No Spoilers, this includes comments please! If you feel you must, use spoiler tags!
I’ve had enough time to try out Gears of War 2 and I thought I’d give a breakdown of how I feel the game has progressed (or regressed) since the first rendition.
First of all, the campaign: I believe this campaign was definitely better than the first. This is where I’m betting Epic spent most of their time on the game and it shows. In a campaign I usually look for a solid shooter, well designed levels, and a cinematic experience to tie everything together and GOW2 delivers on all three. I won’t say much more, but there are really some cool moments that leave you with your jaw hanging open. Needless to say, I can’t wait to run through it again on a more difficult setting. Gears 2 campaign is one of the best single player experiences I’ve been through.
Multiplayer Matches: What in the heck were they thinking. As most of you know I spent a lot of time playing Gears 1, and I loved *almost* every part of that game’s multiplayer experience. Sure, there were BS THX Slayer Magic Shotgun (TM) moments, but all in all the game was actually quite fun to play. Turn the clock two years later and we’re at version 2.0 (or 1.9 candidate release if you’ve tried the matchmaking system). I’m left with just straight confusion as to what they were trying to achieve this time around. To be honest it’s like they never really thought through the changes, just went around and said.. “Hey man this would be totally awesome if we threw in this cool new thing.. people will love it!!!”, exibit A: the percussion effect. Happen to be near a smoke grenade when it goes off and receive a nonlethal and quite annoying jolt that knocks you to the ground, making you a target for 4 seconds until you get up. Combine this with a totally neato awesome stick effect to stick smoke grenades to walls and you get a funtastic standoff where routing out that last player is virtually impossible if he has an ounce of skill in his thumbs. At least you’re not able to pwn people with superior lancer/hammerburst skill any more. The people who are getting the kills are doing so through one of two things, hoarding a power weapon, or you guessed it, the chainsaw. Lowered shot rate on the shotgun and continuously running chainsaws whether they’re shot or not provide a zone of opportunity for any three year old child with a B button. The lancer fire is effectively useless, taking almost more than a full clip (which has been extended) to down someone. The hammerburst is ok, except for the fact that it’s melee is useless against unstoppable and never ending chainsaws.
The power weapons: Get the torque bow and win. Get the boomer and win. Get the mortar and have a distinct advantage. Get the frag grenades and win. Get the sniper and have your whole team cuss you out while you lose. And that sums up exactly how you’re game will go if you do those exact steps. The torqe bow is now so overpowered that you just have to shoot the ground next to an opponent and he’s mashed potatoes. We discovered this while, after his whole team had died, an opponent destroyed all 5 of us (1 vs 5), all with what we thought was an innocent looking torque bow from GoW 1. Meet the new Halo 2 sword folks! Do not use standard weapons in this game. You will be doomed to disappointment over and over again. I confirmed this by grabbing the torque and subsequently destroying the opposition every time. And here’s where I say it: I PREFER PLAYING HALO 3 MULTIPLAYER FAR MORE THAN GEARS OF WAR 2 MULTIPLAYER. God help me. After getting sawed *cough* sworded *cough* in GOW2 35 times maybe others will feel the same way
And I will end in typical complement sandwich form by saying something good about the GOW2 experience.. Horde mode is amazing. Horde mode rocks your face off. Horde mode gives your Mama a back massage and strokes your Aunt Bethyl’s bunions. I can’t say enough about how much fun I have playing this mode. At this point I’m feeling like GOW 2, much like this post of mine, is akin to owning a Lamborghini with a turd for a stick shift. The awesomeness is there, but you have to constantly grab on to that turd in order to get the full experience.
Sweeney, your still my hero.
Thanks!!
