20 hours in I am close to saying that this is probably the best gunplay ever.
Doom's chainsaw and glory kill mechanic make that a strong contender, too, and overall more unique and polished.
but the weapons in Rage 2 just feel better in my opinion.
the assault rifle and shotgun are top tier, I never get tired of them. they feel so damn good, the hit feedback is visceral and satisfying and a league of it's own. Doom can't touch this.
the strongest weapon in the game is the pulse cannon easily, melts everything with no problem, even the arc sentries.
the most fun weapon is probably the dart launcher, I thought first it might not be practical and useful enough, but I am glad it's great against the spongy shroud enemies.
Speaking of which, I am also very happy with the enemy variety in this game. There are 3 different factions of enemies and you need to approach them all very differently, on top of that they also come in more armored variants, some mini bosses and some large bosses which I did not expect at all.
The best moments, apart from the standard shooting off armor and dismembering enemies which I cannot overstate how good it feels, are probably the mutants who light themselves on fire which can be shot for a big glorious BOOM inbetween. I generally love the explosions in the game, darting enemies to barrels or swirling them together with the vortex power feels just as good. Rage 2 is such a fantastic, wonderful mayhem.
I am close to finishing the game, just a few points of interest left on the map and I loved every single minute so far.
I have to say the game has great pacing, but how is a game paced without a real story in an open world? through the upgrades and those have kept me extremely motivated for 20 hours so I am glad the game is over soon, but it was a wild ride.
I feel these upgrades were very well balanced and paced throughout the game so I always felt motivated to do more. in many other games I get the upgrades that interest me in the first few hours and after that I don't care anymore. that would have killed Rage 2 for me, but luckily you can upgrade so many strong features that keep you motivated through the end.
Sure the game has problems but apart from the technical issues they didn't really bother me. The driving is serviceable and you get the the flyer pretty soon so that was never a problem for me, quite the contrary, I loved exploring on my own, BOTW style. first all the arcs for powers and guns, then all the other POI to upgrade them, some of the story missions in between. I am also glad I played on hard, I died quite a few times and I think that difficulty was perfect for me. only in the last ~5 hours did I really become strong enough to handle the level 8+ points of interests easily. I cheesed some of them earlier, though.
It's a shame many FPS enthusiasts will never see this glorious gunplay because of the poor reviews, but I think rage 2 will find it's audience in time through word of mouth. I think it's a lot better than both Rage 1 and Mad Max, I am also glad it's open world. Let Doom have the linear experience and Rage have the open world approach, I like different approaches and it works for me this way.
