Paradox Designs

Gears of War 2 is a great game. Its a sequel to one of the classic games of the Xbox360, a game that filled the hole between Halo 2 and 3 for many people. Gears 2 is very fun, very pretty, and very different than the first one. The new engine makes things look gorgeous, but the multiplayer has fairly large flaws. The campaign is quite fun, and has lots of replay value.

The Game itself

Gears 2 brings a lot in the way of High Res games. The updated Unreal engine adds many new effects, and these add to the realism of the game. The enviornment is even more photo realistic, with some of my friends pausing and asking what movie I was watching during the cutscenes. The levels are large, and full of beauty. Elements in each level, such as trees, windows, fences, etc, are all destructable, at least mildly so^[1]. The lighting and weather elements add a beautiful realism. In one level, you can even be hurt by the weather, which adds for an interesting gameplay mechanic. Also, the playable characters are affected by the surrounding, for example, becoming covered in blood causes them to turn red, etc.

In addition to visual flair, many other small new features are useful, and sometimes, I wonder, how did i ever get on without them. One such feature is the new Achievement tracker. Throughout the game, when you preform actions that must be repeated a certain number of times, or you must do a certain number of unique actions, little notices will pop up in the right hand side of the screen. These have the achievement name, the icon, and a progress bar showing how far you are to unlocking it. This same info can be seen from the menu-based War Journal. This is a boon for achievement hunters. The Whats Up menu is very useful. Although common to have per-game friends lists on the original Xbox, very few games on the Xbox360 make use of such a feature. Gears 2 is one of them. The Whats Up menu shows you who is online, and more importantly, who is playing GoW2. You can invite these people, either by the use of individual invites, or by an invite all button. The Invite all button sends an invite message to EVERYONE in your friends list, even those who are offline. Luckily, game invites expire at session close. When you have invited a player, an invited icon appears next to their name, useful to prevent repeat invites. Another useful option is the ability to turn off Gore and Language, making the game virtually rated T. Perfect for Lan parties with members of varying ages.

The game has a full palate of weapons, from the classic Lancer^[2], to the Hammer of Dawn^[3]. They allow you to tear through your foes in many different ways. The grenades, however, feel markedly weak, and you wont use them too often. The addition of some weapons to multiplayer, as well, feels quite dubious, and will cause many headaches.

Campain

Gears 2 campaign is a cinematic masterpiece. Picking up shortly after the first game, the new game skips over all the background, and assumes you know the story. This is to be expected. You have to fight through a number of locations, most of which you control the progress of. There are a few levels where you are riding on something, and these are more like traditional rails shooters^[4], providing bridging actions. As the game progresses, you are introduced to more weapons and areas of the game background, and you learn about the story retroactively. The final mission is very satisfying, and, although there is room for a Gears 3, you wont be left waiting at a cliffhanger. Finishing the campaign on any difficulty unlocks the Insane difficulty, which is best suited for co-op, with one person playing casual and one playing insane, that way the Casual player can revive the insane player on the numerous deaths.

Multiplayer

The Multiplayer of GoW 2 isn’t as fun as that of GoW1, likely due to multiplayer advances made since then. Halo3 and CoD4 have spoiled us all, and the slow matchmaking and lack of player profiles really seem to shine through as something from last generation. Matchmaking can be excruciatingly slow, as players can back out or quit at any time, and restart the whole process. There is no quit penalty for ingame play, and so there are quite a few quitters. Finally, the layout of the multiplayer maps and gametypes always seem to give one team a distinct advantage over the other team, be it a closer spawn to a hill or capture point, or a more strategic location closer to power weapons. The Shotgun, a weapon to be feared in the first game, is virtually useless, as Multiplayer is a constant lancer fest.

All in all, the matchmade multiplayer component is realatively poor, and will leave many people going back to Halo 3 or CoD4.

The new Multiplayer modes, such as Hoarde and Co-op, however are quite fun. Nothing beats getting a group of your buddies together and fighting through locust wave after locust wave.

Overview

Gears 2 is a very fun game, but does not seem as revolutionary as its predecessor, likely due to advances since its release. While the graphics and campaign are fabulous, the multiplayer leaves a lot to be desired.

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1. I have yet to find any ingame element that did not take damage and deform [↩]
2. The chainsaw gun [↩]
3. An overhead satellite death ray [↩]
4. Rails shooters are where the player is on a pre defined course, and merely has to concern themselves with killing everything around them. [↩]