My experience with the Dirt series is very limited. I’ve always known it to be more of a simulation-type racing game, with points for knowing the turn grades and race routes. This is not the type of game Dirt 5 is even trying to be. This is not an entirely negative thing, in my opinion, but I can see why a lot of series fans are a little underwhelmed. The arcade-like approach limits the variation and depth of individual experiences and with that, this game is pretty easy to burn through. Regardless of your experience, I think you should certainly give this game a chance.

The deviance of this game from what I know of the series is actually something worth talking about. For a series with such a devoted following, they really took a risk with this game. Their fanbase are purists. They love seeing tracks they’ve spent lots of time on be mastered, and I think a lot of people play Dirt games with steering wheel peripherals for immersion. What really surprises me about Dirt 5 is that it is a mainline series installment. Dirt has had spinoffs before with Dirt Rally, so why not put this arcade vision to the side where it belongs?

Being a mainline installment makes the road forward so unnecessarily dangerous for developer Codemasters. What will happen going forward? Are gamers just supposed to buy Dirt games and take what experience surprises them out of the box? If they go arcade again, purists are going to be really drained, but I hope that doesn’t kill this new style completely. Having it be a separate series and knowing it has a future, if successful, would be cool.

The context I played this game under was downloading it on Xbox Game Pass when it hit the service. I have been totally addicted to racing games since nostalgia drove me to play Need for Speed Heat last November. I reviewed this game on my blog. Since then, I’ve been playing mainly arcade racers. This might’ve made me more receptive to Dirt 5’s innovation on its own flavor. For Codemasters, foraying into the arcade sphere is a bold move they had to execute perfectly for this game to even be decent. But it is more than decent, it is nearly divine.

I appreciate when racing games make, somehow, good use of the driver’s POV perspective camera. Dirt is known for this, and while it is still fun in Dirt 5, the environments are so beautiful you will want a wider viewing angle. Prepare to spend a lot of time in the photo editor with this game. This game is clearly trying to go big with visuals, and they totally pull it off. From the hanging lanterns in Chinese levels, to the way snow piles up over the course of a race, to the fireworks at the goal line of the race or sometimes off in the distance.

Dirt 5 always had me eager to take on the next event. The feast for the eyes, but also the racing. There is generally the initial phase of the race, where you are fighting from the back of the pack to slowly battle your way to the front, then try to hold the lead once you get it. Your opponents will capitalize on your mistakes, so the arcade-style driving style does not make this game too easy. The tracks are usually pretty unpredictable, and weather makes a difference. This game probably could’ve extended game hours by making it harder, but is that always better? Haven’t you ever had nights that were better than some years of your life?

There are several different event types in this game. A little confusing as many of them just breakdown one way or another into a circuit race with other drivers. There are some nice variations though. Think you’ve mastered driving in Dirt 5? Take on a Gymkhana event, where you’ll be pulling off some crazy stunts in the popular driving style. I am a big fan of the Pathfinder events, where you drive offroad buggies up impossible terrain. It is like a combination of the popular puzzle game Getting Over It and a Dirt game. There are “sprint car” races, ice road races, and more.

Something I noticed, but never suspected about Dirt games is what good party games they make. This one is no different. While you may find the music repetitive and lacking, with party games don’t we like to put on our own music a lot? This is a great game to do that, better than previous installments honestly because you aren’t listening for audio cues from your copilot. The experience for viewers is highly entertaining due to the graphical style and also quality of visuals. It is easy to pick an event that sounds fun, and dive right in without feeling too challenged, another turn-off for previous Dirt games being sub-optimal party games: the difficulty. I keep a page of pins on my Xbox home page of great party games in case I ever have people over. Games that are either fun multiplayer or good to controller-hop. It is time I had a perfect racing game to put on this list.

You earn in-game cash by placing high in races, and can use this cash to buy new cars that are grouped by the type of race in which they are used. There are some really cool choices in here. I saved early for a Cadillac Escalade and own a couple Porsches, as well as some more conventional rally racers like Subaru. You can customize your car’s paint and some decal options.

I am having a great time with Dirt 5. I love the graphics and simplified, but high quality arcade racing style. I understand series fans’ disappointment in not getting the game they expect, but I hope they can open their eyes to what may be a limited engagement. I think they’d find fresh and unique experiences that can be the ultimate rally driving fantasy.

Photo credits: Dirt 5. Screenshots by me.

Path of Exile is a game I had watched extensively on Twitch before finally delving into it myself. The game launched clear back in 2013, and is relevant today. The graphical style pulled me in, the sound design was captivating and it just seemed so satisfying. Still, I kept away from it for some time mainly because of how complicated it looked. After finally giving it a go, although I do struggle, it is was well worth it.

Path of Exile is an action role-playing game from Grinding Gear Games. It is available, and free, on Xbox, PlayStation and PC. And for a free game, it has an enormous amount of depth. Randomly generated loot, levels and enemies, six starting classes each with their own massively branching skill trees which radically change your playing style, a myriad of ways to craft and a host of endgame content so significant many players say the game doesn’t start until endgame. There is a lot to keep you coming back to this game.

The crafting system is highly complex. Items you equip have gem slots. These can be altered, along with your equipment itself, by various types of orbs. When you fill a gem slot, it provides an active or passive ability which may pull from mana, which you have in addition to health and shields possible for either. These gems can be upgraded by being equipped, and you will find the gemstone abilities tie into skill tree advancements heavily. To the point, most players strongly urge looking into a character build guide BEFORE playing this game. I did not do this, and my experience was mixed in this regard.

I started as the “Witch” class and beat the game at level 69 out of 90. I died, I would guess, around a hundred times. The penalties for death are losing 10% of your current experience and having to respawn at a checkpoint or town. So, not the end of the world. Bosses will even stay at the health they were at when you come back, which means even though it might feel like it, nothing is unbeatable in this game.

My initial character build was centered around having minions fight for me. This means zombies, phantasms, a golem and a powerful skeleton army. By the end, I could have close to forty minions on the field, while I just ran around dodging attacks and casting the occasional fireball.

Even with this massive minion army and my fireballs, my survivability was ultimately not strong enough for endgame serious feasibility. This really disappointed me. I wanted to play endlessly. Looking into a build guide could’ve been a good idea had I known how much I was going to enjoy playing. For now, I will settle for starting a second character.

Be prepared to watch some videos or do some reading on this game if you decide to get into it. While the game itself is easy to consume say an hour at a time, (I did quite a bit more,) the background knowledge that will help you is immense. Path of Exile is all about minimizing your weaknesses and maximizing your strengths. Getting it right is highly rewarding, like everything in this game. Incredibly satisfying.

It has been a while since I have played a game this addicting. Path of Exile is very unique and sets itself apart with details. The story is dark and gothic, and takes you across 10 acts followed by the endless epilogue. It is average storytelling, but holds the game together well with riveting atmosphere. Even the music is engaging.

About every three months, GGG releases a new “League” that changes the game in some new way. These persist, so you can always check out old League stuff. Some of these are more interesting than others, what makes a lot of rewards, for anything, more interesting is that your stash persists between characters.

I imagine I will end up trying all the character types at some point. Once you know the story, this is a great game to listen to some music or a podcast while kicking back and enjoying. Most character builds are somewhat reductive, due to the min-maxing style, so you can really get into a groove and enjoy some hours of this game and let the time fly by.

Although Path of Exile is free to play, there are things you can pay for, and will want to for a couple reasons. First, the stash upgrades are huge for maintaining several characters. Second, you will just want to pay GGG for making this sublime game free to enjoy for all. Word is that not only is Path of Exile content going to keep coming, but a sequel may very well be in the early works. Exciting news to many who enjoy this game.

There is a wide community for this game. A random player offered a trade with me when I was an early Witch and gave me a rare chest item which bolstered me greatly without asking for anything in return. As I said, I frequent Twitch streams of the game and there is always some complete human almanac of this game in chat that can answer your question as well as any Google search. There is actually a great app many will recommend called Path of Building which will help you make build predictions and things like that, as well as trade sites where you can buy and sell items. Some of these items can be enormously helpful to gain if you are a serious player of this game.

For me, I will likely continue to enjoy making new builds in this game until I reach a point where I feel compelled to look into a build guide, which I just may do for one build I started but scrapped early when it became troublesome. It would really open up when I could use an advanced skill gem that is too high level right now. But, if you want a fantastic, deep, FREE action RPG look no further than Path of Exile.

To uptake the crown held by Need by Speed 3: Hot Pursuit in 1998, and 2002’s Hot Pursuit 2, the 2010 reiteration Hot Pursuit had big shoes to fill. It was the first Need for Speed game made by Burnout developers Criterion. And did they ever deliver on the promise. The 2020 remaster redresses the game with enhancements for next-gen.

At first, I think a lot of players get thrown by this game because the handbrake is only used for emergency situations. All slowing for turns and drift initiation should be done with the normal brake and pumping the gas. Once you get used to this, the gameplay is highly addictive. High speeds feel fast, chases feel thrilling and wins are satisfying.

The lack of tuning also may turn some players off, the cars are as they come, but I found this refreshing. It was fun to feel more like I was unleashing these monsters of machines upon the fictional Seacrest County, not some Frankenstein souped-up version of them.

Seacrest County features woods, desert, snow-capped mountains and everything in between. There are plenty of roadside sights like mountains, vegetation and observatories, for example.

Which brings me to my next, and very important point. The 2020 Remastered version of this game is gorgeous. There is a built-in photo mode, and as foolish as it is to take your hands off the wheel, I often couldn’t resist popping out for a breathtaking photo. The cars look fantastic, as do the roads and much of the environment. Especially at high speeds.

I never got a chance to play this game in 2010, so after my Need for Speed Heat review, I had an insatiable itch for games of the type. So, I picked up Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered shortly after Christmas with an Xbox gift card I got from my brother. Thanks, bro!

I am about thirty hours deep into the game. There is no story. You play two campaign trajectories: Cop and Racer. They do not affect one another. Level up by getting medals in events to unlock cars, better pursuit equipment and events. There are several types of events, including time trials to standard races to the dreaded “Gauntlet,” where you survive a barrage of cops to reach a destination in one piece, to “Hot Pursuits,” both as Cop and Racer, in which you either race while outrunning cops who come equipped with pursuit equipment and so do you, or the opposite where you are the cop in the same scenario.

This game has a well-executed difficulty curve. I am about level 12 out of 20, and while I have unlocked many of the events, there are still those I have yet to receive a gold medal, and other content to unlock as well. Recently, a car decal wrap editor was added. This is very exciting, as we can now deck out our rides with custom looks we can take racing online, but not trading them online. There is even a built-in system for reporting offensive decals.

Hot Pursuit does the “arcade” racing genre proud. I can almost feel myself joyfully putting fresh quarters in my Xbox as I start the same Hot Pursuit over for the fifth time. At times this can be rage-inducing, but generally it is a good time. Especially if you can accept not always finishing first, you’ll rank up faster and unlock better cars and pursuit tech if you can accept a few silver or bronze medals and just take the experience points you get for placing on the podium and for skills you performed during the race.

The simplistic control scheme makes the game accessible and levels the playing field. There is an advantage to knowing the game, however. You can master the delicacies of driving and drifting, and also learn the shortcuts, alternate routes and which is which. If I played this in an actual arcade, you can bet I would be spending a lot of time and quarters there.

The soundtrack is as good today as it must have been in the day. Lupe Fiasco proves his timelessness as a rapper, MIA’s “Born Free” is featured and there are various other genres as well including Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Weezer and Bad Religion. (Last one is a personal favorite.) There is also an original score for some events.

Wins are extremely satisfying in this game. For me, they almost always came certainly with a fist pump and a “Let’s go!” Whether it is your first or seventh attempt at an event, pulling it off can be truly epic feats. In a Hot Pursuit, you had to dodge/connect with every tool imaginable while also competing with the traffic, road conditions and other racers. Sometimes I have crossed the finish line as a racer with a sliver of a life bar so small it was invisible. But a medal is a medal, so again, if you fought for it, take it!

Another reason wins can be epic is the AI is very tight. Rubber-banding seems generally fair. I did a race which lasted over nine minutes, and fought between second and sixth place the whole marathon distance. Until the very end, when I fought in the last mile for first and won by two car lengths. The second longest race in the game, which truly had my heart pumping throughout as I dodged crashes that would’ve spoiled my attempt and force more restarts. I only regret not taking my pulse throughout this race.

The chases in this game are second to none. Cop or racer, they give you upgradeable pursuit equipment to even the odds and get you to your objective. As you race on tracks, once you reach the end of the track as a racer or a cop, the event is over. Everybody just goes home once the finish line is crossed in Seacrest County, I guess. No wonder their street racing scene is out of control!

After playing Heat, this is a very different experience. To be clear, the lovable, joyously addicting arcade approach to racing games is persistent, but the execution is different. It also is a sign of evolution in the series. The open world style of Heat is adored by many Need for Speed die hard fans, while the limited courses of Hot Pursuit hearken back to an even older generation. Instead of driving from event to event, you simply take one on from the menu. So yes, the remaster feels a little dated. But, it is still so fun and the fresh coat of paint looks so good on it I would say it is definitely worth picking up if you’re an arcade racing game fan.

Screen credits: Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered. Captures by me.

The latest installment in the Need for Speed series makes one thing very clear from the outset: when you are illegally street racing at night in the fictitious Florida city of Palm City, it is life and death. If the breakneck turns don’t kill you, the cutthroat corrupt cops just might.

Welcome to Need for Speed: Heat, released in 2019, anonymous out-of-town racer. You will have your choice of a few starter cars, and choose wisely, you may be relying on it for a long time. Even when my ’65 Mustang wasn’t a viable street racer anymore, I converted it to an off-road vehicle because being so upgraded as it was it made for a better rally racer than any other option I saw.

This game was a lot of fun for me. A lot of times, I have so much latent anxiety it is hard to commit myself to playing a game. But, I found Heat so addictive and joyous I binged the whole thing in under a week. It fostered such a fantastic passion for play with edge-of-your-seat thrills. It was not a perfect experience. The enemy AI was a bit unfair at times, there are a few bugs, and some other minor issues like repetitive and uninspiring music. (Although I almost can’t complain about the music, as I love a game that lets me turn off game music and put on a record as I play. )

I played the whole game on “Medium” difficulty, out of Easy, Medium and Hard. This was a consistent challenge that really pushed me to get better at the game and grind away to unlock parts and cars. When leaving your garage in Heat, you select Day or Night. During the day, you race or drift on closed tracks for cash. At night, you compete for experience to unlock cars and parts to buy, and you also are up against police and traffic as nighttime is illegal street racing.

I beat the game in about thirty hours. It was quite addictive, as I did the whole stretch over five days of playing every day. My internet has been out, you see, so I cannot do my job and I had just downloaded the game before the internet failed. I thought at least I could get a blog out of it.

Those thirty hours were gleefully spent. What compelled me to play the game was, first, it was available as EA Play is now part of Xbox Game Pass. Second, I have loved the Need for Speed games since the original PlayStation days. I thought back on all my joys playing racing games of old, in particular 2013’s Need for Speed Rivals. A game where I made great memories, probably my favorite Need for Speed of all time. Heat is a slightly different experience. The arcade style racing was very much still there, as were a taste of the cop chases you would experience in Rivals.

The learning curve of this game is solid all the way to the end, and into endgame. More on endgame in a moment. The ability to tap then slam the gas to drift into turns is an ability that is both fresh, fun and difficult to master. The handbrake is still there, and at times favorable. As your cars get faster and faster, they become more difficult to control as well at these high speeds. Off-roading and drifting provide unique challenges with depth.

You as a racer have a Reputation level, and your individual cars have numerical grade levels. Reputation is not helpful to accomplishing goals besides unlocking new races, cars and parts. As far as car grade goes, you always want to be as far above the recommended level as possible. I found at least 20 points ahead was very helpful.

The story does nothing to astonish, but honestly what do we want from a Need for Speed game? The fact that it even has a coherent story is remarkable. The ending even left me with complex emotions. The sheer joys of the final mission, one of the many in this game in which a good performance is enormously satisfying, the catharsis of seeing some closure to the story but the game leaves you with a right hook. Don’t worry, you can keep racing after the final campaign mission.

The customization is everything I want from Need for Speed. Underbody lights for cars, colored tire smoke and more, tons of decal options, custom body kit parts, upgrading performance parts from motor parts and swaps to chassis upgrades and both a passive and active ability, and a bevy of character creation options. A pre-Covid game, it predicted we might want some masks for our racer. Like I said with my offroad Mustang, cars can be tuned to different performances, offroad and on-road, by racing and drift. Somewhere on that 2×2 grid is where your car falls.

There is a host of endgame content. Characters to interact with, races and drift events, both day and night, cars to buy, collectibles and challenges. Old races get upgraded to higher difficulty throughout the game and you often find yourself grinding the same races over and over again. This would be more fun if it kept track of course times for you to compare. Police chases are too difficult to be much fun, but this may change as I proceed through endgame content. You can play to Reputation level 50. I was 31 when I beat the main campaign.

I will likely continue to play to see if police chases become more fun. Chases go up to heat level 5, which includes a helicopter, spike strips, police sports and super cars, and armored trucks designed to collide head-on. At heat level 3 is when they really start combing the area for you and you should get to a garage immediately, before you lose almost all the Reputation you’ve earned over the night, and a grip of your cash even if you haven’t earned any over the night. They take from your savings for that one. It is best to avoid cops if at all possible.

Overall, I highly recommend this game to anybody who likes arcade style racers. I may go back to EA Play and download Need for Speed Payback, a 2017 game, after enjoying Heat as much as I have. Although I will stick to Heat for a while into endgame I’m sure.

Here’s roughly my experience with Rage: I played the first game repeatedly, loved it, read the novelization, which reveals a lot more as the story to the first game is not very significant in itself, and I have the comic which tells some details of characters, locations, and events in the series. So, when Rage 2 came on Xbox Game Pass, I was beyond thrilled.

So, the obvious question is how does Rage 2 stack up? Formidably. I must say, I really enjoyed the experience. Yes, it was a bit simple, but it did what it did right so good it kind of overshadowed the flaws.

There is a lot to this game that only hardcore fans will appreciate, which is an enormous gamble, as the first game received a mediocre reception. And I think that’s being generous even. Not because the first game was bad, but because gamers wanted other things at the time. Like the main villain of this game, General Cross, is a character only people who read the book would know, and understand how he could become so powerful.

The game is a post-apocalypse caused by a major asteroid impact. Humanity knew about the impact ahead of time, and prepared survival arks filled with top people and technology and resources to restart humanity. Well, some humanity survived doomsday, some mutated into horrible monsters, and arks came up over time. On the eve of doomsday, when the arks were being put underground, General Cross started taking people out of arks who were deemed necessary to humanity and started filling it with his people. Military brass, scientists, and soldiers. These people come to hunt down arks, and anything attached to them, and once the survivors are useless they are killed. These marauders come to be known as the Authority. They have all the power, as much as anyone has power in the wasteland, and their technology is advanced and they are a very formidable force.

At the end of the first game, you raise all the arks. Between the first and second game there is a war which seemingly ends the Authority, but as we see in the intro to Rage 2, they are anything but defeated. They’ve continued their mutant experiments from the first game and comic, to terrifying lengths.

So, its your job, new character to the story, to take them out. You do this by assembling a project built by arkists and important anti-Authoritarians from the first game. I’d love to go deeper into the story and tell you about the ending, but I have no idea how it ends. Not that I didn’t have time to play it before this review, I honestly hoped on starting a New Game + after beating it. But, the last mission won’t trigger for me. It is a glitch, which I have read online some others have had, and had success reinstalling the game. this, tragically, did not work for me. Now, this game crashed at least every couple hours of play, so I can’t say I’m surprised, but after being this invested in the story, I would really enjoy experiencing the ending of this game! (Exclamation point in place of expletives.)

The game had other problems besides being buggy. You use the same three guns the entire time. There are other guns, but the ones I have come across have been laughably useless. The revolver that, instead of using the left trigger to aim and be powerful and useful, you use the left trigger to detonate already fired rounds. Why don’t they just detonate on impact? What possible advantage could this serve? Just get rid of the incendiary mess altogether and let me aim an actually powerful revolver! I already have a pistol from the start of the game I haven’t used since, but you allow me to spend resource points to upgrade it, which is almost adorably stupid. I put all my points into the holy trinity: assault rifle, shotgun, rocket launcher. And I suppose I was satisfied, upgrading them gave them perks and increased damage. So you don’t EXACTLY use the SAME three guns the whole time.

Let’s talk about the good points of this game. First of all, gunplay is amazing. Exciting and challenging. It is satisfying to see enemy armor shatter, and also this effect is useful to have a visual effect to help you know their armor is broken, because while the hit reticle turns from yellow to red when you go from hitting armor to flesh, that only helps when you’re shooting them. This game doesn’t have health bars for most enemies, although tougher ones will. So, seeing the armor basically explode off the person in pieces is a cool way of letting you know what is up. There is also a handy red skull that appears on the reticle when an enemy has been killed.

The vehicles weren’t as fun as the first game, partially because I wasn’t blown away by the graphics the way I was the first game, seeing scenery and such, and in the original most of the driving you did was racing. But, you unlock a flying vehicle at one point in the game which trivializes travel. I will say however, there are roaming convoys you can engage in vehicle combat with, and this is really fun, even if it is really hard. Easier if you upgrade your attack vehicle, but until then it is hard to come by auto parts to upgrade.

Speaking of resources, there are a lot in this game. Different currencies you can use to do different things. Money, obviously, buys you things at stores. There are different upgrade currencies depending what you’re trying to upgrade. Resources are scarce enough to motivate you to do as many side missions as possible. Which, honestly I was fine with because they were fun. Doing different mission objective types earns you loyalty points with different people which benefits you.

You have unlockable superpowers in this game. These are a lot of fun, and you definitely want all of them. They make you much stronger. And all powers are super upgradeable. Like everything else. Powers include throwing singularities that draw in enemies, a barrier you can place, a dash, to a defibrillator so you don’t just die when your health reaches zero, (all abilities have cooldowns.) Those are just some powers.

Rage 2 faithfully carries on the spirit of the Rage universe, while innovating in exciting ways. I always thought about how the nanomachines from the first game that only heal you, could be made to do crazy things, as they do in this game. Although most of your powers seem to flow through the suit you wear in Rage 2. I liked the characters they brought back, and General Cross is a great villain as are the Authority, but you fight other factions. Three essentially, if you count mutants. None of them really have much to say besides the Authority. The story feels like its a bit more campy and over-the-top, but its refreshing in a way. This game plays a lot like the new Doom, (2016,) and is from the same publishers. If you have the DLC, the BFG from Doom is even unlockable in Rage 2.

Final word: I am really upset I can’t start a New Game + in a series I am deeply invested in, especially since I was having such a good time. Bugs pretty much killed this game, which is a terrible shame. I suspect it got rushed onto shelves when it’s existence got leaked during development. This game also wasn’t developed by a different company than the original, which is very much present in other ways, but I’m not sure if this is one of them.

I realize Overdue Review is an overdone segment on this blog, but I have tried to only do games that are still relevant. They’re games that are still popular, and often are still expanding with new content. Elder Scrolls Online is one of those. Again, this is available now on Xbox Game Pass. And worth playing, if you can get it on a great sale. I wasn’t blown away with this game by any means, but I do find it entertaining.

Elder Scrolls is an extremely popular fantasy franchise that started in 1994 with the roughly conceptual game “Arena.” Since then, it has become monstrously successful, the fifth iteration, “Skyrim,” being ported to just about every imaginable platform. It has always been a solitary experience, until Elder Scrolls Online came out in 2014.

If you’ve played Elder Scrolls, it’ll mostly help you with dialogues with NPCs, crafting, and understanding the lore. And if you like Elder Scrolls lore, like I do, there’s a good chance you’ll like this game. It has deep, rich legends to everything, and lots of books and such about to read and enhance your grasp of the world. The story is quite good, if you can keep track of the players involved.

The typical Elder Scrolls races are divided up into three factions, each faction with unique quest lines. You still all play the same main story, but side quests are different and you explore different worlds. Picking your beginning character class is very important, you have choices of how to spend your skill points, but you’re confined to the skill trees of your character class and race. I have tried all the classes, and my favorite so far is my Argonian templar, which is a paladin-like class. I do a lot of major healing, but I also wear heavy armor, which typically isn’t spellcaster armor, but this is of benefit because I dont have a tank who I can play with on the regular.

There are several expansions to the base game, but the base game alone will net you a lot of play, especially if you experiment with classes as I have. I hate giving a score to a game, because I don’t think it is a good representation of what is typically a complex work of art. But like I said at the beginning, this is a game I would only get on a good sale. If that helps. Worth playing, but don’t waste your money. The graphics are not the best, especially skill effects leave a lot to be desired, the leveling system is somewhat mundane, and there are a lot of things which are just unclear about game mechanics.

UPDATE: If you read my Rage 2 review, the short version is: great game, but Bethesda let a game be released so buggy i could not beat it. A hard-lock bug happened to me on my playthrough of ESO as well! Unbelievable. So disappointing.