Looking back to 2010 and if honest, the original RAGE game fails to ignite many fond memories other than the setting and the story, which for me was a nice twist on the post-apocalyptic world trope. So, when it was announced that it was to get a sequel nine years later, I was both surprised and curious. In that time Bethesda has released some of my favourite story driven single play shooters in the DOOM reboot and Wolfenstein series and knowing that RAGE 2 was being developed by Avalanche Studio who made the excellent and personal favourite game of mine, Mad Max, Rage 2 had my attention!

Rage 2 is set years after events in the first game and the Earth is still reeling from the devastation of the giant meteorite strike that decimated the planet. The first game set the scenes following the apocalyptic destruction brought by this meteorite, named Apophis and genetically enhanced survivors started to reclaim the world with a rogue element calling themselves the Authority, trying to shape humanity according to their own plans. Picking up the story 30 years later, and descendants of those enhanced survivors are adjusting well to the landscape and things are seemingly going well with the Authority gone. But that is all torn apart when the Authority suddenly attack the main base and take down the main Ranger force, those enhanced individuals able to use the advanced tech and weapons to defend the settlements, lead by villain of the original game General Cross who has gone full on cyborg and looking more like a Transformer than how he was in the first game.

During the battle is where the player finally gets to step into the shoes of Walker, an orphan who has been raised by Erwina Prowley alongside her daughter Lily. Now Walker is a generic name as the player is able to select the gender of Walker for the story, and once into the story, Walker learns that General Cross has captured Prowley and murdered her, which doesn’t sit too well with Walker. During the opening scenes, Walker takes the Ranger suit from a fallen ranger, a suit that enables Walker to tap into his enhanced genetics and Ranger weaponry. When the dust settles, it is clear that Walker is not the last Ranger standing and goes to the Ranger HQ to try and work out what to do next, which is when he/she discovers a final Holographic message from Prowley for Walker, no doubt designed to be played upon her death and the message explains to Walker that they must find three characters to help complete ‘Project Dagger’ which would put an end to Cross and his Authority once and for all.

This is the point where the game really comes to life as Walker’s mission is to roam the regions in search of the three key characters who can help complete the last gasp ‘Operation Dagger’ and the majority of the main story missions will be working to complete objective missions for them. The story itself is a little short in that respect, the focus is mainly in just getting Project Dagger up and running. To offset this, Avalanche has gone back to the tried and trusted gameplay of Mad Max in that the player can go exploring the different regions taking on mutants, Authority forces and Bandits to expand the gameplay. If you have played Mad Max then so much of what has gone into RAGE 2 is going to feel very familiar in both good and bad ways. There are plenty of places to discover and explore and every bandit outpost will have collectables to find in order to complete that location with either having to find Data Pads which will add some lore to the game and storage chests which can contain money or Feltrite Crystals which are used to help unlock new level tiers for weapons and Walker’s enhanced abilities.

Those weapons and abilities can be found in any of the 14 Arcs located around the map, Arcs being the survival containment vessels that the enhanced survivors went into before Apophis took out the world. Some will contain new abilities for Walker to absorb through his/her suit or will hold one of the deadly enhanced weapons that only Rangers can wield. The abilities range from super jumps to the ability to force shatter an enemy to a powerful ground slam capable of taking out many enemies at once. The more abilities you absorb the more dangerous and powerful the player becomes which will help not only exploration but also in the combat as when things kick off later in the game, you will come to rely on both the abilities and weapons combining together and boy once these are levelled up they can be very fun to unleash.

The combat is where RAGE 2 really comes alive for me and it certainly takes inspiration from DOOM and Wolfenstein in this respect. The violence and gore are very much a nod to all things DOOM whilst the cut-scenes and storytelling is from Wolfenstein’s playbook. Now having played both series a lot in recent years, it was a very smart choice in bringing RAGE 2 into line with how those games handle the action but at times RAGE 2 can feel a little too close to them which stops it truly standing out on its own. The weapons feel so great to use from the starting Ranger Pistol and Assault Rifle to the shotgun and crazier advanced weapons with the Hyper Canon and Rocket Launcher the stand out big guns to use.

Abilities, weapons and your main vehicle, the Phoenix, can all be upgraded with a really frustrating two step upgraded process. First, each ability and weapon have a tier system which can be unlocked by spending Crystals and each tier contains upgrades which can be unlocked using weapon mods or ability boosters. This enables the player to pretty much tailor how they customise the abilities and weapons to their play style through progression until each can be maxed out. When you do start improving weapons and abilities, you will become quite the unstoppable force which increases the fun you can have but also has one downside, you can become too strong.

For example, for the most part of my first run through the story, I only used the pistol, assault rifle and shotgun along with my abilities like shatter and ground slam. Other than grenades and the amazing wingstick weapons, the more I levelled those up, the less challenging fights became, even with the tougher end story level encounters. In fact, the assault rifle once fully upgraded was able to pretty much handle every encounter including the boss level enemies and the reason for that is because the enemies fail to scale up to how powerful you can become. So many of the tougher enemies such as the Authority Sentry units and the convoys you can take down, stick to the same patterns of attack which are very easy to learn and then manipulate to get the win. This makes so many of the encounters pretty much routine by the end and rather dull, which is a real shame as exploring to earn all the materials to level up as well as finding all the arcs is what you will spend most of your time doing between story missions.

Whilst still fun with some fantastic combat encounters early on, it can become tedious after a while as bandit camps become nothing more than a quick shoot out before trying to locate all the collectables in order to clear that location. The moment your weapons and abilities become stronger than the enemies you can face, those battles become mundane and far too easy. Whilst it borrows quite a bit from Mad Max, Doom and Wolfenstein which take it to a new level from the first game, by the time you do reach the end, there is little else to do other than clearing up the map which can become repetitive.

The story has a short narrative would could have benefited from having some more to do as the setting is rather captivating if full of quite a lot of plot holes. But I did enjoy my time with RAGE 2 and to say that using the Danny Dyer voice pack cheat wasn’t fun for a short time would be a lie. It will be interesting to see if there is a future for RAGE as a series, and there is certainly enough here to build on but for now, this is one that could have delivered far more if the progression system took into account how strong you can make your Walker and scaled the enemies to match.

But players will have to be very forgiving of its shortcomings and though the combat can be extremely fun, it doesn’t do enough to balance out all its parts.

I am a huge fan of the Sniper Elite series; I mean it is bat crap crazy with the kill camera and x-ray kill shots but under the surface lies a very deep and competent shooter that has evolved greatly over the years. The full evolution came in the form of 2017’s Sniper Elite 4 which brought in a much larger world with far more player freedom in how you could complete the mission objectives and a story mode that was fun and rewarding. So, it was with some surprise to learn that Rebellion were going back in time to remaster Sniper Elite V2, albeit a fan favourite, it is still taking players back to how the series was in 2012. It was time to step back into the shoes of Lieutenant Karl Fairburne.

Sniper Elite 2 is set in the final days of World War 2, our hero Lieutenant Karl Fairburne is an American OSS officer and highly skilled sniper who is inserted into Berlin in 1945 with the mission to prevent the Soviets from capturing the Nazi Scientists responsible for designing the V2 rockets, something the US themselves would rather learn from the scientists. The story makes good use of actual historical WW2 operations and even mentions Operation Paperclip which is such a clever way of inserting this story-line into real events without having to alter them to make it work.

What I loved about the Sniper Elite series is that I always considered it the HITMAN of WW2, two game series I held in high esteem back then and still do with the modern games having evolved so much. Fairburne is ultra-deadly, trained to complete the mission no matter the cost and with no help if necessary. He is a very believable character in this world which helps with the immersion which is something this remaster manages to enhance by improving all the visuals for levels and the world. This game does look amazing thanks to the work done to bring the visuals more up to date but it also falls into the trap that many remasters fall into, making it look prettier but not reworking the gameplay.

The sniping physics are some of the best you can find with this series, and even in this early entry to it, the depth in setting up a good kill shot is very satisfying. When all the different systems come together and you can pull off an exceptional sneaky mission by utilising stealth or setting clever traps in order to protect your position it is simply rewarding on a whole new level but you can also just go full arcade run and take out all the enemies around you instead. How you play will determine the score you can get, with more thought out kills scoring more than just ploughing the road with a Thompson machine gun. It was one of the first games that I remember actually using bullet drop as an element to every sniper shot and it certainly elevates trying to get that final kill shot on the target of that mission. Not to mention what it takes to reach and create that opportunity, often having to avoid patrols or strategically taking out guards who could get in the way.

Where this remaster does fall down is where as I said, so many recent ones also fail on, is that the issues the game originally had still remain, despite this version clearly being based on one with all the patches over its life. This is one of the frustrating things about remasters where giving it a shiny new coat of paint and repackaging is seen as good enough. The controls can be clunky at times and there is still an issue with crouching to be stealthier can lead to getting stuck on scenery, which not only happens to you as the player but also to AI characters which is admittedly rather amusing to see whilst zooming through the sniper rifle. The AI can also be very hit and miss to how smart they are where at times they can spot you with the slightest margin of view and other times you could stand there playing charades and they will not notice you at all. The AI can also break its own rules such as when you fire a shot, naturally it can be heard by enemies in close range which will make them actively search for you but if one of their snipers sees you and starting pinging off shots at your location, some enemies wont even consider it something worthy of their interest to look into.

So visually, this game looks really good compared to the original but the issues and linear gameplay make it feel incredibly dated and whilst playing all it made me want to do was reinstall Sniper Elite 4 and play that instead, which I did. This has released with all the DLC included and the new photo mode is a nice new modern feature but unless you are a die-hard fan of the original Sniper Elite V2, I can only say you should check out the more recent game which can be found cheaper than this remaster and is actually currently included in the Xbox Games Pass and is just far more entertaining to play through in just about every way.

Sniper Elite V2 Remastered is another example where the original would have benefited from a full remake rather than just giving it a pretty makeover as it still has playing issues which detract from the playing experience even if they have improved how  the overall game now looks. V2 is still very playable but if you have played Sniper Elite 4 then this will feel incredibly out of date from a gameplay point of view whilst this remaster is slightly redeemed by the co-op mode and the always fun X-ray kill cam views when you pull off a fantastic sniper shot, it still struggles to look anything but dated.

Possibly one to pick up when it lands in the bargain bucket or sales window but sadly Sniper Elite V2 Remaster needed more fine tuning than just a fancy new coat of paint.

I am always a fan of developer teams building up to a release date of their game by posting developer videos that show how the game is coming along as well as sneak peaks at what to expect. Those videos showed just how passionate Asobo Studio are about their debut game and you can see how it translates into the game with some amazing emotive storytelling and world building I have seen so far in 2019 in ‘A Plague Tale: Innocence’. Which is certainly not what I was expecting when first firing the game up and seeing a main menu screen covered in thousands of rats!

Seeing those thousands of rats on the main menu really sets the tone of A Plague Tale: Innocence with the story set in Medieval France as a country at war with England but also at the very beginning of the Black Death epidemic as well. This is a country in crisis and turmoil which is why the opening chapter is so striking. The story opens with Amicia, daughter of a French Lord, accompanying him through the grounds of their estate on a lovely and peaceful day with the sun shining and countryside looking beautiful. The player learns that Amicia is unhappy that she spends so little time with her father due to his obligations to manage his lands as well as being very distant to her mother who is looking after her younger brother Hugo is has a mysterious illness. With very little effort and in a very short amount of time, the player is able to really connect with Amicia as someone who feels quite alone despite being the daughter of a Lord.

Her father then sends her to give a message to her mother that he wants to speak with her, and take Amicia back to her family home where she is welcomed by all the servants who themselves are all hard at work doing their daily tasks. Everything is rather peaceful and lovely and seemingly away from the troubles in the country. I loved how the pace of this opening, which also serves as the tutorial to the game, manages to immerse me right away in the life of Amicia which is vital as her entire world is about to collapse. The Inquisition arrives, charged with finding those who may be afflicted with Plague and to essentially stop the spread by any means necessary but their mission here is different, they are looking for someone, Amicia’s Mother and brother Hugo. As Amicia runs to her brother’s room, we see the soldiers of the inquisition interrogating the same staff that only minutes before were just going about their daily routines and yet now they are being beaten, questioned and then killed by these strange soldiers.

Soon it becomes a race for Amicia to take Hugo and escape the home, in doing so Amicia witnesses the death of her Father, fighting to protect his family and killed by the head of the Inquisition Force Lord, a brutal and uncompromising force of nature who will accomplish his orders by any means necessary. The opening chapters not only establish Amicia as the hero but at the same time makes sure that the player and the audience is fully aware that this guy represents the evil villain of the story. The story telling is just so powerful and beautifully paced in this opening that by the time Amicia and Hugo have managed to escape, as a player you have genuine fear for them going into the world alone, and hunted and not knowing why.

The story itself is broken down into chapters which really deliver the story for the player in just the right pace for storytelling as it enables for true moments along the way for Amicia and Hugo. The chapters never feel too long or too short, delivering the right amount of impact for each level of this dark terrible world. It also allows for some clever rest points as cutscenes take over to tell the story with some beautiful animation and visuals that are sublime at helping to tell the story just as much as the dialogue between characters. As beautiful as it can be it also does not shy away from recreating what a city that has succumb to plague would look like in medieval time and it is very bleak to see. Rotting bodies all covered in flies with homes in villages marked with a giant white X to serve as a warning to others that the Black Death has taken them is just so visually striking on screen after you first spend time with Amicia at her home in the bright and peaceful lands she calls her family home. It is often brave to use such horrific and dark real historical events in a video game to tell a story but here it is so vital to the how this story needs to be told.

Then you have the rats, the thousands of red eyed rats that swarm like a water can flood an area. They are creepy and sinister and they just continue to get under your skin the more they appear on screen with incredible audio effects that especially through a good headset just honestly got to me and added so much atmosphere. I also love how the voice cast absolutely nailed their performances when it came to these critters as there was real tension and fear in their dialogue exchanges when having to deal or avoid the rats, making them a real danger to the characters in the gameplay moments of the game.

That gameplay really comes in the form of stealth with some optional and at other times nonoptional combat. The Stealth is a clever one as for most of the game, Amicia is tied to Hugo so is constantly having to look after him in every situation they encounter. This is accomplished by the need to always hold the hand of Hugo when moving and particularly when having to avoid enemy encounters. This shapes how you handle the stealth sections as you always have the feeling that you as the player are protecting Hugo more then you are protecting Amicia. You are able to command Hugo to wait, and later when other characters join to work with Amicia, but with Hugo if you go too far away from him, he acts like any scared little five year old boy and he will panic and start to call for Amicia which can raise the alarm which means keeping him close is usually the only way to complete a section.

The game also has combat in the form of Amicia’s skill with a sling shot, which can be used to take out enemies. This can feel clumsy at times but thankfully there is a crafting and upgrade system to improve her skills such as making the slingshot stronger so it takes less time to aim at the target and improving the time it takes to throw another shot. I really liked how Alchemy plays a role in that as you progress through the story, Amicia learns or is taught how to craft new ammo types to use such as shots that can start or light fires which is handy when dealing with the rats but also ammo that can put fires out, which can be used strategically later in the game. Upgrades and is capable through collecting materials which are conveniently lying about all over the place and via a workshop table, upgrades can be made to Amicia’s equipment such as improving her slingshot but also the ammo pouch and material pouch. I really enjoyed this aspect to the game and it certainly did help in preparing for the later chapters.

Where this game does fall down for me is just how unforgiving of mistakes it can be, something what in the final chapters of the story can lead to frustration more than enjoyment, with one sequence in particular just yanking me right out of the experience in a bizarre and unwelcome way but will come to that a bit further on. Being seen will often lead to being caught and killed and whilst the game does have a very good checkpoint system as though it knows when a certain section could prove tricky, I did find that there were moments that just seemed unfair such as guards being alerted and staying alerted even though I had successfully broken line of sight and hid. This caused me to actually restart at checkpoints quite a few times just to reset a sequence in order to have a fair crack at it.

The moment that frustrated me the most came in the form of the final boss battle, and did so for many reasons. This game is full of powerful story telling and allowing the player to make it through the game without being too annoying with puzzles that are very straight forward and using a trial and error approach so the player can lean from mistakes. But this boss battle completely broke the immersion for me as it simply broke all the rules of the world, I had spent hours learning to use and follow. The slightest mistake and I was forced to restart the whole fight and even when the battle just became more stupid then challenging, all I could see was that someone along the way suddenly felt that the game needed a big fight despite the combat aspect really being kept to very minimum moments along the way, some of which are completely optional and stealth can be used instead of taking guards out. This battle annoyed the hell out of me and instantly reminded me of the final Joker battle in Arkham Asylum where Rocksteady admitted they just ran out of time to do something really big to finish on and for this game, this battle just felt forced instead of something to battle, defeat and then celebrate to close the game and almost soured my enjoyment of this game.

This is a game that only surprised me on every level and bar one silly boss fight that tainted the experience a little, this is a game and a story that will stick with you long after the credits end. It has so many themes such as family devotion, friendship, sacrifice and how they can be beacons of light in a dark world. With the setting and backdrop of the Black Death, you see how horrible it must have been to have no hope at all of either surviving the plague itself or the fear it created in people who would go to any extreme in order to eradicate it. Amicia is such a wonderful character who has so much pressure and responsibility forced upon her and really grows into a strong and capable woman because of what is at first expected from her as Hugo’s big sister to ultimately wanting to protect her family no matter what.

I came to genuinely care about Hugo and had the instinct to make sure he was nearby even when the game did not call for me to do so, that is how well the game pulled me into the story and I hope it will do for others playing this. A Plague Tale: Innocence has instantly become a highlight and GOTY contender for 2019, the visuals, musical score, voice acting and cast all come together so beautifully that even with that outright stupidly designed final boss encounter that sullied it a little for me, this is a story I really hope gets the recognition it deserves. It has some faults but otherwise this is a story and gaming experience that deserves to be played.

I now really do not like rats!