Gears Of War 2 Review

Bigger, Better & more Badass were the words used by Cliff Blezinski when describing GOW2. We felt the need to revisit this classic best seller on the 360 as it’s massive and record shattering sequel, Gears of War 3 looms ever closer. Did the game live up to its hype? Let’s find out!

 

 

Gears of War 2 (3PS) was developed by Epic Games and released on the Xbox 360 on November 7, 2008. It had a lot of hype going into it since the hit of Gears of War, its prequel. The game introduced a new co-operative game mode called Horde. This was a massive game changer that brought about a lot of popularity in general in the world of gaming towards this style of gaming. A lot of different variants of this game type can be seen in modern video games and although Gears of War 2 wasn’t the one the one that started it all, it was certainly the one that made it famous.

 

 

Horde mode, being one of the most iconic game modes of Gears of War 2 gives you and 4 other buddies (either over LAN or online) the ability to fight waves after waves of Locust creatures for an insanely hard wave at every 10th round. It also features a system that also makes the waves progressively harder with Locust enemy stat multipliers after every 10th wave with a lot of achievements support for the game type too. It feels like a true accomplishment after completing wave 50 of Horde, even if it was on the Easy difficulty, playing it on Insane would simply be, well, insane…

 

 

Apart from the Horde mode, Gears of War 2’s single player offers a good chunk of co-op enabled background to the Gears universe. They offer a good sized amount of replay value, especially for all the 41 or so collectibles (usually in the form of COG tags or some Locust faction artifacts). Playing through the campaign on any difficulty, unlocks the Insane difficulty mode which should not be taken lightly. It is very, very hard to beat the game solo (with an AI for partner) so we, along with other gamers, have found an awesome way to get around the achievement of completing the campaign on Insane (for a cool 150G’s)! Gears of War 2 allows you to play the campaign with up to 2 players, but it doesn’t restrict the difficulty that each of those people play on. So, you could play it on Insane while your buddy plays it on Easy and allows you to stick back and he/she can do most of the work, allowing the campaign to be completed in relative ease.

 

 

Last, but not least, the game offers you the competitive side of the Gears of War franchise. The multiplayer side of Gears of War 2 was sort of a hit and miss between gamers. There were some who were completely dedicated towards it and played it to death and then there are others who just can’t seem to get into it all. The game provides classic Gears of War gametypes like Execution, Warzone, Annex, King of the Hill and three new entries to the Gears world are Wingman, Submission (A.K.A. Meat Flag) and Guardian. All of these gametypes have two different variants, ranked or social. In the ranked variant, you are matchmade with other gamers of your skill level and you get penalties for quitting. On the other hand, social offers you the ability to jump into whatever you wish and whenever as well, but there is usually a lot of bots in the game to occupy the roles of the quitters which gets quite annoying.

 

 

However, the multiplayer structure of the game relies on a host and this is one (if not the only) of the downfalls of the game. The game does not have a host swap feature that was implemented into most modern games and so, if the host were to quite, the whole lobby is emptied to the main menu, thereby ending the game. Also, since the game employs a host feature, there is almost always host advantage which makes the game unfair sometimes in CQC (close quarter combat) situations.

 

 

Apart from the above said problems, Epic has showed continued support for the game via numerous Title Updates (at 6 right now) and not to mention the several and seemingly outrageous XP events with all the tweaks to multiplayer and Horde mode (it once even reached a whopping 30X event!).

 

 

Apart from gameplay, the Gears of War franchise runs on the amazing Unreal 3 engine that’s always being tweaked and enhanced and with it running a ton of games in the industry, it is one of the most trusted and famous engines that are known. The game has solid graphics for a 2008 release and another thing we must mention is the DLC the game offers too. The best package is the “All Fronts Collection” which gives you all of the game’s DLC packs for a great bundled price. It contains 19 multiplayer & Horde maps along with an extra mission that was cut out from campaign. It’s a pretty sweet package for such a measly price and is probably the most value for money on the XBL Marketplace right now!

 

 

Note: For Gears of War 3 fans, make sure to stay tuned for our coverage and constant updates on the game. Also, in the meantime, make sure to unlock the Veteran Gear achievement as it unlocks all 5 gold starter weapons for you to use in Gears 3 and also Seriously 2.0 which is yet to be detailed!!

 

Game 2 Gamer’s Final Score  4.5  / 5

 

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