Review: Gears of War 2

Game: Gears of War 2
Format: XBox360
Developer: Epic Games
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios -

Yes I know what you’re thinking, “the games been out for ages you twonk!” And well.. yes I realise that but after numerous patches and some recentish downloadable content (DLC) I felt that the game needed a re….re-review(?) which I’m not quite sure is a word but you get what I mean.

Anyway it’s been nearly a year since the second instalment of the “Gears of War” series came out and in that time we have seen a whole host new DLC and patches come out for the game including new multi player maps and a new single player campaign, but what’s actually changed?

Well on campaign side of things not much and rightly so, I mean why fix something that isn’t bloody broke?! Just for a minute forget about the god awful anti climax to the game, featuring possibly one of the worst end bosses to a game ever a la “Killzone 2” and instead look at everything the developers got right in the single player game and already you can see the positive far outweigh the negatives. And that’s just it, excuse for me sounding like some demented little fan boy for a moment and let me just say this… there is so many things done right in the campaign mode that it’s almost impossible to not like it.

It has great characters with great voice acting, a gripping and interesting story which, laugh at me all you want but was the first story which I felt emotional attached to since “Final Fantasy 7” and OK maybe not straight away after completion, is actually re-playable!!! And you then add to that the same great game-play from the previous instalment, a brilliantly cinematic soundtrack and graphics that will please even thee biggest graphics whores among us who won’t touch a game unless it’s HD graphics are so high def that 30 seconds in your eyes melt.

Sure you could say that it’s essentially just a prettier version of “Gears of War 1”, same game-play mechanics, same types of levels etc. But you would be wrong! “Gears of War 2” offers much more of a personal experience. The story runs much deeper and is more engaging than the one in it’s predecessor and it is just that which sets the two games apart. By sucking the gamer into the world Epic as created it seems that they have done the impossible and made slicing up a Locust with your chainsaw even more satisfying than ever before the sadistic f*cks!

Chainsawing Locust enemies as never been so much fun

July of this year saw the “Dark Corners” DLC which contained a brand new campaign chapter, the chapter being one that was left out of the boxed version of the game because…well…I don’t actually know. It fills a plot hole in the story which I guess is good but that does not necessarily mean that the hole needed to be filled. Did we need some campaign DLC? Well yes and no, the extra chapter does nothing to enhance a perfectly good story or even really add any different game-play mechanics. However fan boys had long been crying out for some kind of campaign DLC so I guess this DLC is Epic’s way of shutting them up.

Now that the campaign mode is done, let’s look at the multi-player mode. Now I hated the multi-player mode on “Gears of War 1” because every time I tried to play it some pr*ck would shotgun me into pieces before I could even say “bang you’re dead!” and then follow that up by bellowing tirades of abuse at me down his headset. So if I said I had been looking forward to playing the multi-player mode on “Gears of War 2” I would be lying. But I’m very thankful for that now because I wasn’t excited for that mode when the game did drop, which in turn meant that I wasn’t disappointed when it turned out to be a horrible, buggy, laggy mess! I mean Epic must have been focusing too much on the campaign mode and forgot to actually test the multi-player mode of the game because it was just awful. It took approximately FIFTY BILLIONS YEARS! To find matches and when you did they were filled with lag and disconnections.

Thankfully however these problems have now been rectified thanks to numerous updates and patches. Matches are quick and easy to find, there’s little to no lag and not enough disconnection issues to really moan about and because of this I found myself playing the mode more and more until I was hooked. You see the addition of a ranking system adds an even more competitive edge to matches and it’s because of this that I suddenly found myself being the pr*ck spouting drivel through my headset. In fact I’d even go as far to say as I’m addicted to multi-player mode and that it is definitely the one game that I have out of all my games that I’ve played the most just because of the multi-player.

The multi-player consists of a wide range of modes the playlists for which could still be improved I mean why can we just have a playlist for all the maps? Not individual map pack playlists and you can play across the 10 maps that shipped in the game. However the addition of 4 more map packs means that there now are a total of 29 maps in total to play on now giving it’s players even more choice. Along with map packs, updates such as the ranking system and the ability to gain experience through horde mode (which should have been included in the ranking system inclusion anyway) are all welcomed as well as glitch fixes and issues with matchmaking, let’s just hope with the next instalment we don’t have to endure poor quality for a few months before we have a multi-player mode we actually want to play hey Epic?

So to sum it all up “Gears of War 2” is a brilliant game and it stands out as one of the fewer games which actually get somewhere to meeting the standards promised by the Microsoft hype machine. Building on a great first game, the second takes what the first game was so good at and adds to them. Both campaign mode and multi-player mode are both very enjoyable and certainly earns it’s right to be one of Microsoft’s blockbuster games.

Review Round Up

Graphics: 5/5 – Graphics are as good as they possibly could be on the 360. Big graphical improvement from the first game in the series.

Sound: 5/5 – Very atmospheric and really adds to the whole experience of playing the game.

Gameplay: 4/5 – Not much changed from the “Gears of War 1” but that’s not a bad thing, some of the cover mechanics can become quite frustrating and needs to be sorted out.

Longevity: 5/5 – The game as been out for nearly a year now and through tons of DLC and the introduction new achievements there is many many hours of gameplay.

Overall: 4/5 – I give “Gears of War 2” 4 chainsaws out of 5. Why didn’t I give it 5? BECAUSE THE LAST BOSS AND THE ENDING WAS SO GOD DAMN AWFUL! Epic sort it out for the third one yeah? A must buy for 360 owners, especially as we wait for the third instalment in the series.

[starreview tpl=16]

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