Rage 2: 10 Reasons It's A Crushing Disappointment

3. Difficulty That Punishes You For Getting Involved

Ask some Rage 2 players and they'll say the game is a cakewalk - a streamlined 8-10 hour experience you can rattle through by going main mission to main mission, perhaps struggling a bit with some of late-game bosses, as one summons waves of minions that can overwhelm in seconds.

Ask others (including myself) though, and they'll cite the incredibly harsh health system as reason to never feel fully comfortable with the gunplay itself.

Point being: You can go from full 100 points of health to less than 10 in seconds, simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Rage 2 is set up to generate these OTT encounters where you're introducing entire swarms of monsters to the business end of your shotgun, only to get downed by a projectile you couldn't see coming.

One particular boss at the close of the "Cult of the Death God" mission (a pre-order bonus) feels genuinely impossible; the encounter devolving into a splash damage-fest as bombs are lobbed your way and grunt enemies obscure your view.

The biggest issue comes from health not being regenerative, even though combat requires evasion and playing the angles game on higher levels to fight back. The game's answer is crafting and holding health syringes, but even the animation for these is so slow, you'll likely get taken out while trying to use one.

Like Wolfenstein 2's difficulty spikes also putting you in the ground for indulging in the action, it remains an annoying decision to encourage anarchistic encounters, only for your hero to die immediately if you try to have fun.