When I read that Rage 2 was free to keep this week on the Epic Games Store, my first thought was, "Doom Eternal? But that just came out last year!". My brain forgot Rage 2 existed so thoroughly that it did an autocorrect for a different Id Software sequel.
That's probably unfair, because apparently Id's open-world collaboration with Just Cause developers Avalanche paid off, and Rage 2 is a pretty good game. If you've got an EGS account, or are willing to sign up for one, it's probably worth considering.
]]>Remember Rage 2? No? Let's take a step back. Remember Rage at all? Well, the oft-forgotten sequel to Id Software's oft-forgotten FPS will be free to keep on the Epic Games Store next week, so maybe now enough people will play for it to stick in the collective memory. I actually heard some good things about Rage 2, an open-world affair made with Mad Max devs Avalanche, but they slipped out the ear fast enough that I was surprised to be reminded of its existence when it came up on Epic's freebie schedule.
]]>I have often related how, whilst covering E3 2018 from the UK, I was watching Bethesda's live show at some ungodly hour in the morning, having not slept for some days because of watching other live shows at ungodly hours in the morning, and suddenly Andrew W.K. happened.
He and his band absolutely crushing Ready To Die (Mr. W.K. proving he is indeed a very accomplished piano player in the process) whilst the camera kept cutting to Bethesda's visibly bemused live audience of tired journalists and industry investors and producers - one woman even has her mouth hanging open - broke something within me and I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe and nearly fell off my chair. And this was all because of Rage 2.
]]>Rage 2's wasteland is riddled with ghosts, thanks to its first whack of DLC. Sadly, though, the rising ghosts in Rise Of The Ghosts are not spectral nasties, but a bandit clan from the first game. Someone has taken over and experimented on everyone until they've got superpowers though, so that's good.
More importantly, yesterday's DLC added a new Nanotripe ability that lets you telekinetically hurl people about like in Control. I am keen to do this in a videogame that is not Control.
]]>Google held another one of their Stadia Connect conferences today, and this one was meant to be all about what games you'll be playing in the "scary" cloud come November. Sure enough, there were new Stadia games aplenty announced this evening, with the biggest addition being Cyberpunk 2077.
To help keep track of them all, here's a list of every Google Stadia game confirmed so far, as well as which games are coming at launch, which ones will be arriving a little bit later, and which games you'll only be able to play by subscribing to one of the special Stadia publisher subscriptions.
]]>Do you remember Rage 2? It had this whole wacky pink-neon punk vibe going on before launch. For a hot second, I was pumped to become some mad blue-haired lass battering the wasteland with a baseball bat. Turns out, nah, you're some future cop called Walker (who in a cruel twist, drives around more than they walk) out to ruin the party for everyone. Rubbish.
Avalanche Studios probably aren't gonna rebuild a whole game just for me. But they are going to try to tempt folk back with some bloody hard new modes, a truckload of quality-of-life changes, and stickers.
]]>Our former John (RPS in peace) has vanished in odd circumstances, last heard claiming he'll be flying through the sky in a big metal snake, so I'm taking over this week. Not even an employee anymore and he's still making work for me.
Join me for a stroll down the hit parade to inspect last week's top-selling games on Steam.
]]>Watson Whoopinkoff and Flitwick Mcdimbledick are in an altercation. They're wearing the same (mostly lack of) clothes, and have both taken affront to this. We're in a particularly scummy part of a particularly scummy town, where nobody around pays them much mind. Except me. I stop and watch as insults escalate, until Mcdimble suggests Whoopy stick the robot hand he's holding somewhere untoward. Whoopy knocks him out with it, then strolls away. Sheepishly.
Rage 2 is weird.
]]>Welcome back to the wasteland, you raving bunch of lunatics, because today's the day that Rage 2 finally blasts its way onto PC. Filled to the brim with tongue-waggling goons and mohawked, tattooed hoodlums with very itchy trigger fingers, the successor to id Software's 2011 post-apocalyptic shooter is now bigger and boomier than ever, thanks in no small part to their collaboration with Just Cause devs Avalanche Studios and their mastery of very good-looking explosions.
But will Rage 2 make your PC explode in equally spectacular fashion? To help answer that question, I've been testing the game with a bunch of today's best graphics cards in order to find out what kind of performance you can expect, and how to get the best settings and the best speeds no matter what GPU you've got whirring away inside your case. Let's get cracking.
]]>Rage comics may be so over by now but Id Software remain committed to their FPS adaptation of the Internet meme, this morning releasing Rage 2. Their open-world drive-o-shooter imagines a world where everyone raged so much that human civilisation collapsed, turning into a Mad Max-ian wasteland where people drive angry and murder angrier. For the sequel Id have collaborated with Avalanche Studios, the mob behind Just Cause and Mad Max, and given it an injection of rude 'tude plus sci-fi superpowers to cause big daft murdermesses. The future...!
]]>Rage 2 is very almost here on PC, but for a game half-developed by Doom maestros id Software, there is something really quite rotten about the state of Rage 2's default keyboard controls. For as well as having an arsenal of mildly ridiculous guns at your disposal, you also have various special abilities to help you in the heat of battle, such as the sonic boom-emitting Shatter Strike punch. The only problem is that the default control for Shatter Strike is Ctrl+F.
Now I don't know about you, but when I've got three fingers on WAD and my little finger almost always stuck on Shift so I can move around without getting riddled with bullets, Ctrl+F is, quite literally, a bit of a stretch. Infuriatingly, the rest of Rage 2's special abilities are all tied to Ctrl as well. Fancy a Slam? That's Ctrl+Space. Throw up a barrier? Ctrl+C. It goes on. Fortunately, help is at hand inside Rage 2's key mapping menu. Here's how to remap those terrible default keyboard controls so you can carry on playing Rage 2 like a true mohawked champion.
]]>WARNING: If you're reading this, there is a very strong chance you're looking at news on your favourite game. Please, it's imperative you click on to discover crucial information.
]]>Cheeky cockney sparrow and beloved minor UK television celebrity Danny Dyer will 'ave it large in Rage 2 with a voiceover pack, Bethesda have announced. Which sure is a thing that's happening. God knows how they found out about the star of shows including EastEnders, Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men, and I Believe in UFOS, but I'm glad they did. The world should know. He's going full-on bolshy in Rage 2, asking people if they want some, warning people about their nut, advising baddies to sort it out, declaring people muppets, and generally cussing up a storm. As you would hope.
]]>Bethesda are backing down from plans to make Rage 2 and other upcoming games exclusive to their own launcher, announcing today via Twitter that they'll all be sold on Steam. Confirmed headed back to Valve's storefront is Rage 2, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, VR spinoff Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot and (most importantly) Doom Eternal. The move will be partially retroactive as well, with Fallout 76 confirmed for a Steam release "later this year", although no date has been nailed down for that yet.
]]>Rage 2 just had a brand new trailer that showed a good nine minutes of mayhem and destruction. This collaboration between id Software and Avalanche Studios looks to be quite utterly mad, with plenty of new gadgets and vehicles to create a spectacle with. Our guide hub includes all the known information about the game, such as the release date, trailers, and details on the special editions and pre-order bonuses.
]]>It's not going to tug on any heartstrings or change the world, but I like what I've seen of Rage 2. Bethesda have just released nine fresh minutes of lightly-cut footage from the Avalanche/Id collaboration shooter, and it's reminding me a lot of both Avalanche's Mad Max and Bulletstorm. We get to see the player acquiring (and tutorial-ing) a new super-power, getting sidetracked on a side-quest, taking a sightseeing trip on a hover-bike and picking a fight with a mech made out of junk. There's also a lot of things that go boom. Take a look for yourself in the video below.
]]>The world may be a barely-habitable hellscape of unending hyperviolence, but that's no reason to be glum according the new Rage 2 trailer. Along with announcing a May 14th launch date and a pre-order page popping up on Bethesda's store (though not Steam, interestingly), The Game Awards last night gave us another look at the Id/Avalanche collaboration in action. The new video features a lot of dusty roads punctuated with flashes of neon, lots of gore and a peek at some of the roadside activities available. Take a peek at its well-signposted end of the world below.
]]>While Doom Eternal brought the show home at QuakeCon, its opening act - Rage 2 - wasn't too shabby either. The ambitious joint project between Id Software and Just Cause studio Avalanche looks to be coming along nicely, and the new gameplay trailer below gives us an extended look at its occasionally lurid and mostly explosive post-apocalyptic world. It features a look at some of the enemy factions, environment types, and the vehicles you'll be driving plus an encore for the stuff featured in its original debut.
]]>The frags will flow like Bawls this weekend at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center, where Id Software are throwing their annual LAN party/convention, QuakeCon. Thousands of gib-hungry gremlins will lug their computers to Texas and many more will loiter around the festivities. It's become more ZenCon in recent years, featuring more from corporate siblings Bethesda and other studios and games owned by ZeniMax Media, but will have a good kick of Id this year with our first look at Doom Eternal, the sequel somehow not named Doom II: Hell On Earth. Before all that, loads of Id and Bethesda games are cheap on sale, including yer Quakes, yer Dooms, yer Fallouts, and yer Preys.
]]>Tonight we got our first real look at Rage 2, the sequel to Id Software's 2011 post-apocalyptic drive-o-shooter, in its first gameplay video. After Andrew WK and his chums finished rocking out on stage, anyway (a thing that happened, and I was glad to see at 2:30am?). Click on through for faceshooting, carfights, and some real fancy superpowers.
]]>There we were, being all surprised that Just Cause/Mad Max outfit Avalanche Studios had been handed the reins to Id sequel Rage 2, and now here we are, being all surprised that Avalanche are now owned by a 111-year-old Danish movie studio. Nordisk Film, the world's oldest still-active film production firm, have doled out some $103 million to take control of Avalanche's three offices, but the claim is that the Swedish games studio will retain creative independence. In fact, the plan is to work on more self-published titles, though they don't plan on giving up work for hire just yet.
]]>Bethesda Softworks have blasted a 'gameplay trailer' for Rage 2, following yesterday's terse announcement and unexpectedly colourful live-action music video doodad. This new vid is full of mutants, mechs, cars, guns, and giant throwable fidget spinners. The sequel to Id Software's 2011 post-apocalyptic FPS is drafting help from Avalanche Studios, the mob behind Mad Max and Just Cause, which is a curious and exciting pairing. Avalanche do explosive open-world spectacle well, Id do first-person violence well, and together they're making a game which looks a little something like this:
]]>Id Software's 2011 post-apocalyptic first-person drive-o-shooter Rage is finally receiving a follow-up, publishers Bethesda announced today. They do not say much about Rage 2 beyond the fact that it exists, which was kinda already known following a spate of leaks over the past few days. But! Rage 2! That's good. The original game's carfights were a bit bland and the whole thing smashed into its ending like someone walking into a glass door but I really enjoyed Rage's shootybangs. Some splendid violence. And while Rage was very serious and brown, the tone of the announcement trailer--at least--is silly and colourful. Watch this.
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