Joystiq hands-on: The finished Gears of War 2 campaign mode

Joystiq writes: "With just one month to go before Gears of War 2 deploys on 360, we were recently challenged to play "as far as we could get" into the now-finished game's campaign mode by Microsoft, Epic Games, and the game's director, Cliff Bleszinski. Like the good Gears we are, we couldn't – nor would we want to – refuse the order."

[Fishy Fingers]

6 hours and I presume they completed it (or got very close),

"All told, we got really far in our roughly six hours of play ... far enough that, if we told you all about it, there wouldn't be any surprises left come November 7. "

That's disapointedly short after the Dev's constantly referring to it as "much longer". Other than that a positive preivew for a game I beginning to get hyped up for. Marcus and I are gonna smash some heads :)

[Pennywise]

BIGGER, BADDER, SHORTER!

[Agent Orange]

LOL, thats some funny sh!t penny.

[RealityCheck]

DVD probably filled up.

[ericnellie]

The single player campaign may only be around 8 hours of game play but, throw in a little co-op, head-to-head multiplayer, and free DLC on release and I think things will be nice.

It's strange that so many PS3 fanboys are stopping by to share their opinion on a 360 game that they'll never play;) Just funny!

[ToastyMcNibbles]

not as strange as 360 fanboys strolling in on threads about ps3 games that they'll never play...now i may prefer ps3 over the 360 but it doesnt stop me from knowing a great game when i see it and gears of war 2 will be an awesome game

[ericnellie]

It's all good if you provide opinions about another consoles game - I'm not referring to you but I'm what I'm talking about is the trolling.

You can't tell me that RealityCheck's comments were constructive....it's simply trolling and that's who I'm talking about;) Thanks for explaining your disagree though, it's rare that it actually happens!

Edit: just take a look at most of RealityCheck's comments and you'll see that he always has some fanboy thing to say about the 360. It's simple, he's a troll...and that's all I've got to say about that;)

[Pennywise]

Maybe the DVD is full... who are you to say it isnt? There are Devs filling bluray discs.... so I would assume Devs fill all dvd games. This game is a good looking game, I would assume it would take most, if not all of the DVD to reach this.

[RealityCheck]

@1.7, that's what I said but got a bunch of disagrees. They improved visuals, made the maps bigger, etc. Of course that is going to take more space even with compression. And given that the 360 DVD format has some space for DRM, of course it will be filled up. I think the developers are pulling a technical miracle to fit as much as they are already on a single DVD.

And yes, I played the first Gears twice (single and co-op) and already have Gears2 on pre-order. DVD has a limited size, it's just a fact people must face. I expect them to compensate with DLC down the road.

[ToastyMcNibbles]

@ ericnellie...my fault i didnt respond thinking you were talking about me i just figured i'd respond just generally speaking you know...i didnt disagree with you either but yeah i understand what you're saying and i do agree so here's an agree and a bubble my dude keep it toasty

[dragunrising]

First of all, joystiq never finished the campaign nor was close to finishing it if you compare their preview to gamespy.com. Quote: "All told, we got really far in our roughly six hours of play." Either they are lying and trying to get hits, or played it on the easiest difficulty. Regardless, read the gamespy preview of the game. Their preview is much more about the experience and less about the story aspect. More informative in my opinion. For all the haters, gamespy says the campaign is 12 to 15 hours. They actually finished the game, unlike joystiq. Here is the link:

http://xbox360.gamespy.com/...

[Lord Vader]

Good post blindfromthesun. Bubbles+

"Complaining about another 12 to 15 hours of hot Gears action is like complaining about having too much money in your wallet" = LOL

"That's right, Gears of War 2 will be a good deal longer than the first game, and the single-player campaign is wonderfully paced."

http://xbox360.gamespy.com/...

[DJ]

There's a lot of people who never touch multiplayer, and prefer campaign mode only. If you're going to have a mode, it needs to be fully fleshed out and compelling. You can't just say "Well our campaign is short and unsatisfying, but look at the online stuff!"

[RealityCheck]

@1.6 no need to get personal because you don't agree with some comments, there is a disagree button for that. I actually follow the forum rules, if I post something as a joke or something that may be viewed as biased, I use the open zone. Looking at just the posting summary fails to show you where each comment was posted.

Once Gears2 hit retail we shall see how much of the available DVD space is used, if it is not >90% filled I will be really surprised. I expect a solid developer like Epic to use all the available resource they have.

[Richdad]

Shorter but awesome is good thing. Just think of last years COD4 how many GOTY it took last year and it was not even 6 hours at normal difficulty.

[thebudgetgamer]

that the 8 million or so gamers not connected to the internet are sol.

anyways i cant wait for tax time so i can afford the 360 and this game

[TheDude2dot0]

That's way too short of a single player. Unless Joystiq was rushing through the game, I might have to pass on buying this game.

[CEO of Troll Corp]

Sounds like it was a disappointing 6 hours of gameplay

[dale1]

its a demo right

[Pennywise]

Sounds like a review build.... 6 hour demo is LLOOOONG. Usually a demo is 30minutes tops.

[thewhoopimen]

hahahha That's funny how they were dropping hints all over the place about this game's play length. Guess it isn't going to last that much longer than gears 1. Still a great game.

[ToastyMcNibbles]

i agree 6 hours is disappointing but its definitely still gonna be a great game and with multiplayer it will extend the game even longer

[lokin]

some pll wants to see a game fail as badly as this..... READ BEFORE YOU IDIOTS POST

"All told, we got really far in our roughly six hours of play ... but still nowhere near the end"

BUT STILL NOWHERE NEAR THE END.

[Sena Kobayashi]

6hours is Pretty Short if its the Final campaign mode.

Example.

Today is Friday and its 4h00.PM and lil hommie gets out from school and since he had a good school week and finished all is homeworks and had a good grade in his exams , Momma decide to rent lil hommie a game for the weekend.

hommie gets to the video store and rents Gears2 he gets home and its about 5h00.PM and he starts playing . And lil hommie knows how to play games really well and his brother is playing with him in co-op mode. this means that around 11h00.PM lil hommie will have finished the game he just ranted earlier on. And lil hommie aint got no Xbox Live account. SO this mean he's already done with the game he was really hoping to play all weekend.

What a letdown if you ask me .

and Im a X360 type of guy on that note Im of to another thread with my MAX SPEED!!!!

EDIT:@Fishy
Loooooooll yeah I knw.

[Fishy Fingers]

"6hours is Pretty Short if its the Final campaign mode."

Headline reads: "The FINISHED Gears of War 2 campaign mode". Sounds like the final build to me.

Oh and "lil hommes" parents shouldnt be renting their child a M-rated game ;)

[FBI]

It sounds like its not worth 60 bucks,are they making gears 2 an XBLA title

[Killjoy3000]

No, because the memory cap is 10kb.

[Exodia]

BEST LOOKING CONSOLE GAME EVER.

[Fishy Fingers]

So good it needs CAPS? ;)

[Pennywise]

I am sure they have surgery available for blind bats.

[rawd]

Gears of War

Pushing the limits and boundaries in retina bleeding grayscale technology

[iNcRiMiNaTi]

like new abilities and they give it more orders instead of the usual "jack, rip that door"

[DeZimatoR]

Would respectifully disagree with that statement of yours Exodia ;)

Anyways, ~6hrs for the campaign mode is indeed not enough when the devs themselves said the game would be 'bigger' than the first one. It'll be a great game regardless, though.

[Pennywise]

Please forgive SDTV Noobs who think they know something about graphics.

[DiabloRising]

Please forgive uneducated noobs who know nothing about design and think bloom = win.

[Lord Vader]

"All told, we got really far in our roughly six hours of play ... far enough that, if we told you all about it, there wouldn't be any surprises left come November"

Does that statement really say how far they got ??? Is "really far" even halfway ??? I think 1up would have slammed GEARS if they almost finished the game in 6 hours. But this sounded good:

"Like we said earlier, from the time we spent with it, Gears of War 2 one-ups the original in terms of its story and variety. It's also a more balanced gameplay experience from a difficulty standpoint. The new elements such as human – er, Locust shields, new weapons, and oodles of one-off mechanics"

[Fishy Fingers]

"if we told you all about it, there wouldn't be any surprises left come November"

Unless all the "surprises" come in the first half Id read into that statement that they got near completion.

But they do not mention the difficulty they had it set on, personally being a hardened Gears 1 player I'll be playing on Hard first time through. I doubt I'll complete it in such a short time that way.

Oh you've changed your post.

[Pennywise]

Sounds like they came close to finishing it... but being Joystiq(360 lovers) I wouldnt be surprised if they finished the game. They wouldnt say they finished it. Imagine the crap Epic would get making a game as long(or short) as heavenly sword. You know how much crap was flung about HS game length?? It was an epic game, but everyone still talked trash. Brace yourself.

[Lord Vader]

I cannot imagine that they finished the game is 6 hours... even on n00b diff.... that would be considerably shorter than the first game. Hopefully what they are saying is alot of plot points are revealed in the first 6 hours.

[JokesOnYou]

I think its hard to make a judgement about the actual games length based on such vague statements....

"roughly far in our roughly six hours of play"

-how far is "roughly far" most shooters avg around 8-10hrs I think so many people would call 4 or 5 hrs in, "roughly far" and his statement

"if we told you all about it, there wouldn't be any surprises left come November"

-could simply mean that he felt alot of the major plot spoilers/surprises happen within those first 6 hrs or I could be wrong and the game could in fact be nearing a conclusion but just based on his generalized comments we're all just speculating on its length based on comments from someone who *didn't even finish the game.

There was also other news posted from a hands on with a reviewer who did *finish the game who stated Gears2 was "about 25% longer" than the first experience, so we'll have to wait and see something more definitive, like when I beat the game MYSELF.

Edit here it is;
"A personal rough estimate would be about 25% longer, at least in my experience."
http://previews.teamxbox.co...

Again this is just as vague as the above statement, since we don't know how long his first experience with Gears was, but you get the point.

JOY

[Doctor Strange]

As long as the story is better this time around I don't mind if the campaign ends up short this time too. That was my only problem with the first one. With a better story, more weapons and all the other stuff they included I'm sold even if is short.

[CR7JUVE1897]

Yet another must have title to my list. Sometimes owning 2 consoles can be such a drain on the wallet.

That's OK. My tenants REALLY don't need oil heat through the winter.

Do they???

[Final_Rpg]

I was thinking of buying a 360, got a wii and PS3 at the moment. Though if I bought one it would cost be $700 for the elite (I live in Australia) plus all the accessories and an extra controller. It's easily going to cost me over a grand... That's like 15 games... Too much money for Gears and whatever else turns out to be a good game. Guess I'm stuck with just the PS3. On the lighter side, there are more than enough games being released on PS3 for me to be satisfied. Still, I hate missing out on the top titles. I'll have to go to a mates house to co-op Gears when it comes out.

Will Uncharted help train me for Gears? In other words, are uncharted and Gears battle system close enough for me to translate my skill from one to the other? I don't want to be playing with my friend and be the guy that sucks arse, I can beat Uncharted on crushing so I'd hope I'd be able to do Gears 2 on hardest difficulty as well. I guess me sucking ass with the 360 controller doesn't help much. Last time I played Gears of War was well before uncharted came out, and I sucked major arse. Gears was my one of my first encounters with a "take cover and shoot from 3rd person perspective" experiences I'd ever had. Now that I'm pretty darn decent at a third person shooter(uncharted) I'm hoping things will go a little more smoothly. I do not want a repeat of last time!

[CR7JUVE1897]

I would say so. The controls are somewhat similar, although Gears does have the superior cover system working for it. Uncharted's cover system is ok, and it fits the style and design of the action around it, meaning that although at times there are a number of enemies in Uncharted, they tend to be spaced out a little more, whereas Gears just surrounds you with enemies at times.

So, in conclusion, I would say that yes, Uncharted's system is a good way to get acclimated with a cover system.

[aggh im on fire]

Basically it ROCKS.

[Perjoss]

after reading around 10 comments in this one i had to double check i wasn't in the open zone by mistake, n4g has really gone to crap :(

cant we all just get along?

[Rhezin]

I'd say killzone 2 is the leader in grayscale technology. IS THERE ANY COLOR IN THAT GAME?

[steck67]

So the campaign isnt as long as they said... no biggie, online mode is infinite.

[sniper4534]

ok ok this is what the preview said "All told, we got really far in our roughly six hours of play ... but still nowhere near the end.

people in here they just like fuk around they have 2 b ps3 fanboys, umm i wonder what would happen if i say resistace 2 is 5 hours long

[pshizle]

6 hours on what diffculty

im guessing casual

because i beat gears on hardcore in 8 hours and 10 hours in insane

did ign say they beat gears of war 2 in 12 hours in hardcore

[GiantEnemyCrab]

Did you people even read the damn article?

"All told, we got really far in our roughly six hours of play ... but still nowhere near the end."

They played it for 6 hours and go nowhere near the end! Where is all this 6 hour campaign crap coming from?

[pain777pas]

Why do they have to spend so much time on multiplayer? they probably spent more time on that than the actual single player game. Gaming is changing and all but this is stupid. Halo3 and now this. WTH better yet WTF!!!!!!!!!