Rage 2 is a violent and dangerous world. Every day is filled with action, explosions, car chases, and giant monsters. It’s all very exciting and a blast to experience. But one of the most prevalent activities in this world isn’t killing mutants or destroying enemy convoys. No. Instead, for some reason, the game really wants you to find a bunch of crates. So many crates. And it sucks.
I’ve been enjoying my time with Rage 2, even if the game feels like six things copied and pasted a thousand times. Luckily, most of Rage 2 is fun and feels great. I love the shooting and driving, so I don’t mind doing the same things over and over. It’s fine. What I do dislike and actively hate is how nearly every single location in Rage 2 is packed with the same collectibles. And each location tasks the player with finding them.
Again and again and again.
To be fair, you don’t have to find these collectibles which are usually crates and PDAs. However, if you want to fully check a location off your map you will need to spend some time searching for crates and stupid little PDAs.
And again, to be fair to Rage 2, you don’t have to collect these things. This is just a problem I have while playing. I just can’t walk away from these locations and see them on my map unfinished. I hate it. This is my personal hang up, I understand this. If you can drive by a bandit camp that isn’t checked off the map, more power to you. I can’t do it, which means I end up digging around every location searching for shit.
Here’s the thing though, even if these crates are optional, I don’t understand WHY these scavenger hunts are even in the game at all. Because they suck. They are just the worst.
[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/05/rage-2-the-kotaku-review/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–2eUxt01F–/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,pg_1,q_80,w_800/iszeqpbukfwlo5f2zqzl.jpg” title=”Rage 2: The Kotaku Review” excerpt=”Rage 2 is caught between Good Stupid and Bad Stupid. In the end, Bad Stupid wins out.”]
Crates can be hidden almost anywhere. Sometimes they are just sitting out in the open. I love these crates. I’ll never say anything bad about these good ones. They are fine. But other crates are bastards, hiding in weird spots or under buildings. These crates are annoying, but I understand that these scavenger hunts need to be a bit challenging, so I’ll get grumpy at these bastards, but I don’t hate them.
No, I reserve that hatred for the arsehole crates.
These arseholes are always a pain to find. Here’s an example of an arsehole chest. I was searching a bandit camp in Rage 2, looking for the last crate in the area. I spent way too long digging around this area, searching every room, behind rocks and even vehicles. I almost gave up.
Suddenly, as I was walking by a large shipping container, my view stopped moving and locked onto the doors for a moment. I stopped and checked the container and found the doors were locked with a small pink padlock and my reticle was locking on to this object due to auto-aim. I shot it, the doors opened and I found the last crate. What an arsehole.
This sucked and wasn’t fun. I didn’t feel clever finding this box. Up until this point, I had no idea I could shoot locks that I found randomly in the world. I didn’t even know I could check shipping containers, as most of them are locked and can’t be opened.
In fact, at this location, there was actually a few other containers that I couldn’t open. After finding it I felt cheated and it left a sour taste in my mouth, a taste that I quickly rinsed away by shotgunning some bandits later.
There is an ability players can unlock that adds a item tracker to the in-game HUD. I didn’t have this tracker for my first few hours of Rage 2. Once I did unlock this tracker, I was excited. Finally, chests will be easy to find.
Except there was a big problem: The tracker blows.
It works well enough in large and open areas. But more compact or vertical bases are still a massive hassle to search. One problem is that the tracker seems to be inconsistent or at least it feels that way. It also has a problem with how it works. It tracks not just crates, but PDAs and Ark chests (another collectible some areas have you search for.)
This means if a PDA, chest, and crate are close to each other, the tracker will change wildly as you move in different directions. I’ve gotten better at using it, but it doesn’t really solve my main problem with these overused checklists.
These item searches are a terrible activity. They aren’t fun or interesting and their rewards are rarely worth the time. These damn crates are a wonderful example of how overstuffing an open world can lead to things that are created simply to be time sinks. A way of making that list to “finish” the game get longer and longer.
These things add little to no value to the game and for the players, like me, who try to complete them, they often make us hate playing the game we were enjoying just a moment earlier.
So if you are enjoying Rage 2, don’t worry about tracking down every chest. Find what you can and if you really feel up to it, wait until you unlock the tracker before looking for all these collectibles. Don’t make my mistake. Instead, have fun. Don’t worry about checklists.
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