Gears of War 2 ( 360 )

Story

If you have come to this after playing Gears of War 1 on the 360 then feel a little bit better about the series as the story is no longer a disjointed pile of mush for you to wade through wandering what the heck is going on.

Gears of War 2 is set shortly after Gears of War 1, Humans have launched a new offensive attack on the evil subterranean alien race called the “Locust” by launching a highly destructive missile into what the humans thought as their heart of their under ground tunnel system. The locust survived and continue their offensive attacks on the humans as they withdraw into their only city left standing, Jacinto, the only place where the Locust can not burrow into.

You play as Marcus Phoenix, a “COG” soldier. The remainder of the combined Human military. If you can carry a gun, then you are a COG soldier. Mr Phoenix is not someone you would want to meet in a dark alley, besides the fact he is over 6 foot tall and is wide as he is tall through sheer muscle mass, surely there would be health problems with being like that x_X; He does seem to have a policy of shoot everything that moves, steal anything that is not moving and when in doubt chainsaw it.

Along with Mr Phoenix you have Mr Dominic Santiago or “Dom”, he is there to primarily stop the Locust from killing you that bit easier, also he holds the player 2 slot when you are not playing co-op, but with GoW not playing co-op is no where near as fun as co-op can be. He does have some very forced character development and one moment in particular makes no sense what so ever.  Expect him to have all the “Must do something that is not in the main story line and really shouldn’t be there” moments.

You have to fight the Locust out of the last Human haven and to crush them once and for all….well sadly as this is a trilogy, the story will not finish at the end of the game. So yeah expect a semi-halo 2 like ending.

Sorry for the flash, it made my camera behave itself

Gameplay

There is no surprises here really, if you played GoW then you know what to expect in GoW2, same control layout, nearly same weapons, looks roughly the same and the AI will make you want to kill something.
Though I will admit the AI is surprisingly better in combat, they will no longer rush head long into enemy cannon fire in a straight line….yeah that was kind of bad. To ease the pain of dying a lot in single player you now have a chance to fall to your knees and crawl about for a bit when you get hurt enough. Your “friendly” AI has to revive you at this point… if you can see where I am going with this then good.
They don’t even try to help you, they will only revive you if you are within arms reach and if you are not they will half the time walk to your dying body and if there is even 1 enemy they will concentrate all their attention on that enemy rather then rushing to help you up. So prepare to have a couple of game overs due to the AI being idiotic.

Multiplayer wise hasn’t really changed either, more maps, more modes, more players on new maps with new modes. Also a new mode which I can’t wait to try out properly “Horde”, if you have played Unreal Tournament you will recognise this mode quite easily. You and your friends against waves of enemy foes, increasing in difficulty and number as each wave comes. Sadly the number of people on my friends list who have GoW2 are rarely if ever online then it will be a while till i can force them into playing it.

Music is nothing to be excited about, the general  war time-esk music carries on throughout the campaign, nothing of any note hear sadly.

Visuals, look the same, surprisingly the same. What has changed then, well the fire looks nicer, the updated engine makes lighting a bit smoother. There is a lot less pop-ins (unloaded textures when new scenes starts then “pop-in” onto the model then the scene looks complete). So nothing impressive here as well.

Scenery, a lot more “epic” in scale *shudders*. A lot more open environments and some big battle scenes scatter the campaign.

All in all this is not much of an improvement on Gears of War 1, and they have already released an expansion pack for the multi player, so yeah extended production time to make more stuff to sell to you once you bought the game me thinks is what has happened there. Though could be wrong.

I made my camera finally work properly for Mr Brumak

Completed on normal difficulty and part way through on Insane.

Conclusion

So onto the finale of this review

Pros :

• The story is lot more fluid in this next part of the story, less of a feel epic is going to release a PC version with parts of the story missing like they did with GoW1
• Guns still provide much amusement, chainsaw duels are a tad tedious but okay.
• At least some effort put into character development.
• Co-op fun still beats the rest of the game.
• Horde, though blatantly ripped of from UT, it is still much fun.

Cons :

• Expect cheap deaths due to both friendly and enemy AI.
• Giant enemies are surprisingly weak.
• Main gun solves everything.
• Unmasked characters should just wear red shirts to reduce costs of manufacturing armour.
• Music is bland and uninteresting.
• No real improvement to visuals.
• Co-op still beats hands down to what should of been an alright single player.

Simply put, if you have played GoW and enjoyed it, then GoW 2 is more of the same, if you haven’t played GoW 1 then GoW 2 should be bought instead of GoW1. The improvements while not much make it a vastly superior experience. Also you don’t need any experience with GoW 1, there is about 3 or 4 references to it made throughout the entire game so nothing of worth.