Gears of War 2 Review - Xbox 360

The original Gears of War combined a polished cover system, visuals that were perfect for showing off an entertainment system to your friends, and a lean towards cooperative gameplay that made gamers happy, and Microsoft even happier.  Does Gears of War 2 improve on the original significantly, or is it indeed, Gears 1.5?

Let’s just say I hope you’ve set aside 60 of your crazy-gaming-holiday-bucks...

Once Upon A Time

There is a movement of late to give first-person shooters deeper stories, and characters that are developed enough for you to establish an emotional connection.  Now, a nice story can’t make a bad game good, but write one for a great game and you have an amazing experience on your hands.  Gears of War 2 takes a shot at this and hits... mostly.

Two elements that really humanize the beefcakes in Gears 2 are the relationship between Marcus and Dom, and Dom’s quest to find his wife Maria, who has been missing for quite some time (The keen observer may remember Dom asking the stranded, Franklin, in Gears 1, if he had heard anything about Maria.).  At the very least, they make the cut scenes more engrossing, and at best, they give you good reason to separate Locust heads from Locust bodies.  Another fun moment is Chairman Prescott’s rousing speech.  If this Independence-Day-style President’s speech doesn’t make you want to get into the action, then you may not have a soul.  Locust Lover!

While a marked improvement of Gears 1 in this respect, the story of Gears 2 isn’t quite batting a thousand.  Bundled with getting better acquainted with our heroes, comes a series of plot twists and story elements that come out of nowhere, go unresolved, and actually leave you wondering if you did much more than survive by the end of the game.  If this were a novel, this would be a bigger deal than it is, but this is not a novel.  It is a game... whose inhabitants cut each other in half with chainsaws that are attached to automatic weapons.  Rather than knocking it for not having a perfect story, I praise it for the moments that it gets right.

Gears?  How ‘bout GEARS!

Gears 2 is bigger in just about every imaginable way to its predecessor.  The Campaign has been beefed up to a 10 – 12 hour affair, depending on what your modus operandi is, and the scope of the conflict has been ramped up as well.  More Gears, more weapons, more bad guys.  Remember the Brumak?  The big beastie that made a brief appearance in Gears 1, but wasn’t actually in the game until the PC version came out?  Pshaw.  Brumak’s are now a dime-a-dozen.  No less fearsome unfortunately, just more common.  The other new Locust units are a lot of fun as well.  There’s the Kantus Priests who can knock you down with their screams, the creepy crawly Tickers, the Bloodmounts that some Grubs ride into battle now, and more Boomers than 31 Flavors has... well, you know.

Epic manages to expand on their vision of Destroyed Beauty with a refreshing variety of environments, and - yes, hard to believe - color palettes.  It is a strange thing seeing Gears of War in blue.  Claustrophobic passages, massive caverns, and even a quaint snow hamlet are just a few of the settings you’ll traverse.  The stay-in-the-light sequence from Gears is gone, as are the Pitch-Black-esque Kryll, replaced by a new environmental feature called Razorhail.  This stuff is pretty self explanatory.  Don’t be outside when it starts coming down...

The new weapons present all sorts of wonderful possibilities: poisonous Ink Grenades, the mortar, the automatic Gorgon Pistol, the Mulcher chain-gun.  The flamethrower is one of the best video-game flamethrowers ever due in part to its crazy fire and the way your targets start to heat up and fracture when you turn it on them.  A tiny feature that is a game-changer is the ability to tag grenades against surfaces to create Gears-y claymores.  These will be your best friend when your teammates have been eliminated and you’re wishing you had eyes in the back of your head.

Remember the driving sequence in Gears 1?  Cruising around shining a giant flashlight at the angry bats?  There is more driving in Gears 2.  Now before you start groaning, the frustrating driving has had its frustrating-ness turned down a bit. In fact, both driving sequences in the game are actually not too difficult.  However, the on-rails shooting sequences can be a drag especially if you’ve got the difficulty turned up to a point where the rest of the game is challenging for you.  A co-op partner is a huge asset here.

Overall the campaign is beautiful, well put together, and truly enjoyable.  This game was meant to played with a buddy in co-op mode, so if it all possible, grab a wingman and teach those filthy Locust a lesson together.

Speaking Of Wingmen...

The area where Gears of War 2 is positively brilliant is the multiplayer.  Epic has taken what was the skeleton of a great competitive-online game, and fleshed it out to the point where it can stand on its own in the pantheon of great multiplayer action games. Not only has the lobby size increased from 8 players to 10, Epic has added a party / matchmaking system.  No more having to reassemble your jolly band of pirates between matches.  And those without a jolly band make up the group of people that demanded the second-most-asked-for-feature - Bots.

You can play any of the competitive gametypes with a lobby full of AI drones if you wish.  You can choose the bot’s difficulty, which essentially raises or lowers their stats.  This, in conjunction with the Training Grounds multiplayer tutorial, is a great way to practice with those power weapons that you may not pick up so often online.

There are a host of subtle tweaks that Gears of War 2 presents in its multiplayer package.  The cover system has been reworked to be more intuitive, and reduce the grabbed-the-wrong-wall mishaps.  It still happens, but the difference is noticeable if you go back and forth between the old and the new game.  Stopping power has been added so that bullet hits slow opponents slightly.  This is mostly noticeable when you attempt to roll towards a target with intent to shotgun him or her.  If your target opens up a spray of fire, your roll will come up shorter than expected.  Which means your shotgun blast may not splatter your target.  Which means you are more than likely going to be dead.  Not to worry though.  The new death-cameras are fun, and the free-flying ‘ghost cam’ allows you to view the survivor’s action from any angle, and even take screenshots, which are scored, and can then be uploaded to www.gearsofwar.com.

At launch, Gears of War 2 ships with 10 maps, and each new copy of the game comes with a code to download jazzed-up versions of Canals, Gridlock, Mansion, Subway, and Tyro Station from Gears 1. The game modes from the original Gears return including the PC’s King of the Hill.  Guardian (the VIP gametype) has received a significant overhaul.  The goal is to wipeout the opposing team, the catch is that as long as each team’s VIP has a pulse, their team has unlimited respawns.  New gametypes include Wingman, where up to five 2-man teams vie for victory, and Submission, a capture the flag variant, except the flag is an AI character who is armed and doesn’t want to be captured.  Oh yeah, and there’s Horde.

What is the deal with this Horde mode that everyone is going on about?  The deal is that it is a killer good time.  Horde mode is a co-op mode where you and up to four friends take on waves of AI Locust, in an attempt to either get to the 50th wave, a high score, or both.  The horde’s numbers increase as well as the caliber of unit through a 10 wave cycle.  In other words, wave 10 features Bloodmounts, Theron Guards, Boomers, etc...  At wave 11, you go back to a basic enemy lineup, but they have increased stats.  By wave 50, facing enemies whose accuracy, health, and damage are all multiplied by 2.5 creates a nerve-wracking confrontation.

Back into Battle

Having expanded on their previous game in every way, Epic has a real gem on their hands.  The deeper story and amazing visuals will pull you deeper into the Gears universe (Gearsiverse?), and the expansive multiplayer options will not make leaving easy.  Exceeding already lofty expectations, Gears of War 2 raises the bar a notch for action games this holiday season, and that is no small feat.  If you don’t have an Xbox 360 yet, Gears of War 2 is as good a reason as any to compose a short letter to Santa.

Article by: Mr. Sark