2 Catch All

I am having a much better second day with the game.
I have gotten the shotgun but while it is fun, I don't think it is the best gun of the initial 3.
Of course diving down the upgrade tree could change thing in short order.

There are way too many blind cliffs of doom for the ground vehicles to be very effective.
Heck I have even died on foot from a blind cliff of doom on the way to the suggested first town.

But I have a few quests under my belt. I have double jump, shatter and dash unlocked with some upgrades.
I am confident I will be able to get value out of this game while I wait for the craziness that will happen around September: Borderlands 3, Mechwarrior 5, Jedi Fallen Order, Wolfenstein Youngblood, etc

fangblackbone wrote:

There are way too many blind cliffs of doom for the ground vehicles to be very effective.
Heck I have even died on foot from a blind cliff of doom

Yeah one of the first things I learned is be careful, maybe environments further into the game arent so treacherous, but so far its easy to drive off a cliff and waste time finding your way back.

Very early first impressions playing on ps4pro, the game feels oldschool in ways both good and bad. Playing on Hard seens the sweet spot, combat shows promise even early on and makes me thirsty for upgrades and new guns. But visually the IQ overall of this game is well below expectations, it is no exageration that I feel like Im playing a remaster of an old 360 game at times. I have never been a proponent of 60fps over overall IQ and resolution, and what they have prioritized here was a mistake imo. Especially coming off the sharp high quality image and textures of a game like Div2 this game just looks rough as hell.

For anyone that got the preorder/deluxe edition bonuses, make sure you log into your Bethesda account within the game. They don't appear in the game until you do.

AcidCat wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

There are way too many blind cliffs of doom for the ground vehicles to be very effective.
Heck I have even died on foot from a blind cliff of doom

Yeah one of the first things I learned is be careful, maybe environments further into the game arent so treacherous, but so far its easy to drive off a cliff and waste time finding your way back.

Very early first impressions playing on ps4pro, the game feels oldschool in ways both good and bad. Playing on Hard seens the sweet spot, combat shows promise even early on and makes me thirsty for upgrades and new guns. But visually the IQ overall of this game is well below expectations, it is no exageration that I feel like Im playing a remaster of an old 360 game at times. I have never been a proponent of 60fps over overall IQ and resolution, and what they have prioritized here was a mistake imo. Especially coming off the sharp high quality image and textures of a game like Div2 this game just looks rough as hell.

Avalanche put out JC3 which barely ran on the OG consoles, even after multiple patches.

They moved on the JC4 which implemented dynamic resolution to overcome the framerate issues and it worked, but maaaaaaaany people complained that it was ugly at times.

Sounds like they carried that over to Rage 2.

Damned if you do damned if you don't?

AcidCat wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

There are way too many blind cliffs of doom for the ground vehicles to be very effective.
Heck I have even died on foot from a blind cliff of doom

Yeah one of the first things I learned is be careful, maybe environments further into the game arent so treacherous, but so far its easy to drive off a cliff and waste time finding your way back.

Very early first impressions playing on ps4pro, the game feels oldschool in ways both good and bad. Playing on Hard seens the sweet spot, combat shows promise even early on and makes me thirsty for upgrades and new guns. But visually the IQ overall of this game is well below expectations, it is no exageration that I feel like Im playing a remaster of an old 360 game at times. I have never been a proponent of 60fps over overall IQ and resolution, and what they have prioritized here was a mistake imo. Especially coming off the sharp high quality image and textures of a game like Div2 this game just looks rough as hell.

I've quite enjoyed the starting of the game although it feels like they haven't made much strides in the design of the open world vs the original.

There are a lot of reused assets like crates, shelves in every room you go in, rows of derelict houses/warehouses that look pretty much copy & pastes of each other, it leaves the game lacking character & unique details.

I agree with AcidCat it's not a great looking game by any stretch of the imagination, it actually boggles my mind that this runs at 30fps on the vanilla PS4 & only goes to 60fps with the Pro (or Xbox One X) as visually this doesn't push anywhere close to the fidelity that you'd expect from a open world game at the end of this console generation.

The driving feels a little improved from the original Rage but still not the jump in weight, damage modelling & physics I was expecting. The gunplay is reminiscent of Doom without the polish which is still very good & in truth what carries the game on its shoulders.

I'm interested to see if my experience changes as I get further into the game, I'm especially excited to unlock new nano abilities & get my hands on some creative weaponry.

I am stuck at a boss (God's Country)
Fortunately I did save before the boss is triggered.
Unfortunately, I can't back track or fast travel out as it is a dead end. (you drop down a sewer pipe to lead to the path to the boss area) really bad level design.

So anyone have any tips on how to defeat that boss? (God's Country, I think it is a warlock or some such. It carries a stop light)

Is that Cult of the Death God? If so, that's the bonus mission. It's a tough one. If I didn't have the BFG I would have had a much harder time.

I found out you can abandon a mission and it will tp you to a nearby checkpoint.
So yah that one was tough. I'll come back sometime later.
Gah I am level 5.5 with Kasiv. When you hit 7, you get the flying vehicle which will allow me to bypass the driving which is too cumbersome to me.

Assault rifle is my go to weapon still.
I just took down one of those giant suckers. It was plodding and yet ultimately satisfying.

Random thoughts:

Game loads up pretty quick on a PS4.

Autosave is a bit finicky. I picked up some quests in Gunbarrel, quit the game, and found out they didn't get saved.

I like that there seems to be a lot of different upgrades to pursue.

The voice acting of the main (female) character is not bad.

I'm getting a lot of Crackdown 3 vibes.

This has to be one of those bugs that caused more problems to fix than it was worth so they just left it. It was super easy to reproduce.

Spoilered because big bad fight.

Spoiler:

After getting another couple hours in last night, have to say I am having a lot of fun with this game.

Got the shotgun & it feels superb, enemies are launched back through the air with its power, only played a little more tonight but it was great mowing down mutants. They have that cool little run up the side of the wall animation to make it harder for you to get them in your crosshairs that was in the original Rage, always liked that.

I done the sewers mission for John Marshall, forgot to use my overdrive & ended up remembering to activate it during the boss fight & ripped him to pieces. I have unlocked his skill tree & have spent a load of points on the first row of skills. There are way more than I thought.

I highly suggest looking though all (and I mean all) of the upgrade menus to see what will fit your play style, and then work towards those. I was getting tired of hunting for chests and data pads, and proximity alerts are early upgrades for the Dr. Kvasir projects. I beelined his missions to unlock his project tree tonight.

I've been picking up bounties, but I think they are randomly generated? Only seems useful to do on the way to something else.

If you are looking for ark upgrade, when you hold down the focus button in the open world, you will see a column of rainbow light that indicates an ark location. I found a new weapon that sticks its ammo to targets, and then I can explode it remotely. Fun!

Got half an hour of game time last night and really loved it. The feeling of Doom with actually less gore - at least I haven't found something like the Doom "glory kills" so maybe that impression will fade.

A PS4 copy was delivered to my door courtesy of GameFly yesterday. I only got to where you open up your first ability before I had to head out, but I like what I saw so far. I haven't played the "newest" Doom, so I can't make a comparison there, but I really liked the speed and mobility and how easy it was to run and slide around while firing off headshots and flinging my boomerang. I'm eager to play some more after the kids go to bed this evening.

For the mouse and keyboard players, I found last night that it is possible to map the nanotrite abilities to a single button press instead of having to hold ctrl. It makes things a lot easier.

I tried to do that and it didn't work. In the keyboard settings, you can assign a key to quickfire an ability but it did not work with my extra mouse buttons. (I could assign it but it did not fire the ability)

I love the NPC names in this game. They are really good.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

For the mouse and keyboard players, I found last night that it is possible to map the nanotrite abilities to a single button press instead of having to hold ctrl. It makes things a lot easier.

fangblackbone wrote:

I tried to do that and it didn't work. In the keyboard settings, you can assign a key to quickfire an ability but it did not work with my extra mouse buttons. (I could assign it but it did not fire the ability)

In all seriousness, when a game is designed for controller, why don't you just play with a controller?

garion333 wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

For the mouse and keyboard players, I found last night that it is possible to map the nanotrite abilities to a single button press instead of having to hold ctrl. It makes things a lot easier.

fangblackbone wrote:

I tried to do that and it didn't work. In the keyboard settings, you can assign a key to quickfire an ability but it did not work with my extra mouse buttons. (I could assign it but it did not fire the ability)

In all seriousness, when a game is designed for controller, why don't you just play with a controller?

There is no such thing as a shooter designed for controller.

garion333 wrote:

In all seriousness, when a game is designed for controller, why don't you just play with a controller?

IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/l3V0w34dIIiW35KkE/giphy.gif)

Oh, no. Here we go.

I was hoping we didn't have to go straight nuclear, but ...

Middcore wrote:

There is no such thing as a shooter designed for controller.

IMAGE(https://media0.giphy.com/media/XevXoNu5WZxe0/giphy.gif)

When there's articles about how bad the controls are and how to fix them, maybe switch to a controller? I see this all the time and it just blows my mind. Haven't we moved past this?

Avalanche games are made for controllers. They just don't do m&K well anymore imho.

garion333 wrote:

:lol:

I was hoping we didn't have to go straight nuclear, but ...

Middcore wrote:

There is no such thing as a shooter designed for controller.

IMAGE(https://media0.giphy.com/media/XevXoNu5WZxe0/giphy.gif)

When there's articles about how bad the controls are and how to fix them, maybe switch to a controller? I see this all the time and it just blows my mind. Haven't we moved past this?

Avalanche games are made for controllers. They just don't do m&K well anymore imho.

In a shooter, switching to a control scheme that inhibits aiming and shooting for the sake of some other input would be like... playing a racing game and using a control scheme that inhibited steering the car because it was easier to, say honk the horn.

The article you linked to itself says the special abilities can easily be remapped to single key presses. I don't see the issue.

I'm lazy. My keyboard is always out and plugged into my computer and my DS4 is in that drawer over there and it probably doesn't have the cable because someone else needed it for what ever reason (it totally still has the cable) then I have to go through and make sure that I have all the software installed and then make sure Steam sees it then I have to make sure the game sees it and since I have the game on Steam I have to get up and unplug my steering wheel because for some reason Steam wants me to play all my games with a wheel and then the game probably only has Xbox controller support so it's going to tell me to press X instead of X and then my PS4 is going to boot up because I'm going to forget that my DS4 is still paired with my PS4 and it doesn't unpair until it's plugged into my PC and I hit the PS button then my TV is going to switch inputs because my PS4 booted up so I am going to have to scavenge through my room looking for my TV controller and I'll find it right where I left it under that piece of paper on my desk then I'll change inputs but then I'll remember my PS4 is still on so I have to switch inputs back and turn off my PS4 or get up again and press the power button then I'll have to go wash my car and change the oil so that's why I use keyboard and mouse.

Garion, I am going to come out there and swat you with a newspaper. You know better than to start this conversation!

We really really really should be able to have the conversation.

Should.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Garion, I am going to come out there and swat you with a newspaper. You know better than to start this conversation!

IMAGE(https://pics.me.me/my-kindex-first-fire-explore-the-wonders-of-firelighting-18-30491133.png)

(I will follow my own advice.)

EverythingsTentative wrote:

I'm lazy. My keyboard is always out and plugged into my computer and my DS4 is in that drawer over there and it probably doesn't have the cable because someone else needed it for what ever reason (it totally still has the cable) then I have to go through and make sure that I have all the software installed and then make sure Steam sees it then I have to make sure the game sees it and since I have the game on Steam I have to get up and unplug my steering wheel because for some reason Steam wants me to play all my games with a wheel and then the game probably only has Xbox controller support so it's going to tell me to press X instead of X and then my PS4 is going to boot up because I'm going to forget that my DS4 is still paired with my PS4 and it doesn't unpair until it's plugged into my PC and I hit the PS button then my TV is going to switch inputs because my PS4 booted up so I am going to have to scavenge through my room looking for my TV controller and I'll find it right where I left it under that piece of paper on my desk then I'll change inputs but then I'll remember my PS4 is still on so I have to switch inputs back and turn off my PS4 or get up again and press the power button then I'll have to go wash my car and change the oil so that's why I use keyboard and mouse.

Half of that would be eliminated by an Xbox controller.

I just don't understand the mentality that we must continue playing with M&K even when the game plays poorly that way. It's not that difficult to plug a controller in to your PC and use it. I know, I've used a 360 pad for a lot of gaming dating back well over a decade.

Granted, it does get tedious at times with wireless controllers. The loss of the wire isn't that great a boon to me most of the time considering the hoops one has to (sometimes) jump through.

Anyway, I will probably never drive in an Avalanche game without a controller. Their driving model is ... meager, but feels significantly better with a controller, which makes it okay. With M&K it just feels bad the entire time.

Middcore wrote:

In a shooter, switching to a control scheme that inhibits aiming and shooting for the sake of some other input would be like... playing a racing game and using a control scheme that inhibited steering the car because it was easier to, say honk the horn.

That's a really weird analogy in that I don't think it quite compares the difference between M&K and a controller. It's fairly clear simply by the fact that shooters are on console and flourishing that a controller can do more than just honk.

But considering how many PC reviews of the game talk about the controls and UI in Rage 2, it's fairly safe to say the game was designed and tested with a controller in hand. My question wasn't about which was superior, but about which control scheme was prioritized and why not just use that to solve your problems? Obviously, you don't have any issues with the control scheme, others did.

garion333 wrote:

I just don't understand the mentality that we must continue playing with M&K even when the game plays poorly that way.

Because some of us feel that when aiming and shooting are integral to the gameplay, however badly a game plays with M&K, it will play worse on a controller. I might be irritated by the controls on M&K, but I will be MISERABLE trying to aim with a controller, guaranteed. You're framing this as "if A is bad, then why not B?" and for some people the answer is "because B is TERRIBLE."