Some helpful tips and tricks, plus a loadout to get you through your first rage mode playthrough.
Game Introduction
Hello there! This guide will teach you some essential techniques and provide you with a powerful loadout to take on the game in Rage Mode.
The Basics
If you follow these basic rules, you will survive and even breeze through the easier levels in the game, although due to the ridiculous AI on this difficulty, you may still need to use some trial and error on the more difficult levels, as it’s simply impossible to beat them on your first try without some practice.
1. Slide as much as possible. – This one is absolutely essential, slide whenever possible as it allows you to dodge a significant amount of enemy fire, be sure to bind the slide button to a key that is comfortable for you to spam as you will be sliding every time you come out of a slide and you will basically be sliding the entire game. In order to keep up with the sliding, you will need to chain enemy kills together to keep your stamina up, which brings us to rule #2.
2. Use your stealth. – When you run out of stamina or focus, use your cloak to sneak up on some unsuspecting enemies to regenerate your focus and stamina, you can also use the cloak to reload and avoid taking unnecessary damage. The cloak also allows you to quickly reposition yourself when under heavy fire. Picking off enemies before the fight begins can also tip the odds in your favor.
3. Use the grenade launcher. – Later in this guide I will talk about using homing rounds on the grenade launcher and this is crucial in rage mode to allow you to generate focus from cover or from a safe distance, this is because you can just fire into the air and the grenades will lock onto an enemy giving you a kill which will regenerate your focus allowing you to get back into the action sliding around with shotguns.
4. Don’t use incendiary rounds. – On Rage Mode, incendiary rounds are a quick way to kill yourself and cause frustration, on lower difficulties they are fun to use, but since enemy bodies burn after they die, it will prevent you from sliding over enemy bodies to pick up any ammo or armor they drop, which can be the difference between living and dying. Sliding into the fire can also cause heavy damage to yourself in rage mode, and since you are moving around a lot, this is very easy to do.
5. Resupply between levels. – Make sure you have maximum ammo, armor, and grenades before getting into the helicopter as you will need every little advantage you can get.
6. Don’t try Rage Mode on your first playthrough. – It’s not worth it because you won’t have unlocked the dual wield serum or the attachments that are most useful on this difficulty. You’ll also lack the game knowledge and skill, so I think it’s best to save that for your 2nd playthrough. On the 2nd playthrough you can also play the levels out of order, which means you can tackle the hardest ones whenever you want, which means it’s less frustrating.
7. Be patient and take breaks. – This has more to do with not getting annoyed with the game. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, so take some time to relax between beating levels.
The Loadout
In order to take on the game in rage mode, we need a loadout that not only allows us to take down enemies quickly, but also allows us to regain our focus and safely take down stronger units. This brings us to the two weapons we will be using.
1. The Shotgun – The Shotgun is by far the most useful weapon in the game as it does significant damage without burning through ammo, as the game encourages aggressive play and there are not many maps that require long range combat this weapon is perfect as we can quickly take out enemies while sneaking past them and in focus mode we only have to spend a small amount of focus to line up a shot or two saving us valuable amounts of time in focus mode. The attachments for the shotgun we will be using are the choke and we will leave the stock folded. This will allow for more accuracy in medium range encounters and the folded stock will allow us to reload faster which is invaluable on the higher difficulty levels.
2. Grenade Launcher – The grenade launcher is incredibly useful in rage mode as it can be equipped with a homing attachment that will automatically lock grenades onto enemies. This means that if we lose focus, we can fire the launcher from cover or after repositioning with stealth to get a kill that will regain our focus without putting us in the enemy’s line of fire. We can also use the launcher to attack juggernauts or boss enemies while staying at a safe distance.
Finally for our grenades we will be using the rat grenades as they move around the floor and lock onto enemies that come near them, this again allows us to get quick kills while maintaining our speed and safety as you can throw these without being very accurate and still pick up some easy kills.
Calling for Backup
Most of the side missions have supply crates where you can buy weapons and armor, but you may not have noticed that you can also buy TF27 squads to assist you. If you scroll down to the bottom of the menu, there are various units you can call in, from recon units (the cheapest) to smartgun units (the most expensive). I would highly recommend using these whenever possible as the friendly AI can make incredibly frustrating stages a lot easier. They help a lot on wave-based maps, as fighting 30-40 enemies solo is incredibly difficult, whereas with friendly AI killing them, it becomes much easier. You can also use the grenade launcher or grenades to kill enemies without getting in the line of fire, which in combination with these units can make some missions much easier.
The Patriarch
The Patriarch boss in Jorvik Castle is a particularly frustrating boss to fight in Rage mode. Mainly due to the fact that by this point in the level you may be running low on supplies and the boss will spawn minions between you that will damage him, but take solace in the fact that there is an autosave between the three stages of the boss fight.
When fighting the Patriarch it is worth picking up the bolt launcher, which is on the ground with a bunch of other weapons when you enter the arena, I would recommend having both the shotgun and the bolt launcher for this. Use the cloak to get close to the Patriarch, then fire a burst from the bolt launcher at him and quickly back away from him, rinse and repeat and use focus if you can and it should make the fight a lot easier.
If the Patriarch spawns in the thugs between fights, use the shotgun or your backup weapon to save ammo for the bolt launcher. When the Patriarch returns, repeat the same steps as before.
On the third wave of the fight a meat golem will spawn, just ignore it and dodge it and focus on the patriarch, you don’t need to kill the golem to beat the boss. Spend all your resources on this fight as it’s the last encounter of the level.
Horizon HQ/The Final Battle
For the most part, Horizon HQ is a straightforward level considering it is the last one, but the final battle can be particularly difficult as you are under time constraints while trying to prevent the brain upload.
To make this fight easier, try to take out the first few enemies of each wave as they rope down from the helicopter onto the roof. Also destroy the brains as quickly as possible, the game will autosave between each wave, so if you destroy the brain quickly and clear the enemies, you can make it through the first few waves with relative ease.
When the five or six brains appear at once, this is the penultimate stage of the battle. Make sure to ambush the helicopters as they come in and once again make your way around the brains as quickly as possible and destroy them. Once you have destroyed the brains you will be prompted to pick up some breaching charges, do not do this until you have cleared the roof of enemies as picking up the charges will spawn the helicopter which is the final battle.
Once you’ve cleared the roof of enemies you can just fight the helicopter on your own, you should do this as there is no autosave between the last wave and the helicopter. Be sure to pick up a minigun from one of the dead soldiers before activating the helicopter fight. This is because if you go into focus with the minigun, you can basically shoot the heli down before it even has a chance to do any damage to you.
CONGRATULATIONS!
If you’ve made it this far then hopefully you have managed to beat rage mode! Congratulations!
After the final battle and finishing Horizon HQ the achievement should pop, there is no need to play the epilogue on rage mode, after the achievement pops you can safely lower the difficulty for the epilogue.
