Gears of war 2 was easily the biggest game in 2008 for the xbox 360, after a rather empty half of the year - fans were obviously very excited about the release.
The game was released to amazing sucess and critical acclaim, but is it really bigger, better and more badass?
Graphics:
The game looks amazing, great imaginative art style which is unique to Epic's games, even if Unreal players will feel like they have seen it all before.
The game has serious pop-in issues if you choose not to install the game, with textures not fully loading for sometimes upto 30 seconds in certain multiplayer matches.
However, this doesn't take away from the amazing scenery created in the game, specifically the single player campaign - very well done.
Sound:
The gun sound effects can before tiresome during the single player campaign due to the fact you will be using the same gun for the majority of the game, however - the other weapons have some imaginative sound effects but the amount of times you hear them during the campaign is lacking.
The game has a decent soundtrack - fits the theme well, but nothing that caught my attention - i had to stop and focus my attention on it to even notice it.
Gameplay:
This is what i think makes the game worthy of AAA status, yeah - it has a great cover system, but the slow, clunky movement really adds to the experience - it makes it unique, i don't think i have played a third person game which is similar or has managed to pull it off as well as gears.
It can be, however boiled down to just run forward, hide behind a "Chest high wall" (- yahtzee) kill a few locusts, run forward again to hide behind another wall, will become repetative for some.
Story:
Ahh, not gear's strongest point - has some great voice actors, but the dialogue is terrible, where it was just cheesey in the first gears, it sometimes steps over the cheesey line into just plain bad. The story is, once again - destroy the locusts - there is a sub story with dom and his wife which i think was completely unnecessary, especially how stupidly it was executed. This type of game is never really expected to have a good story so i won't deduct much from the game for this.
Online:
*Sigh* i had this game on release day, i tried to get online and.. what did i find? A matchmaking system that taken upto 20 minutes to get into a game - when i did get into a game i was met with horrible lag. Few weeks later, the lag problems were not as bad - but then - with the game actually playable i would find all the gamebreaking glitches that other players used to gain advantages, the game was also terribly unbalanced.
All this made me eventually give up online. I, however recently decided to try get back into it after hearing most of the issues have been resolved, finally after all this time. I do come back to find a quicker matchmaking system, lagless games and less glitches - it was finally playable!
Horde mode seems to be a popular mode in the game, i personally don't see much in it after the first few play throughs, it is a great laugh with friends but just became old with me after a while - still a welcome addition.
Conclusion:
Has a really great, varied single player campaign and amazing presentation. The competitive play is still very unbalanced but is now enjoyable to play after all the fixes, horde mode is a great laugh. I'd recommend a purchase if you liked the old gears, if you never tried the first one - try it out if you like this genre of games. One of the best games on the xbox 360.
