WR: Gears of War 2 (360)

December 23rd, 2008 by

Mmm.... character models

 
Developer: Epic Games
Publisher: Microsoft
Players: 1-2 (10 online)
Console: Xbox 360
ESRB Rating: M (Mature)
TestFreaks Score: 10/10
Hours Played: ~ 15 hours
Progress: Beat game on Hardcore, played lots of online

Well, we didn’t kill all of them critters last time, so here we are again.  An instant flagship title for Microsoft, the Gears series has made quite a name for itself in the gaming world.  Known particularly for ridiculously tasty visuals and plentiful gore, can this game possibly live up to the ridiculous standards set by the original?  (All screens in this review can be clicked to be enlarged and are all taken from IN GAME action.)

 

Graphics

You can’t start a Gears review with anything but graphics discussion.  There is essentially no way for me to adequately describe how awesome this game looks.  I had to stop many a time (when not being eaten by various things) to stare in awe at how beautiful everything was.  Everything you’d want graphic-wise is present in full force.  The effects are amazing, fire sends smoke and embers into the air, and not the fakey cloudy smoke but real decent smoke.  The water ripples pristinely, reflects its surroundings, and responds appropriately to stimuli while maintaining a murky feeling.  There are “god rays” where necessary to show the light bouncing off of dust particles, as well as actual individual dust particles that swirl around.  The physics are managed quite capably by Nvidia’s PhysX engine, and it makes the bodies’ rag doll effects as well as explosions look awesome.

I constantly remarked while playing this game that the environments must look exactly like the concept art.  Even though everything is rendered in real time, it all most certainly looks either pre-rendered or painted.  The laborious nights without sleep spent making this game look as good as computerly possible are extremely evident and appreciated in a market where the majority of the games released are just trying to make a quick buck off of people too ill-informed to read reviews such as this one.  I give the graphics a “superb”.

 
Totally not pre-rendered.  So cool.

 
Sound

The sound in this game is similarly fantastic.  Just as in the first game, and many games for that matter, the intenseness of the music is used to signify if enemies are still around in addition to other things.  The soundtrack is definitely a little more classy than the first game’s, largely due to the absence of random rap songs at the end.  Otherwise, the score and sound effects feel exactly the same as the ones used in the first Gears.  That certainly isn’t a bad thing, but perhaps a more notable soundtrack, with a killer and sweeping opening song (similar in concept to that found in Devil May Cry 4) would have at least made people interested in buying the soundtrack for this game.  I’ll give the sound a “cool”.

 
Controls

The game controls pretty much exactly like the original Gears as well.  There are a couple of new finishing moves that can be executed on down-but-not-out enemies by pressing diferent buttons in their vicinity, but otherwise not a whole lot new.  There is the ability to stick the standard spikey grenades onto walls and set them as proximity mines by melee-ing a wall with them, but it serves of little use when you can’t remember that you can do it, which I never do.  ^_^  Controls get a “comfy”.

 
Story

This game very luckily has a better story than the first Gear’s “SHOOOOOT IIIIIITT!!!!1!” plotline.  The narrative shifts the focus from the decrepid world in general to the main Gears themselves.  Everyone has a little more vested in the missions as they fight to reunite themselves with loved ones, save the literal last verstige of civilization, and take on monsters from the depths of their earth both unimiginably huge and grotesque.  Relationships between the main players are developed further and people are both loved and lost, as in any war.  You feel both emotive and weathered, just like the Gears, throughout the storyline as they experience true emotional horrors, and the more personable presentation of the characters helps to greatly increase the ability of the average gamer to identify with the characters’ plights.  The storyline gets an “epic”.

 
It's sooo pretty!

 
Multiplayer

Luckily there is beginning to be a slight shift in the gaming industry back to single-console multiplayer.  Many, many people in the world have both siblings and friends that they’d like to play their video games with, and far too many developers have been ignoring this fact in the last generation of games.  Fortunately, there are games like Gears of War that lead the pack in both online and offline compatibility with multiple players on a single console.  Like the last Gears, two players per console can go and either play the entire campaign through co-operatively (and get more achievements to boot) or go online and participate in good old online skirmish matches or play the new Hoarde mode.  Hoarde pits 5 players against wave upon wave of Locust (up to 50 levels) in varying sizes and difficulties.  The first Hoarde achievement that you receive comes at level 20, and it is no surprise that both before and after that landmark the waves seem to be particularly challenging.  This mode can be a blast if you have a good team, or an ordeal if you do not.  As soon as someone decides that they want more points and goes of by themselves, it spells certain doom for them and perhaps for the whole team as a whole is made in their defenses.

Another great new feature of multiplayer takes place is the regular Versus matches after you die.  Once you die, not only can you chat with your fellow deceased from both sides of the skirmish, but you can also activate something called the Ghost Camera and just shuffle youself over the entire map either watching the remaining players fight from great vantage points or scouting the level for weapon spawn points.  Multiplayer gets a “sweet”.

 
Summary

Graphics:
+ Awesome effects
+ Sweeping and amazing environments
+ Good lip sync
+ Nice high-res textures on everything
– Water when taken in huge quantities behaves strangely

Audio:
+ Fitting score
+ Awesome voice acting
– Not any real improvement over the first Gears

Gameplay:
+ Smoothed out controls
+ More poignant story
+ Spectacular single-console multiplayer
– Kind of short
– Last boss is a disappointment

 

9.4