I got about three hours of playtime in, and maybe I'm just an easily pleased 2019 gamer, but I'm having a lot of fun with this. The combat is very satisfying to me so far, with meaty sounding guns, and pretty fun abilities to use. It doesn't reach Doom 2016 levels of fun, but honestly it's a pretty lofty height to try and reach. Once I started unlocking the different skills, movement abilities, and some gun upgrades; things really took off for me. The joy of combat is generally what tempts me to get out of my vehicle and engage in the open world aspects.
Speaking of the open world, it's fine so far. I don't play a lot of open world games, I don't buy most of the new releases as they come out, so I'm not super burned out on the typical open world formula. However, one major thing I notice about this game is the lack of emergent gameplay, or a dynamic feeling in the world. Every firefight I've come across is placed by hand, and most everything you find is marked on the map. I recently grabbed Far Cry 5 on sale, and it's clear Ubisoft is light years ahead of Avalanche in this regard. When taking over compounds in FC5, I'd occassionally already run into a compound being seiged by AI comrades who happened to be attacking it. Basically the world felt a bit more alive and dynamic, whereas so far Rage 2 does not. Which is fine, but it certainly feels more bare bones.
So far this scratches my itch for more fast paced shooting where I'm not stuck with weapon limits, weak feeling weapons, and just an overall faster pace. That alone will be enough to carry me on, but there was indeed a lot of potential to do more that was squandered. I really hope they add more to the vehicle combat in a future DLC. Right now it pales compared to Mad Max in that area.
