Hope is only Skin Deep
The original Gears of War was one of those really popular games that I, for some reason or another, just did not like at all. I thought the action was weak and boring with a dry single player to boot. The great graphics where offset by the assy weapon sounds, bad dialogue and that the combat felt sluggish and was overall very low impact. So naturally when I heard about Gears of War 2 I wasn’t exactly hyped out of my mind like all the others in the gaming community. I will admit after seeing the E308 demo I was tempted to give Gears another go, and damn was that good move.
Gears of War 2 for me was a surprisingly good game, but on top of that was ten times better at everything that the mediocre original game had. The combat was one of the biggest issues for me in the original title, and still is, but in the sequel, I don’t know if it’s the weapons or what but the gunplay and sound effects that go along with all the visual effects and stuff in combat is AWESOME. I love it. The weapon selection is good, but smaller than usual. Regardless, all the old guns are back with some newbie’s in the mix; the lancer actually sounds like a real rifle now and feels a lot more powerful. I really was instantly happy with the better tuned combat. The enemies came in greater varieties in more amounts and didn’t take ten million rounds to drop either. Pretty much my biggest issue, the combat, has been fixed up as well as it can get.
The Single Player campaign left me rather happy, in fact, I thought it was epic. The story is better this time, but the acting and characters remain boring and uninteresting. The Game’s overall pacing through was phenomenal. The action set pieces in the single player were incredible, and a lot more “war” like than the first games weak ass two or three man firefights. With that said all the vehicle stages are also sweet, and really the only bummer was in a certain awesome rail shooting sequence the frame rate takes a nose dive. The Multiplayer still blows, hard in my honest opinion. I hate it. But the campaign was fucking sick.
Graphics are just stunning…I really don’t need to type much. Textures, colors, everything = near perfect.
So there you have it. I actually liked Gears of War 2. I hated the first game but I guess some things deserve a second chance.
