Rage 2 & Absolute Drift Free On Epic

Monday, I didn’t have any stress or last-minute news. Tuesday, I was thrown into the deep end and wrote about the PS5’s DualSense possibly being “Defective,” Lisa spoke of taking all you could eat out of OverCooked!, and I returned to detail enhancements of Metro Exodus‘ next-gen and PC editions. Wednesday, I spoke of what came and what is coming to Xbox Game Pass this February, while Taylor spoke of Nintendo’s latest Direct coming later that day. David also spoke of the latest Civ VI update, and I’d spoken of System Shock 2 becoming a fully-playable VR game. Thursday hit and noted the FPS boost coming to select titles on the Xbox Series X/S, while Aaron covered his first conference with the Nintendo Direct.

Onto this week’s free games on the Epic Games Store, and a bit of a more general opinion than usual. Normally I’d play about two hours of each, but something was up and Epic wouldn’t load properly when I tried. Plus, I’m a bit too busy this week to sit around on this one. Though luckily they are both games that I’ve got a good enough idea on anyway, not to mention I am good at that whole generalized opinion that no one really listens to anyway. The smaller of the pair of games this week is Funselektor Labs’ Absolute Drift: Zen Edition, a game clearly about baking cakes for the civil parish fair. No, it is about cars going sideways as they take corners.

I played Funselektor’s latest car-based game just two months ago, with that one being fairly Rally-based. You can see straight away where it all came from, as the two are fairly similar: Top-down view, music I’d never subscribe to listening to daily, a driving style that is impossible to master, and a lot of moments that make you want to swear as you spin out uncontrollably. The latter possibly being because I decided to use the keyboard controls instead of plugging the Xbox One controller in. A keyboard can do a number of great things, but being less binary is not one. Throttle control is not something you can have command over when all it knows is: Go! or Not Go! with nothing in between.

The second game is the sequel to 2010’s very PS3/Xbox 360-era game, Rage. I played Rage (2010) not long before the release of Rage 2, and it wasn’t the best endorsement to a sequel that could have been; Grey-brown covered in dust, and I’d have to go in and shoot the place up/have a punch up. I’d rather play 2015’s Mad Max because it was that with proper car-combat, a photo mode, and has an impact. The sequel (Rage 2) has that air of Borderlands Syndrome, adding color and over-exaggerated characters to an otherwise similarly grey game. For some, that’s fine, but for me, I don’t get it. Also, I never want Andrew W.K at E3 ever again, thank you!

All this week, you can pick up both Absolute Drift: Zen Edition and Rage 2 for free on the Epic Games Store until the morning of Thursday, the 25th of February. Then we’ll be replacing these two with Sunless Sea, an RPG about nautical nightmares and dying… so that’s fun! Next week, I’ll be hiding under the bed; Not because of the nautical nightmares, I’m just tired of this week’s stress and want the quiet.