Lets show people how to do a proper review

[JesusofChaos™]

Having played the first Gears of Wars game to death, I was excited as other gamers to find out about Gears of War 2 (GOW2). Would it improve on the highly flawed online gameplay the first Gears suffered from or would it polish its online experience and still expand the campaign to a satisfactory level and keep the same level of gameplay which gave me the many play throughs on Gears 1.

[spoiler= Some mild Gore]

 

 

 

After purchasing a copy almost 6 months ago I was happy to pay the £35 price tag knowing I was paying for a part of gaming history. For people willing to splash out a bit more there is also a collectors edition. All this basically gives you is a few small additions and also a Golden Lancer to use online. However this is a sign to many other gamers that you are a dick so i settled for the normal version.

 

I got home and opened the case and inserted the disc into the slot of my Xbox and sat back to watch the beginning screens flash through. First impression were a little disappointing instead of going straight to the menu we had to go trough the press start routine present in many old games. Anyway I decided to start with the campaign.

 

Gears 2 is set a few years after Gears 1 in human kinds fight for survival against alien creatures called locus. The game starts with a cut scene describing the effects of the bombing carried out in the previous game. Basically stating that the humans failed to wipe out the locus just really piss them off. The game starts in the seiged city of Jericho, the last human stronghold. The game beginnings with a small training mission disguised as a training routine for the new rookie recruit. However there is an option to skip this.

 

As I began playing the graphics begin to take my breath away. I had never seen graphics of this depth of texture ever in my gaming history. The controls also felt familiar and slotted straight into the game. From the beginning this game just get better and better. So far the highlight has been walking through a sunk city. The graphical backdrops look amazing and although there is a linearality to the game it soon is forgotten as you eating up locus horde. The Campaign in all is approximatly 4-5 hours so there is an improvment in game length over the previous game.

 

However this is what I expected from the game as the last campaign was also good. What I was looking for was an improvement in the online play. This did not begin well finding out that 4 player campaign co op had been reduced to 2. However this intial disappointment I moved onto the new mode Horde in which you must face 50 waves of ever increasing enemies with a team of up to 5. This was a good new concept however it does need some polishing as the levels seem to get repetitve after awhile.

 

Now we move onto the online multiplayer aspect. This feature is key in a game as it gives the game a long lifespan, just look at halo 3 still going strong. Anyway the matchmaking system leaves alot to be desired. There are also a variety of new game modes such as Submission (in which you take hostage a human flag and drag it to your base to score). After playing a few games online there is a definate problem with the gameplay. The maps seem to small for the number of players and gameplay seems stop-start with the round system imployed. However the map selection and game selection is decided in a very good way in which players vote between 2 different game modes and 2 different maps. The addition of updates has really vastly improved the Smoke Gernades as they are now more fair, It has also improved the much criticised hit registry for chainsaws making them easier to knock down. However there are still several problems that need to be assesed. the main problem online is the lag. Some games are fine and you can have a fun competitive game. However every 4 or 5 games there is a stupidly laggy ones that frustrate you. The host advantage is sometimes also just beyond a joke. The could all be fixed if Epic bought dedicated servers however this is unlikely to happen.

 

Overall this game is still delivering in the campaign department, however the online play is still lacking in cruical area but there is certainly some factor which keeps pulling me back. It does seem to be an improvement over the first game but there is still big steps that need to be taken to create a game which will draw players premeantly away from Halo 3.

 

Gameplay: 8/10

Graphics: 10/10

Online multiplayer: 7.5/10

Campaign: 9/10

Lifespan: 7/0

 

Overall: 8/10

[fenrir]

*Claps*

 

So far the best game review I've seen today.

[evilhorus]

Gameplay: 8/10

Lifespan: 7/0

 

?

 

I expect that is supposed to be 10?