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| Source // Xbox |
When all you know is war, I guess it's inevitable that the war won't stop. When all you are is an impossibly proportioned man fueled by diesel and wearing parts of a car for protection, you probably don't get up to much else other than shooting things. It's a good job Gears of War 2 exists to keep the guys employed, is what I'm getting at, because I've no idea what they'd do without it.
Marcus Fenix and the gang return in a sequel supposedly bigger and badder than the first outing, the game that effectively unleashed cover-shooters into the world. What form will the chest-high walls take in this game? What horrors will we willingly march into for the sake of mankind's survival? Just how gruff can we shout this line of dialogue?
Let's time our reloads right and kick down the door to find out.
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| Source // Xbox |
Frustrations
Last time out, I said I should have opted for the Xbox 360 version of Gears of War. This time, I mistakenly bought two second-hand copies of Gears of War 2 for the Xbox 360, because this game is so generic that I forgot what I already owned.
Generic is probably the wrong word, as is bland. Gears of War 2 isn't either of the two, really, and yet...
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| Source // MobyGames |
It is sixth months after the events of Gears of War, a game I haven't gone back to since writing about my first experience with it. The Locusts are still absolute pests to humanity, despite a fancy-sounding bomb being detonated in what I presume to be an important part of their territory. I don't really know the plot, but whatever happened wasn't enough. They're back and are making sure you know it.
The game begins in a hospital full of cover to hide behind and locusts to headshot or chainsaw your way through. The controls are much the same, with an addition of a mechanic to use enemies as human shields, so now you've got chest-high cover that actually covers your chest, rather than stopping before it reaches those lofty heights. I didn't use it.
I didn't use it because I was still fumbling with the controls. My aim was all over the place, my reload timing a little lacking and certainly not consistent, and my running into and out of cover leaving something to be desired.
It was playable, provided I didn't do that stupid crouch sprint. The camera would wobble like it was held aloft on a spring and darting to just the other side of a room would have me squinting a little lest I succumb to motion sickness. I read that movement has been improved over Gears of War, but here I am, literally slogging my way around the levels because moving any quicker is sickening.
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| Source // Xbox |
Something calls you away from the hospital and I find myself on top of a weird-looking truck, manning a machine gun as flying monstrosities divebomb us through the mountains. How did I get here? Wasn't I in a city just a minute ago?
This is Gears of War 2's problem. You're swept along from one scene to the next with very little in the way of explanation or reasoning. We've got to repel the Locusts, duh, but the subplot is that Dom is looking for his wife, injured (read: presumed dead) in the war. Gears of War doesn't exactly do subtlety and calm emotions, and every instance of this story so far has resulted in Dom shouting and getting angry at the lack of information there is on the whereabouts of his wife.
Would I care more if I'd finished Gears of War beforehand? Eh, maybe. I'd like to think I'd know more about the characters and how they fit into this world, but because I haven't, I've got to go with what Gears of War 2 is telling me, and it's telling me next to nothing.
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| Source // Xbox |
Well, it's telling me that it has more to offer. It's not just a game about trudging through a city, shooting down corridors before emerging into a hall with cover scattered everywhere and clearly marked chokepoints you should aim towards. Gears of War 2 is definitely more than that. And if not more, then not as obvious.
This truck section is a giant hall with hundreds of locusts. You still park behind cover to deal with them, you still pop your head out to shoot with a variety of weapons, and eventually, you'll get up close and personal with your enemy and show them how sharp your chainsaw is before Marcus puts his fingers to his ears to listen to someone chime in with the next objective, which might make sense as much as it makes no sense.
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| Source // Xbox |
I find myself at a snowy town that needs to be cleared of locust mines and then of locust locusts. The town ends at a dark tunnel that we inch our way through, blowing up more locusts mines as the engine gets to show off its lighting.
I don't know how amazing it would have been back in 2008, but here and there it looked nice. Nice, but not mind-blowing, but that wasn't the fault of the engine. It was the fault of the gameplay.
As I emerged from the tunnels to come face to face with whatever this is, I was starting to get bored of Gears of War 2. I was never on board with it and raring to go, mind you. I suppose I was interested to see what it would offer because I'd never played it, but I wasn't immediately wowed. If anything, my immediate reaction was that it was more of the same.
Outside of the tunnel is another small town where you get to deal with mortars in your own fashion, with the return of the lightly branching path selection giving me the choice of going over the rooftops or through the buildings. It ended with a big dinosaur-like thing with guns for arms needing to be dealt with before it destroyed our truck, but I'd already shot an awful lot of these guys in the vehicle section earlier, so it wasn't new or scary or threatening, even when I was running low on ammo. My AI teammates just keep dumping lead into it until the checkpoint.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Final Word
If we were expecting the chainsaw duel at the top of this post, I feel that what we got was the chainsaw duel above. It might still be cool and manly, but it's not as exciting anymore, is it? Something is missing.
The story has never been the strong point of Gears of War, and given that I like a story in video games, that's a bit of a problem. A lack of story needs to be propped up with good gameplay, which Gears of War 2 does have, but it's gameplay I've seen and done before. Under the hood, and to expert players, I'm sure there are quite a few tweaks and improvements over the first game, but to the masses like me, Gears of War 2 feels like more Gears of War.
That's often not a bad thing, though. If a formula works, why change it? Gears of War was doing something that nobody else was doing, and in a style that wasn't really seen either. Super gruff soldiers weren't new, but in this ridiculous state (i.e., walking fridges) they were. You knew what you were going to get when you looked at the cover to Gears of War on the store shelves.
Truth be told, though, Gears of War 2 takes players to some quite unexpected places that the cover most certainly doesn't give any hints to. The engine might make them look spectacular, the setting making them feel dirty, grubby, horrible, whatever, but the story just renders them as backdrops for some cover-shooting to happen in, and it doesn't pick me up and make me wonder what's around the next corner.
If I were to find myself playing Gears of War 2 again, it wouldn't be because I want to find out what happens to the characters. It certainly wouldn't be because I wanted to find out whether Dom's wife is still alive, or whether the locusts were finally defeated second time out.
No, I'd be playing again because it's there, it's easy enough to get into, and I know what I'm going to get out of it. Nothing special, nothing earth-shattering, but something that wouldn't be a complete waste of time.
As for the multiplayer, there are bots this time, and no, I have no interest in it whatsoever. More interest in Dom's wife, if you want some sort of interest-o-meter.
Fun Facts
The game was a showcase for Unreal Engine 3, featuring all kinds of technical improvements that sail right over my head, but I can grasp lots more fleshy bits on-screen and plenty of destructible environments, though some argue that's more of a graphical detail than a mechanical one that changes the gameplay.
Gears of War 2, developed by Epic Games, first released in 2008.
Version played: Xbox 360, 2008.