So, I seriously had no idea Rage 2 was coming out this week until Saturday morning when I checked upcoming release dates for games.
I was aware Rage 2 was a thing that existed; I saw the announcement panel, I’d seen bits of news here and there, etc. But what I’ve not seen is any advertising or marketing or even word of mouth for this game. I don’t know if I just happened to circumvent all the places where this game was being heavily promoted or what, but I was completely oblivious that its release date was, like, now. That doesn’t happen often for me, a big-budget release slipping under the radar; as you might imagine I try to keep up on quite a bit of gaming news. I just haven’t seen any hype building for Rage 2.
Bethesda has not had a good… well, let’s be generous and say six months. Fallout 76, even though I am fully aware it has cultivated a community of people that thoroughly enjoy playing it, was not by most conventional standards a “success.” I didn’t hear great things about the mobile Elder Scrolls game “Blades” either. So one would assume that Bethesda’s brand could really use a win right about now.
So I think it’s odd to find that Rage 2 isn’t being heavily promoted, as it actually looks like a pretty fun game (it briefly occurred to me that Bethesda might be gun-shy, not wanting to make a big deal out of the release in fear of being attached to yet another flop. but that doesn’t seem plausible). I watched the launch trailer and some preview gameplay this weekend, and I’m thinking about giving it a look. Anyone hyped for this game? Anyone else surprised that it’s out tomorrow, or was it just me that this one snuck up on?
I too am terrified. I dusted off my PS3, cracked open my copy of Rage, and have been playing one of my old favorites again. I remember there wasn’t a ton of hype about the original either. It was one of those “Wow, I haven’t seen this one” kind of games for me. Now I am hoping that my teen aged son will see this as fun and involving as the first one was for me.
I won’t hype myself for any bethesda games except for doom eternal
Yup, if it’s just half as entertaining as the predecessor….it’s gonna be huge!
But I really hope they don’t add another of these just mean collectibles….I’m looking at you, Icon of Sin-Puzzle!
Think it comes down to what ads you get. Because I´m pretty much spammed with ads for that game atm. So while it might not be heavily promoted its not in the low end imo.
I preordered to get the wing stick. Only reason I was ever interested
I just happened to notice the game was up for pre order yesterday when perusing Steam at random. I had a big WTF moment sorta like you’ve described. If you were to have asked me a couple of days ago when Rage 2 was coming I would have guessed 3rd or 4th quarter. I really enjoyed playing the first one even though it had it’s faults. I’m pretty hyped for this one. And yeah, I pre-ordered it as soon as I saw it.
I’m watching some streams of it while I work today, it seems like a good time.
I work in a videogame store. I was vaguely aware it was coming out this month, and quite surprised when it arrived in stock, coming out tomorrow.
It’s not just you.
That’s weird to me. It’s not like it’s some indie title creeping up… it’s a sequel to a game made by well-known developer/publishers.
But it wasn’t some big successful hit that was beloved and has a devoted fanbase. You can get the first one in the dollar bargain bin. And this new one has been met with pretty much total apathy. If it’s good, it could definitely pull a World War Z (which had literally no advertising and just showed up one day) and see some surprisingly high sales, just delayed a couple of days as word spreads. But yea, I had the opposite reaction as you. I thought it was weird that they tried to market it as this highly anticipated sequel… Read more »
There was an article about this very problem near the end of last week. I guess I don’t quite understand because I follow gaming news pretty closely so I’ve seen plenty of articles popping up so I haven’t seen the differences between how this game is being marketed vs other AAA titles.
And yes I am looking forward to it. I thoroughly enjoyed both Mad Max and DOOM (and the original RAGE as well,) and this game kinda combines the two.
While I love this comic, and have for so long that I still miss the damn Penguin, I have to say that the “Fallout 76 is bad” meme is getting old. I have more than 600+ hours logged with it, and… well, I just don’t get what is supposed to be bad. I have played online games since I was in Ultima Online beta and the only thing wrong with it is that it is not Fallout 5, but it was not supposed to be. Anyhow. Love the comic, keep up the good work Tim, your creation has honestly given… Read more »
And I’m not trying to convince you that it’s bad if you love it. More power to you if you enjoy it. But you have to understand that there were a lot of people for whom FO76 wasn’t a great experience. That could be because of unrealistic expectations, undelivered potential or simply odd bugs and weird design decisions. But there is a reason that the narrative became “FO76 is not good” even if you don’t agree with it.
Hi long time reader here. I’m actually disappointed in the gaming community for all the FO76 hate. It’s a unique game and perhaps it could’ve been implemented a bit better but if you think about it… (other than the lack of NPC’s) it makes a kind of sense. You come out from the vault in a hostile world. Alone. From that standpoint it makes a lot of sense.
Yes, the setting makes perfect sense. And as a concept I was on board with the game; I wasn’t one of those people hating on it from the get-go just because it was trying something different. But the to say the implementation “could have been a bit better” is an understatement. Exacerbated by the game’s atrocious support over the following months that actually broke more than it fixed. Connection issues, graphical bugs, item duping, and patches that constantly undid previous fixes were rampant in the first few months. While I’d admit there were some parts of the game that worked… Read more »
I was disappointed, but not surprised, at the state of the game when it released. The problems it had were similar to ones usually present in their single player titles, compounded by multiplayer. I honestly think they thought it was going to be a great success and were surprised by the negative response. They then floundered to fix it, exposing the weaknesses in their development process. There is a positive side to this, however. They have since really turned the game around and it’s now miles better than it was. It gives me some hope that they have learned something… Read more »
I heard the first one was massively average, so I didn’t even pay any attention to Rage 2
See, I thought I remember hearing that at the time as well. Now though I see a lot of people/news outlets saying how much fun it was. *shrug*
I think this is what they call the “Fifth Element” effect.
And what’s that? Awesome when it came out and then awesome again a year later and then awesome again when I watched it over and over and over again?
And much like that movie (love it!)… the gameplay was good. It was just bookended with slow, and sometimes even “Meh” content. (Really hated the end of Rage. Like “…that’s it. No real final showdown? No Big Boss? No real story? Just.. “Hold off waves of enemies while a timer counts down, then leave”. After all the lead-up of “fighting the evil Corperation/boss”)
R2 looks pretty damn hype! (And watching YT a lot, i’ve gotten adds at least 2-3 times a day). I just hopebthe story ends up better.
All I remember from the first one was the terrible performance it had on PS3 at first.
“was it just me that this one snuck up on?”
I… haven’t even heard of it before now, actually. Not even the first one. So I guess for me it was the ultimate sneak.
Elder Scrolls: Blades wasn’t bad. Nor was it good. It just wasn’t what Todd Howard said it would be. He said it would be a fully fledged Elder Scrolls game. What it was instead was a very pretty mobile game: a dull, repetitive slog to resource grind while exploring empty, pretty corridors.
Some people eat that up. Compare that to a TES game, it’s horrible. Compare that to your average mobile game, it’s pretty good.
It did look good for a mobile game, I’ll give it that much.
So many YouTubers and bloggers and stuff were screaming, “Look! It’s got boxes! Filled with loot! That you either pay to unlock, or wait for HOURS! Greedy Bethesda!”
And I’m like, “Yeah, ‘pay to speed up the timer’ and ‘random reward’ has kind of been a staple of mobile games since Farmville. What, did you think this was ‘Skyrim Lite’?”
Only to go back to E3 and realize, yeah, Todd kinda DID promise Skyrim Lite.
The shitty state of the mobile industry doesn’t really mean we just give those crappy mechanics a pass.
It is greedy Bethesda, just like it was greedy EA when they did it to Dungeon Keeper and it’ll be greedy Blizzard when whatever IP they announced comes out.
Even if Todd hadn’t blown a huge hype turd out of his ass at e3 they deserve to be slammed because these mechanics are awful and suck the fun out of the product to try and squeeze us for cash.
Honestly, I’m glad Bethesda isn’t heavily promoting Rage 2. I don’t think you need to heavily promote a game to make it successful. If anything, you have a real danger of over-advertising a game and making the amount of copies you need for the game to be successful to be way too high. You’d have to compensate by nickel and diming everyone with micro transactions. Destiny 2 is one of the most recent games that I felt was over-advertised. When I saw some of the advertisements for the game years later, I realized that was probably one of the major… Read more »
Stop buying games from big publishers. There are plenty of smaller studios that want your support and will give you superior games without all the microtransactions
While I agree with you that we should support smaller and indie studios, I don’t think these things have to be mutually exclusive. I would say stop pre-ordering games from big publishers, but if they put out a great game, go ahead and play it.
This right here. EBF5 is a great game, and I’m looking forward to a whole bunch of indie stuff coming up soon, but that doesn’t change the fact that Monster Hunter is awesome and hey whattaya know sometimes they do make good games. On the other hand, pre-ordering games is really…iffy feeling nowadays, and so I definetely don’t want to be jumping on those bandwagons. I’ll take my 10 buck cheaper 5-minute used copy over the 20 bucks more pre-order with extra useless in-game goodies (like “free gun!” in an FPS that will give me better stuff in the second… Read more »
That’s why I have a Gamefly account. I rent, if i like, I go buy. Some see that as a waste, but I’m old (I was the first kid on my block with a 2600 😛 ) So I’ve bought more than my share of “NEXT GREAT GAME” only to find I had purchased something less than quality. I can’t remember the last game I pre-ordered.
That’s even still a thing? Haven’t heard that name tossed out in a couple years! xD
I’m… excited? No… that’s not it. I’m… tentatively interested? I think that’s about right. I really enjoyed Rage more than I should have and, to a certain extent, I am looking forward to Rage 2. However, between getting my ass handed to me in Dead Cells (BC2 for crying out loud), waiting for The Division 2 to drop off from Epic, waiting for Borderlands 3 to drop off from Epic, and playing a bunch of modded Borderlands 2, Rage 2 is way, way, way down my list. Hell, I think there’s quite a few games in my backlog that I… Read more »
Ethan?
Ethan.
Good idea, wrong execution.
Your put your shirt and and pants on, then apply the spraypaint.
THEN you give everyone you meet a bear hug.
Just got my Player 1/Groff shirt, and it looks AMAZING. Thanks Tim! I can’t wait to see the envious faces around the gaming table on Sunday.
Oh awesome! Thanks for letting me know. I haven’t gotten mine yet. 😀
@Tim: Not to criticise. Just something that came to mind while scrubbing my eyes furiously after seeing Ethan in underwear. Shouldn’t Ethan be more buff? Sure, his puny physique undescores the joke. But he’s been training daily (or almost) for a while now, and is clearly capable of hanging onto a rope while swinging between buildings. Multiples times in a row, and without exerting himself overmuch. I’m just saying. I look more buff than he does, and I know I’d just embarass myself if I tried that xD P.S.: I’ve been reading your webcomic, and a few of your opinions,… Read more »
In reality he probably would be a bit more buff, but size and lots of muscle definition are also not the only indicators of physical strength. If you look at a lot of rock climbers, like Tommy Caldwell, they’re obviously incredibly strong, but they’re also very lean. So it’s at least somewhat plausible that with training Ethan could do some of the stuff he does, but not necessarily pack on Captain America levels of muscle. Plus, he swings from the occasional rope, yes, but he’s not Spider-Man either where he’s doing that constantly. There’s a lot more rooftop parkour involved… Read more »
Yeah, that’s what I meant. A touch, not too much so. I get what you mean. Although some people with his build do get more visibly buff with training, others don’t. It’s got a lot to do with your natural build. Myself, I wasn’t that much more buff back when I was in training either (haven’t trained in ages). And some trainings are far less focused on building up sheer muscle mass, indeed. And yes, I get that you don’t show him as rope-swinging that often. I assumed there, my bad. RE: Yeah, digital download would be the perfect option… Read more »
As far as I’m aware, Ethan respawns to his last uninjured state. When muscles are built it’s like, tiny tears, right? Little tiny injuries. Perhaps every time Ethan works out/gets any exercise, it’s undone the next time he respawns.
The most Ethan way to test that theory would be to get a Tattoo…
If I had the time and money to play a game like Rage 2, I definitely would. It looks like dumb fun.
wtf is rage? when did that come out? never heard of it let alone a 2nd one.
I started playing it yesterday, and it’s a lot of fun. As Soup said, it’s as if they combined Mad Max’s driving and UI and DOOM’s fps into one game, and it works very well. I just wanted to start it up and play a bit of the beginning to check it out before switching back to another game, but ended up in a long game session that ended only reluctantly.
There’s a company called Bethesda?! When did this happen!
The game is great so far. Seems to me, after only a few short hours of play, that they already corrected the one thing I hated about the first. The first game was a scant 20 or fewer hours of play. Rage 2 is massive! Game play is as fun and engaging as the first, and the story so far is not bad at all! Give it a shot!