Punky purple post-apocalyptic shooter Rage 2 is the next free title available for PC via the Epic Games Store.

id Software and Just Cause developer Avalanche Studio's fun but underloved sequel will be available to claim from 18th to 25th February, the same dates as top-down indie racer Absolute Drift.

Rage 2 has racing of a different kind, with Mad Max style road combat and shooting. The game's gunplay earned itself points in Eurogamer's Rage 2 review, though Vikki Blake wrote that its open-world setting ended up letting the rest of it down.

Read more

As October prepares to conclude in a flurry of socially distanced shrieks and spooks, Sony returns with another batch of additions to its PlayStation Now subscription service, this time including the likes of Rage 2, Injustice 2, and F1 2020.

Rage 2, of course, is Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios' open-world take on id Software's 2010 post-apocalyptic FPS. Avalanche's neon-flecked sequel comes packed with "plenty of balls-to-the-wall action and beautifully distressed setpieces", as Eurogamer contributor Vikki Blake put it in her review, even if its blandly implemented open-world lets the side down.

"Superficially, it clutters the map and makes it feel like you've plenty to do," said Vikki, "but you'll soon learn that they're chiefly repetitive tasks and as satisfying as Rage 2's combat is, it's surprising how quickly it'll grow stale - particularly as the vehicular combat isn't quite as satisfying as the devastation of your shotgun."

Read more

As October prepares to conclude in a flurry of socially distanced shrieks and spooks, Sony returns with another batch of additions to its PlayStation Now subscription service, this time including the likes of Rage 2, Injustice 2, and F1 2020.

Rage 2, of course, is Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios' open-world take on id Software's 2010 post-apocalyptic FPS. Avalanche's neon-flecked sequel comes packed with "plenty of balls-to-the-wall action and beautifully distressed setpieces", as Eurogamer contributor Vikki Blake put it in her review, even if its blandly implemented open-world lets the side down a little.

"Superficially, it clutters the map and makes it feel like you've plenty to do," said Vikki, "but you'll soon learn that they're chiefly repetitive tasks and as satisfying as Rage 2's combat is, it's surprising how quickly it'll grow stale - particularly as the vehicular combat isn't quite as satisfying as the devastation of your shotgun."

Read more

Microsoft's Black Friday sale has begun, which means massive savings for all you Xbox One owners out there. While you can head to our Xbox Black Friday deals hub for a giant list of great Xbox One deals, we also wanted to highlight the aptly titled Black Friday Game Deals sale.

There are currently lots of great discounts on the Xbox marketplace, but be aware that you have to be an Xbox Live Gold member to avail yourself of the offers right now. The deals will be made available to everyone else on 24th November, and the sale runs right up to Monday 2nd December.

We've had a poke around Phil Spencer's digital storefront and found some of 2019's best video games have been discounted by up to 50 per cent. Not too bad, eh?

Read more

Xbox Game Pass really is the gift that keeps on giving. Tonight at X019, Microsoft has announced more than 50 new titles headed to the service in the coming months.

From a collection of Final Fantasy games and The Witcher 3, to indie gems like My Friend Pedro and Phogs, it looks like there's a little something for everyone on the way - and a bunch of new games have even arrived on Game Pass today.

And, separately, Phil Spencer has said a cross-platform Final Fantasy 14 is coming.

Read more

Post-apocalyptic open-world shooter Rage 2's first big expansion, Rise of the Ghosts, is heading to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on 26th September, bringing with it a new enemy faction and "huge" new region.

In Rise of the Ghosts, players go up against the new Ghost faction, a "ruthless, vicious, tactical and cruel" group of meanies that fled to the mysterious Overgrown City during the time of the Authority War. Now they're back, brainwashed, and out for blood.

According to publisher Bethesda, the expansion's new story content will see players battling the Ghosts on their own turf, exploring the substantially sized Overgrown City region with a new weapon - the Feltrite Laser Launcher - and a new ability. The latter, known as Void, can either be used to suspend opponents in the air ready for some additional damage, or can be focussed to make their heads explode.

Read more

The Gamesplanet Summer Sale began yesterday with over 1900 titles on offer, plus rolling 24-hour flash deals on recent PC releases and old favourites. But that's not all. As a way to celebrate the occasion, Gamesplanet has kindly provided us with ten games to give away to you lovely Eurogamer readers.

As the Summer Sale has entered its second day, a new selection of flash deals are now live. Right now, that includes the likes of Hitman 2 for 15.99, Fallout 4: Game of the Year Edition for 9.75, Fallout New Vegas: Ultimate Edition for 3.70, Dragon Ball FighterZ for 9.99, Metro Redux Bundle for 5.99, XCOM 2 for 8.50, Transport Fever for 5.99, Space Hulk: Tactics for 9.25, For Honor for 9.75 and Motorsport Manager for 5.75.

The majority of these will only be live for a short period of time so make sure you grab anything you're interested in quickly! Continue to check in throughout the rest of the week too as new titles will be reduced every morning at 10am until the end of the sale on 12th August.

Read more

Rage 2 had a lacklustre start to life but the efforts to improve it continue. Today's update introduces three new ways to play the game - New Game Plus, Ironman mode, and an ultra nightmare difficulty - as well as fixes and quality of life improvements.

Players who found the tutorials and intro dialogue cringeworthy (as I did) will now be able to skip them, and the addition of a flashlight to the game is welcome. Other improvements include bug fixes, pop-ups no longer pausing the game, and a camera deadzone slider.

There'll also be a new voice pack, undoubtedly to tie in with the release of the new Wolfenstein game, as it will feature the voice of B.J. Blazkowicz.

Read more

We've scoured the lands looking for some top gaming deals and, shining brightly on the horizon, is this offer on Red Dead Redemption 2 over at Amazon UK.

The swish and stylish edition of Rockstar's western opus comes with a collectible SteelBook and is now only 33.99 on PS4 and Xbox One. A quick look elsewhere shows most standard versions of the game going for around a similar price, so you're getting a nice case for free here!

In fact, if you flick through the site some more, you'll see it's one of the many games on sale ahead of Amazon Prime Day 2019, even though the big bargain event doesn't start until next week.

Read more

Rage 2's console release revealed a big divide in performance between the standard and enhanced machines. PS4 Pro and Xbox One X delivered beautifully smooth 60 frames per second gameplay, with a drop to 30fps on vanilla hardware. The big surprise? Even Microsoft's six teraflop monster 'only' ran at 1080p resolution, leaving it down to the PC game to scale up to higher resolution displays. But what does it take to hit 1440p or even 4K at 60fps? And in what other ways does PC scale beyond the console experience?

First impressions are certainly promising. In common with Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, Bethesda has taken the brave move of shipping Rage 2 just with Vulkan API support, with no DirectX fallback. Settings-wise, the game is fairly comprehensive with plenty of tweakables to adjust, including toggles for contentious post-processing effects like chromatic aberation and motion blur. The game can run fully unlocked with frame-rates beyond 60fps (unlike the original Rage) and 21:9 ultrawide support is also baked in.

There's even support for dynamic resolution scaling, which potentially could be very useful... if it were working. From what I've witnessed, internal resolution increases based on screen movement (?) with the end result being that jumping on the spot can deliver a higher quality image. It doesn't seem to scale according to GPU load as you would expect, suggesting that the feature is very broken right now. Regardless, I'd suggest turning this feature off, with the hope being that its functionality will be addressed in a forthcoming patch.

Read more