blog.mlive.com review : Gears of War 2's bugs hold it back from greatness

Staring down the scope of your Longshot sniper rifle you see a Locust drone in the distance. You pull the trigger. Face explodinates into a fountain of gore.

You creep around a corner, your hulking frame clinging tight to the wall readying your Lancer's chainsaw bayonette. You swing out and jam on the B button. Nothing happens. You press it again. Nothing happens. You wind up on the receiving end of a brutal melee attack.

You crawl on your hands and knees, bleeding out, towards Delta squadmate Dominic Santiago for him to revive you. Nothing happens. Screaming in agony and frustration doesn't break Dom's preoccupation with finding his wife. Not you lying helpless at his feet, not anything. You die.

This is the game you've been waiting for the past two years. This is Gears of War 2.

[rbluetank]

this is a real person review. He seems to not be paid by anybody. Everything he talked about was from really playing the game. i have experienced alot and more of what he is saying about gears2. i had Dom force mount a four foot high wall and get stuck there. i was forced on the sp mission to restart the mission because of his actions. a couple of times he would pop up behind me at a strange angle and we both were stuck in a glitch moment. Gears2 has every flaws of the last game and more. the game is still tearing into focus..WTF they worked on this game for how long...?? over 2years and the same flaw from the last game appears. This game is broke or the engine it rides on is.. I will not be buying this game again!! i will rent to own. Vck the reviews site. (1up,ign,gamespot,ect..) This is not acceptable!!! Epic are lazy flat out. The boss fights are stolen and port over badly into gears2. i can not even play online because of this developmental mess.. someone over at Epic should be fired!!! Mark Rein get the vckout of your lamborginee and "delegate a reinvestment of procedure" within your company. Your game Fails big time!!! LAZY LAZY @ss game. Quite coping everything and do something original and you will be fine....

[tehReaper]

Okay for one, I doubt you've played this game. Judging from past comments, you've been downgrading 360 games for a while now. Not one positive comment.

For two, EPIC said they would try and fix most of the bugs.

Just chill. If you don't like Gears, fine, don't play it. No need to go around N4G trying to downplay its' success. It won't work, my friend.

[Rigmaster]

The first Gears of War was a disgrace.

* The laughably fake marketing shots Epic put out

Epic was given a free pass to put out 5000x5000 16xAA marketing renders as 'in engine' screenshots by the gaming press because the horrible graphics that had earned the Xbox 1.5 label from gamers. The gaming press needed some game to keep the illusion that the PS3 and 360 were somehow duking it out over graphics power

* The anemic single player campaign that had to be cut down in size due to the smaller than last gen 360 DVD storage format

Because this was the single must get 10/10 reviews title for the 360 the gaming press gave the game a free pass on single player length while completely slamming other titles that actually had longer single player campaigns

* The absolutely broken online

The Gears of War forums were insane back in the first few months after release with what a complete disaster the online was. Massive lag making the game almost unplayable, glitching and cheating and host advantage problems due to the poorly implemented P2P networking and Microsoft's failure to pay for dedicated servers. It was a weird duality going on with Gears of War. People were crying about what a total POS the game was in forums where they were amongst other 360 owners but then claiming the game was the greatest ever in more public forums.

The game is a testament to how a company with unlimited money to spend on marketing and all sorts of backdoor deals and payments to gaming review sites can manufacture 9-10/10 reviews for a game.

One just has to look at the most infamous of all Gears of War reviews:

http://www.abjecthubris.com...

Now imagine if that game was being reviewed for the PC, PS3, or Wii...

Fable 2 and Banjo were supposed to the the other two big first party titles and that didn't work out for Microsoft. Left 4 Dead is crossplatform. Gears of War 2 is all there is for the holidays. There is no way in hell it wasn't going to get absurdly high review scores no matter how buggy the game was or how it has the same outdated Unreal Engine graphics.

[Gue1]

Wow, the 1up review for GeoW1 was sick Rigmaster ! lol

people are going to mark your comment as fanboyims even though you're showing proof but anyway, there's no worst blind than the one who doesn't wants to see. =|

[Yoma]

thanks god, a REAL review!

[Bonsai1214]

thats the first the i've read that review.. haha. its amazing how he can still give that an A+.

[ultimolu]

Damn Rigmaster, you did your homework. o_o
And that's ridiculous if the game received an A+ and had those issues. It should have gotten a B+.

[Oner]

Bubbles Rig. Seriously. I try to stay on top of how much BS is spewed in the media about gaming (especially bias) and without question that has to be the best information I have EVER read. I honestly don't know how that one slipped by me. ABSOLUTELY GREAT POST.

ANYBODY who cannot see the proof right in front of their own eyes are sheep. Even after saying that I can say & agree the Gears line is great fun but to receive the highly praised accolades it gets does a disservice to the gaming public and proves the media bias plain and simple. There is no question about it.

Again Rig, great post. Nothing short of a bombshell.

[Why o why]

thanks. hope u dont mind if i use that on somebody in the near future to shut them the fcuk up about media bias and corruption

bubble

[PoSTedUP]

but the media judges ps3 games when they have bugs! >: o~ biased mofo's

good honest review. we need more reviews like these.

EDIT@ #1- ah you beat me to it : P~ good to know we are on the same page though ; )

you need more bubbles friend, here.

[theKiller]

his bubbles wont increase even if 100 users gave him bubbles, its up to the mods to increase the bubbles, and let me tell u this, they hate users anti 360 and pro ps3, and they decrease their bubbles very fast, when nasim make a new account, in one week he will have 1 bubble but when pp or bloodmask make a new account they last with it for months until they get 1 bubble!

this bubble system is pure BS, just use ur comments wisely and put everything u want to say in one comment, and if its not enough make a new account!!!

[badz149]

I see...and now you have trouble!(in term of bubbles!) I'll lend you a bubble!(like I could) but seriously...+1 for you

[ape007]

another hater,yes it has bugs but very few

the game is great,nuff said

[bbelly9320_]

Did they even try?

[Rigmaster]

Would you even try if you had the amount of cash Microsoft has to throw at the gaming media with your game?

[theKiller]

at the time am writing this there is 4 reports from the bots and the type of reports r Lame with one Bad Editing.

show how intolerance the bots r when it come to bad reviews for their games.

also notice the advertising in N4G, it stats that gears of war 2 the best 360 game ever!!! what happened to halo 3??

LOL poor bots, they call it best game ever and yet it has many bugs and cant even beat one years old ps3 exclusive in graphics "UNCHARTED"

Gears of War 2 didnt bring any innovation or technical break threw, its just the same as gears of war 1 with very small improvements that took them 2 years to make!

any way i might download the cracked and better version of Gears of war 2 on PC sometime next year, my pc could handle gears 2 so certainly will handle gears 2!! and whats the point to spend money on it now?? certainly its not the best shoot em up game this year, certainly there is many better shoot em up games then gears of war 2 this winter that managed to make break threw in the technical, online and scale.... ahhm.."resistance 2"... ahhhm 25GB vs 8GB

[Yoma]

this is when the good reviews comes .

[blackbeld]

Gears of War 2!!! It's a SHAME!!!!! How could they mess this up... Damnn.

[peepee]

this game is a goty title bugs don't matter

[Bathyj]

bugs don't matter

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh t !!

[badz149]

what's pp doing here?

[BigKev45]

Yeah, GOTY. No doubt.

[Gue1]

tell that to all the sites that rated the game with perfect scores...

edit:
look at people reporting the story because is a blog but nobody cared when a blog from an unknown guy bashing Resistance 2 saying that it was crap after renting it and playing it for like only 2 hours...

blog posting should be banned from N4G so then people don't complain.

[dwjohnson011211]

Thanks for the laughs, spew some more ******** will ya?

[dwjohnson011211]

Much like your one, i'll stick to the professional reviews. At least they can write in depth about the game and it's features.

What's with these pansy ass blog users playing it through normal instead of hardcore?

LOL@the trolls, they must be mad resistance 2 is the biggest disappointment of the generation.

[heyheyhey]

you seem to have too many bubbles... let me help you there

[Firstkn1ghT]

LMAO

Silly blogs.

[RRoDReaper]

Been working hard on taking away poor RRoD boxes, so when's the best time I can pay you a visit? :)

[InMyOpinion]

This is nirvana for PS3 evangelists.

[N4PS3G]

This is nothing more than an user review..blog.mlive.com ...*sighs*

Whats the point of having an official meta score...if user blogs reviews are getting added

Welcome to N4G

[Foxgod]

i didnt know games existed that do not have bugs.
also, during my playtrough i did not encounter a single bug that got in my way.
only a few minor ones.

also, an 8 is not a bad score, but i think its safe to say this person is trying to get attention by swaying from the masses, thats a risky way to review.

[heyheyhey]

if 360 fanboys think this review sucks then maybe they should stop approving the countless blogs that do the same for PS3 games..

just a thought

oh yeah and if the bugs are ok because they're getting fixed then you are admitting SOCOM is a really good game for the PS3.... think about the double standards people

[pp]

Strange No bugs in my game of Gears of War 2.

[ppisatosspot]

Your the bug, Mr Peepee of a d!ck.

[XDF]

Sorry,

but where but are these blogs coming from? I swear I can't even find it in Google. Wow, the great length people go to find another gears of War 2 blog review that is negative. If this is possitive, do you think it will be posted? Hell no. Maybe I should start blog and write reviews and hopefully someone will post it here. LOL

[25]

or does everyone experience graphic glitches while playing gears 2? textures keep on poppin in and out. i dunno if its the game or my xbox, because the same thing was happening while playing the tomb raider demo.

Edit: also, this is a legit question.

[OOG]

hmm nah I havnt really noticed this much on my end....

Only one I notice is when the match starts and your body becomes more detailed....other then that I havnt really seen popping in n out

[DiabloRising]

It's a known issue of the U3 engine, not your system. Even Unreal Tournament 3 on the PC has it. You can literally watch the LOD and textures load in at the start of every match.

[25]

its not only doing it while loading. im talking about while actually playing it. like in the middle of a level.

[OOG]

yeah nah I havnt seen it other then while loading the levels.....it might be your system...but who knows...

Maybe try tossing one of the games on your hard drive and see what it does?

[sniper4534]

lol hehehe i didnt event read that think lol that guy looks like he suck at playing games but still keeps playing then lol, i bet if he plays any other games he ll get his ass smoke rofl

[caladbolg777]

... from an honest reviewer. Too bad it's only a blog and doesn't carry any weight.

[RRoDReaper]

AHAHAHAHA LOLOLOL Gears 2 Flop of the Year!!!!
/sarcasm

So why do you guys care about someone's opinion? YOU like the game so who cares?

[Magic_The_Celt]

Gears of Bugs 2

[Relwyn01]

What a stupid review. The multiplayer has some issues, but other than that, not much to gripe about. Pretty solid for what it is.

[PS360PCROCKS]

oh please to all the idiots in here pretending this carries any weight whatsoever. The game is great, secondly, wtf is up with the first paragraph? He shoots a head and can't get his chainsaw bayonette to work? Um did he EVER think that maybe it WONT work when your GETTING SHOT at? Not to mention...

"You crawl on your hands and knees, bleeding out, towards Delta squadmate Dominic Santiago for him to revive you. Nothing happens. Screaming in agony and frustration doesn't break Dom's preoccupation with finding his wife. Not you lying helpless at his feet, not anything. You die."

Um this is for the terrible players who play on normal or easy, I could tear through that with my eyes closed, anybody who relies on the A.I. to help him complete the game just blows. This guy obviously is not suited to review any game, let alone this one.

[Bathyj]

Its so typical of XBox only gamers to just put their heads in the sand when someone says something about Gears or Halo.

Dont actually address any of the issues he's brought up or offer a counter arguement to disprove him, just call him a fanboy, that way its alright for you to ignore his opinion and you can still sleep well knowing Gears is the greatest game ever created (haha, I couldn't keep a straight face. Its not even the best game in November.)

Thank god someone brings these issues up. Too bad it is only a blog and no one will ever read it or care, cos if I only went off the "reputable" (yeah right) websites you'd say Gears was a technical triumph of design, story telling and innovation. We all know thats not true. Even my diehard Xbox loving friends (I'm talking actual flesh and blood friends here, not just some guy/girl I meet online to frag) say its really just more of the same with most of the same faults as the first one.

Hey, thats fine, its a great game still. I enjoyed the first one while it lasted and I enjoy the 2nd. I'm just sick of how overated the first one was and the 2nd is just following suit, getting pampered by every site and getting passes on its flaws which most people wont even know exists. Till they play it that is. GotY THIS IS NOT.

[rhood022]

I ran into this issue a few times. But the most annoying issue was that Dom would sometimes disappear on me or just freeze in place. It usually happened in the Hollow levels and once in the Nexus right before the battle with Skorge.

This glitch did provide a humorous moment though. Towards the end of Act 3, when you hijack the gunboat, instead of getting in the boat with me Dom pulled a Jesus and just sorta floated out over the water. However, instead of moving he just stood out in the water firing in circles as the gunboat I was on sped away.

I went through the entire sequence alone on the boat. Dom finally decided to join me on the boat during the fight with the Leviathan. But he decided to walk on water again after I died fighting the monster.

[PS360PCROCKS]

Never saw any of that, once he got caught up on some boxes but that was the extent of my campaign glitches

[ppisatosspot]

gays of war confirmed