Gears of War 2

The original Gears of War was a huge step forward for video games back in 2006. At the time, no game could match the visuals of Gears of War, compete with the addictive multiplayer or have such a thrilling co op experience. The game's story left much to be desired, but the rest of the game's components thrived and made the original Gears of War an experience to remember. To this day, many games fall short in competing with the visuals of the original. Despite the original setting such a high bar, Gears of War 2 manages to improve on the things that made the first game great and succeeds in presenting a damn good story.

'Compelling stories is something Epic fails to create' is a phrase I would use after playing the first Gears of War. However, I find myself proven completely wrong after playing Gears of War 2. The story picks up shortly after the events of the first. The light-mass bomb apparently didn't work but humanity is prepared to launch an all out assault on the locusts. The locusts have been sinking cities around the last vital human city, Jancinto. It is Delta Squads job once again to lead the assault and save humanity from extinction from the Locust.

The plot in Gears of War 2 is relatively seamless and does one important thing throughout the whole game; makes the player ask questions and answers them. Throughout the whole first game the only question a gamer would ask is "what the f##k are these things" but Gears of War 2 answers a lot of those questions. Gears of War 2 wraps up the plot nicely but purposely leaves the gamer poised with some unanswered questions. Unlike before, these questions leave you wanting to play more without feeling you were ripped off. Throughout the story you'll play in a lot of different environments, experience a lot of different things and will be surprised by quite a few plot twists. For the most part I was impressed with the thrilling, on-the-edge-of-your-seat story that Gears of War 2 presented.

Gears of War 2 is the perfect sequel in the sense that it took what it had before and improved on it without making the game too different. Simply put, if you played the first game you will be very familiar with this one. The game feels and plays virtually the same, however it feels a lot tighter and more well-rounded. The cover system has been improved and you'll find yourself getting stuck on walls or going into the wrong cover a lot less. All of the classic weapons return in this game and a few new ones have been added. Among them are the turret-like Maulcher, the morter, the flamethrower and a few more. A noticeable addition is the new executions and meatshield. Now you have the option to perform 1 of 11 new executions on downed enemies, or if you're a prick, you can use their body as a shield for yourself. All these executions are really gruesome and look fantastic.

The true strong point of the first game was it's visuals. They were a landmark for console gaming and Epic has done it once again. A complaint that a lot of gamers had with the first was the boring brown/gray palette that the first had. Epic has added a lot of colour all throughout the game. The environments are rich and the character models have that little bit of extra detail that just make you think 'Wow, that looks great.' That's something I found myself saying more often than not in Gears of War 2, and after revisiting the first game, I truly realized what an improvement it was.

New to the series is Horde mode, a survival-type mode where you and up to 4 others will take on wave after wave of locusts. You start on Wave 1, where the enemies are minimal and weak. As you progress up to level 10 by killing all of the enemies in each wave, the enemies will get progressively stronger and come in larger amounts. Once beating level 10, the enemies 'reset' and on level 11 you will see the same enemies you did in level 1, except now all of the enemies have a 'perk' such as 2x health or 2x accuracy. Once you reach the last level, level 50, you will no doubt be having a really hard time fending off all of enemies. Teamwork is absolutely vital in this mode, especially in the higher levels. If you play with 3 or 4 friends this mode is really fun and quite a challenge. Once you finish level 50 on Hardcore or Insane with your friends, you'll feel very proud.

Gears wouldn't be Gears without a great co-operative mode. Once again the surprisingly fun co-op mode is back in Gears but without too much changes. A fairly significant change however is the fact that each player can now play on their own difficulty. For example, I could be playing on Insane (because I'm that damn good) and my friend could be playing on Casual. I haven't actually tried this, but it seems like a great feature if you're playing with someone a little less experienced than you. Other than that, the co-op is fantastic as usual.

Multiplayer in Gears of War 2 has been changed a fair amount, and in my honest opinion, for the better. While the original had a good multiplayer, I just couldn't get into it. I don't know if it was because I sucked ass at it, or if it was because there were a lot of elements about it I just didn't like. Now however though, I find myself really enjoying the multiplayer. The retail disc ships with 10 new maps, most of which are really well designed and quite fun to play on. If you bought the game new (or got lucky used) you'll get a redeem code to download some classic maps from the original. The teams have been upped to 5 each and I really think that was for the best. Gears of War 2 really feels like it was meant to be played 5v5, and you can feel the effect of that extra guy on each team when you play.

The amount of time I spent playing the multiplayer when I originally intended to post this review (almost a week ago) wasn't very much, and that's because it took forever to find a match. When I had paired up with one friend, and we were looking for 3 other players and then another team, it literally took 10-15 minutes for us to get into a game. This appears to be a bit better now, especially since the NXE update. I was able to play in a party of 5 people last night, and almost immediately with all 5 of us (meaning we could skip the teammate search), we found a match. This problem really effected my initial thoughts of the multiplayer, hence why I held off writing the review until I got some real playing time with it. After playing it though, especially with friends, I found the experience really fun. The same classic game modes from the first somehow seemed a lot more fun in Gears of War 2 than they did in the original.

Gears of War 2 truly blew me away. It's stunning visuals and tight gameplay were impressive, however not quite as surprising as the truly compelling story that the game presented. The massive, epic fire-fights, heart wrenching sub-plots (Dom and his wife) and overall badassness (yeah I made a new word) made the Gears of War 2 single player experience truly memorable. The co-op, horde and multiplayer modes are extremely fun and are sure to keep any Gears fan busy for quite some time. I had my doubts if Cliffy would truly come through on making Gears of War 2 'Bigger, Badder and More Badass' but I find myself completely wrong as the game pulled through all of those claims. Epic's Gears of War 2 is worth nothing less than 5 out of 5.