GamesBeat’s hands-on preview of Rage 2 shows it’s one of the craziest shooters ever made, combining a post-apocalyptic world with Andy Warhol colors.
“Over the top” and “crazy” seem like such mediocre words when you’re trying to describe the world of Rage 2. The latest game from id Software and developer Avalanche Studios is one of the zaniest video games you’ll find in the genre of post-apocalypse shooters.
Tim Willits, studio director at id Software, gave the developers the freedom to create a game that was “more crazy than Rage,” the original car combat and shooter title from 2011. It’s worth noting that the original Rage itself had to be crazier than id’s previous stable of shooters: like Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake. I played Rage 2 ‘s latest demo at a preview event in San Francisco, and then I talked with Willits.
Yet the first Rage was a fairly serious affair, where the world was hit by an asteroid. Some of the human race survived by hiding underground in bunkers, and the action took place a century after an apocalypse. But most of the surface world became a wasteland, controlled by bandits and an oppressive militaristic organization called the Authority. Only in the mutant carnival of JK Stiles, where you have to survive a shooting fest against mutants in a game show, did some craziness appear. The aim was more survival and the defeat of the Authority, rather than humor.
With Rage 2, all that restraint is gone, as Avalanche is well known itself for the over-the-top shooters Mad Max and Just Cause. One of the things they came up with an outlandish color scheme, with plenty of pink, bright yellow, and purple neon lighting. When you blast someone with a shotgun, it’s sometimes hard to see the blood splatter among all of those colors.
Rage 2 puts you in the shoes of Walker, a hero with a voice who wanders the open world. The wasteland is alive with mutants, remnants of the Authority, and absolutely bonkers thugs who rule their own little towns and outposts. In our preview, I had to defend a town and its mayor, a fairly normal woman named Loosum Hagar, against an attack from a punk rocker faction called the Goon Squad. The mayor sent me to go after the rich businessman Klegg Clayton.
But to get close to Clayton, I had to become a celebrity of the wasteland. So I had to race a buggy in the Chaz Car Derby, where we raced around a desert canyon track, trying to avoid pools of toxic green slime. And I had to survive the Mutant Bash TV, which was akin to the Stiles experience from the first game. Except this time, the hostess and her attendants were like something out of a creepy horror film. One of the bikini-clad servants had a huge baby mask on her head. She sliced her hand with a knife and it bled into a cup. The hostess then drank from the cup and spoke in a most annoying voice.
Then I went into the bombastic arena, with a game show announcer and lots of lights. Mutants came at me and I had to use my different weapons and abilities to strike them down as they came from all directions. The Slam command became most useful, as I jumped and then hit the ground with my fist with the force of an explosion, knocking the enemies down as they closed in on me. Each round got tougher than the last, until I had to face off against a big mutant with a gatling gun.
