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Rage 2 review: a big, dumb shooter that’s a blast to play



And then Dick Carlson remarried. His second wife or his subsequent wife adopted the Carlson boys. But later in life, in the interviews that we listened to, Carlson would talk about how this impacted him. And he said, first of all, he felt all kinds of rage about it for many years. He alluded to the fact that he thinks it played a role in him being a heavy drinker before he quit drinking. But there was something else. I told Megyn Kelly this, the former Fox host who now has a YouTube show. He talked about how he had learned from the experience of his mother kind of messing with his head and his emotional life that he would never let people in there ever again, that he wouldn't let his critics get inside his head. And he wouldn't listen to criticism from people who he thought didn't have his best interests in mind.




Rage 2 review: a big, dumb shooter that’s a lot of fun




They did do that in 2016 dumbass. Too much truth and transparency for them. Too much straight to the point no sugar coating it bs. Need another one like that and not a bunch of imbeciles who hire 90k more irs to hound us. So so sickening


We are the only country that has killed its own citizens in a farce and tragedy that is still killing people because of the asbestos released that day. 9/11/2001, and did it just to go to war with other countries for their oil and to make money for the 0ne percent that own 90 percent of the wealth. The right-wing Christians that have so little to do with Christianity are the worse threat to the constitution that has ever existed. We are a country based on religious freedom and we are supposed to separate church and state.


They say that tragedy + time = comedy, but in gaming the real tragedy is the amount of time we have to wait between quality comedy games. Thankfully, in the opening moments of High on Life, as my talking gun belittlingly whispered to me that I was doing a great job as I shot dancing aliens in the face, I got the feeling I\u2019d struck gold. While it has bugs and performance hitches and occasionally frolics in unimpressive toilet humor, it largely succeeds at being the type of absurd space satire I\u2019ve always wanted. Whether I was chatting with my shotgun about the merits of science and formulas, covering myself in alien poop to sneak into a secure facility, or inexplicably watching a full live-action movie from the \u201890s on nearby television, High on Life is a game that just knows how to have a good time, and there really aren\u2019t enough of those.


This delightfully inappropriate first-person shooter puts its comedic premise and characters front and center and absolutely refuses to take itself seriously. After Earth is taken over by disgusting aliens who kidnap humans to be smoked as hallucinogenic drugs, you begin a ridiculous space odyssey to get revenge against the extraterrestrial drug cartel responsible. All the while, you\u2019re accompanied by the stars of the show: the extremely rude weapons themselves, who serve not only as your tools of destruction, but as the story\u2019s most important characters. These animate weapons (called Gatlians) are easily the best part of the adventure, and include Kenny, the easily flustered pistol that\u2019s basically Justin Roiland doing his usual Rick & Morty thing, Sweezy, the foul-mouthed sniper rifle that seems to be a reference to Halo\u2019s Needler, Creature, who shoots uses his rapidly gestating children as ammo, and my personal favorite: Gus, the surprisingly wholesome shotgun voiced by Curb Your Enthusiasm\u2019s JB Smoove. While some took a while to earn my love, spending an entire 16-hour journey with these guys held up right to my face ended up being a fantastic excuse for lots of amusing dialogue and character development. By the time the credits rolled, I really didn\u2019t want to have to put my new best friends back in their holsters.


That\u2019s due in large part to High on Life\u2019s mostly solid writing, which piles on dumb gags, curse-laden rants, and lots of TV screens airing idiotic shows that look like they could have been pulled straight from one of Rick & Morty\u2019s Interdimensional Cable episodes. One level features an intentionally irritating alien who follows you around and rambles on, seemingly without end, until you finally unlock the ability to murder him dead. Another makes you go to Space Applebee\u2019s and have a full meal for no apparent reason. You can also find a movie theater playing the real-world movie from 1990, Demon Wind, complete with Mystery Science Theater 3000-like commentary via some nearby aliens, which you\u2019d better believe I watched in its entirety. The campaign is only about eight hours long if you have the willpower and focus to ignore all of these delightful distractions and power through, so naturally my first playthrough took me over 16 hours, specifically because I was goofing off for so much of it. The entire thing is just packed with so much silliness and it\u2019s always exciting to spend time planet-hopping through it; I never knew when I might run into something insane, like when I teleported a stretch of freeway onto a jungle planet and watched the occupants of the cars who\u2019d been taken with it slowly devolve from a group of aliens with road rage into an insane cult that sacrificed their own to appease the asphalt gods.


A lot of the jokes in High on Life are either lowbrow or sophomoric, or pearl-clutchingly irreverent, and like pretty much all comedy it won\u2019t work for everyone. But as a fan of classic comedy games like Borderlands 2 and South Park: The Stick of Truth, it definitely worked for me. There were moments where all the cursing and shock humor felt lazy or a bit much \u2013 and that\u2019s coming from someone with an extremely high tolerance for it \u2013 but more often than not the silly bits and crass dialogue land. It\u2019s just hard not to chuckle when the grunt enemies stop in the middle of combat to disrespectfully twerk in your direction, y\u2019know? It\u2019s impressive, though, that in a shooter so ridiculous and purposefully flippant with its setting, High on Life\u2019s story ends up having a lot of heart. I genuinely enjoyed bonding with the washed-up bounty hunter turned mooch couch-crasher, Gene, and I felt real motivation to destroy the alien drug cartel \u2013 though mostly to get payback for my Gatlian buddies, not to save the human race.


In perfect harmony with High on Life\u2019s completely chaotic vibe, slinging your companion guns in firefights is over-the-top and occasionally a bit messy. Weapons are somewhat inaccurate and enemies flop around the battlefield shooting gloop at you, and in the opening hours I worried there would be little more to combat than using pea shooter Kenny to mop up brainless ants. It doesn\u2019t help that, even on the hardest difficulty, High on Life is almost always incredibly easy to get through \u2013 you\u2019re given ample opportunity to restore your health and shield, and incoming bullets are almost always slow enough to be easily avoided. Luckily, once you gain some new tools like the jetpack or other interesting combat options (like Creature\u2019s power to mind-control enemies on the battlefield or Gus\u2019 ability to suck up smaller bad guys right in front of him and then blast them to bits) things get a lot more interesting.


There\u2019s still plenty to shake a fist at though, like how weak the enemy variety is, or how hostile aliens occasionally get stuck inside the environment, or the incredibly perplexing decision to make the down button on the d-pad the default button for crouch button\u00a0 (you can rebind this in the Ease of Access section of your Xbox settings menu). These things certainly don\u2019t make for the smoothest combat experience, and the fun comes from finding creative ways to clear each area of baddies. Like how you can use Kenny\u2019s glob shot ability to toss enemies in the air then juggle them with bullets until they explode, or how you can kill enemies that are behind cover (or stuck in the environment) by using Sweezy\u2019s object-piercing shots. It\u2019s definitely more chaotic and less finely tuned than your ideal shooter, but it\u2019s a pretty good sandbox for pulling off stupid and amusing kills, and that sorta jives well with High on Life\u2019s energy.


This series is going to be less about castigating the developers for mistakes and more about offering constructive criticism. I want to encourage the Rage franchise to continue its efforts to build some kind of narrative structure to hang the whole thing on. My previous retrospectives were focused on story heavy games, and this time I want to focus on telling a minimalist story that can still deliver some sort of dramatic payload. My criticism here will focus on what this game did wrong, but it could also be used to figure out how to make the next game better.


Many shooters also display a fascination with guns and/or a preoccupation with violence. They play violent video games, watch violent movies, and read books that glorify violence and killing. Several of the shooters showed a particular fascination with Columbine, Hitler, and/or Satanism. They wrote journals or drew images depicting violence and gore. The continued exposure to violence may desensitize individuals to violence and provide ideas that are then copied in the school shootings.


Fourth, school leaders should be aware that not every apparent act of prevention is worth the costs. Some people believe that lockdown drills, metal detectors, school resource officers, and the like are useful deterrents to school shootings and school violence more broadly. However, researchers have also demonstrated that they can increase anxiety and fear among students. Students may also become habituated to the drills, failing to recognize the seriousness of an actual threat should it arise. Additionally, most K-12 shooters are students within the school itself. These students are well-versed in the security measures taken by the school to try to deter acts of violence by individuals such as themselves. While few would suggest getting rid of lockdown drills and other security measures, educators and administrators need to be mindful of the rewards versus the costs in their selection of safety measures. 2ff7e9595c


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