Gears of War 2

Written by Troy Matsumiya  on December 16, 2008

Review: Bigger + badder + more bad-ass = Fun!

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As before, you can play through the entire campaign co-operatively with a buddy either locally or over Xbox Live. Each player can even set their own difficulty level, which adjusts the amount of damage each player can give and receive (it does not affect enemy AI). As good as the campaign is solo, it's even better when you have a real person fighting by your side.



Of course, having four buddies at your side against five real players is truly bad-ass. Online multiplayer now supports 5v5, a slight increase over the original but adds exponentially to the fun factor. Combine this with the addition of new gamemodes and 10 new maps (plus five freely downloadable reworked original maps) and Gears 2 will no doubt topple Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 from the top of the Xbox Live most-played list.

Returning from the original are the Warzone, Execution and Annex gametypes, along with the new Guardian, King of the Hill and Submission (a.k.a. Meatflag), a capture the flag mode that has a computer AI player as the flag. The УmeatflagФ is armed with a shotgun and will fight back (in fact, he racks up his own kill stats), so you have to down him and then drag him to the objective point. Oh, and let's not forget the opposing team is trying to do the same thing. Meatflag Ц er, Submission (damn those prudish suits at Microsoft!) is a hoot. After all, since when does the flag ever fight back?

Guardian is a tweaked version of Assassination from the original. Rather than simply kill the opposing team's leader to win, the Leader gives each team the ability to respawn while he is alive. Once he's dead, the surviving team members can't respawn. This dramatically changes team strategy as Leader-less teams instantly switch from aggressive attack mode to run-for-your-life defense. Along with the self-explanatory King of the Hill, Guardian is probably my favorite since gameplay is much more tactical and can change in an instant.

For example, you might down the Leader but if he crawls to safety and is revived, you're back to square one. Like in the campaign, the crawling mechanic adds a new twist to multiplayer that pretty much forces you to run up and execute enemies Ц which can also put you in harm's way. However, you can take advantage of several cool new execution moves and even pick up downed enemies and use them as meatshields to protect you from enemy fire. There's nothing more humiliating that watching your own dead body being used as a bullet sponge by your killer.

A new Halo-like matchmaking party system is also new to the game, which tries to match up players with similar skills. Unfortunately, it can take forever to find a match if someone on your team is unranked or ranked very low. It's frustrating and hopefully there will be a fix soon. Also Halo-like is the new camera system. Previously, when you died you could watch the remaining players through fixed camera points or selecting a teammate's perspective, but now you can freely fly the camera through the level and even take pictures of the action. Very cool.

Combining the fun of multiplayer with the excitement of the campaign is the brand new Horde mode. Supporting up to five players online, Horde pits you against increasingly difficult waves of enemies, with the end goal to survive as many waves as you can. Reaching the maximum 50th wave is no easy task, even for hardened Gears vets. Naturally, the higher you go the more difficult things get, yet the more fun you will have. Horde is incredibly addicting and will have you and your buddies blasting Locust butts to smithereens for weeks.

Graphically, it goes without saying the game looks fantastic; in fact, this is clearly the showcase for Unreal Engine 3 technology. There is one level where the graphical horsepower truly shines; I can't describe it much without spoiling things, but suffice to say it's an organic level that looks absolutely stunning with fantastic liquid effects.

The environments are semi-destructible, meaning you can chip away pieces of walls or concrete blocks, but these effects are cosmetic only. You actually can't destroy anything in the environment (except some wooden crates or furniture) which is a bit of a disappointment. Also disappointing is the lack of enemies onscreen. You may recall the Unreal Engine 3 tech demo a while back that showed hundreds of Locust onscreen at the same time. You do see that in the game but only when you're in a vehicle, with the Locust УhordeФ only tiny little figures skittering around in the background. If you were expecting a Serious Sam-like onslaught of countless Locust swarming you, you'll be sorely let down. Typically there are no more than half a dozen enemies onscreen at the same time, just like in the original. Granted, the action is intense enough with these small numbers but the promise of huge enemy swarms never materializes.

What doesn't disappoint is the audio. The voice acting is top notch and Steve Jablonsky's sweeping cinematic score really helps turn the game into an epic adventure. The big improvements are in the weapon sounds, which are much louder and have more authority. You know how the weapons have such a huge auditory punch in Call of Duty? That's what we now get in Gears 2 and it really enhances the action and atmosphere.