I didnt really know how else to call it. So yeah, over the holidays I received Gears 2. Having little else to do as the girlfriend was out of town and friends were celebrating holidays I decided to beat it that day. Good times. So I figured I would give anyone who either doesn't know about it my run down, or give people who care about my opinion on it the run down. Hooray.



So where to start? The original Gears I think is the best place. First of all I enjoyed this game. It was the first game that I played with my ex girlfriend. She giggled when she chainsawed someone in half. Adorable. But we ran through it on every difficulty. For what it was it was fun. Up until insane I never really noticed what the plot was. The action was good though, and the cover system was "new" (not brand new, but rarely used in mainstream).

So what did Clifford Bleszinski change in the newest installment? Everything. The graphics are marginally improved, which is cool. The scale of the game has changed from killing a few locust to killing the whole army. The emotional impact is now existent, if weak. So really, where to start? First the bread and butter enemies from the last one are still there. However there are probably twice as many new enemies, not including variations on the old ones. This includes the brumak (eat me PC users. : P), tickers, flamethrowers, sires, and a worm the size of a level. It was kind of neat, but odd. It was cool to see the expansion of the army and a diverse enemy base. However it also begged the question where the hell where these guys the last game? That can be overlooked though, as they added a lot.

They also introduced some new bosses some of which were fun. The last one was one of my favorites: a completely epic throwaway fight to make you feel awesome. The fight against the queens bodyguard was seriously weak though, and really the bosses failed to meet the last games standards (RAAM was a badass). The worm 'boss' was pretty awesome.


Badass

I suppose next I will talk about the emotional impact of the game. There was a lot of stuff going on here. The search for Doms wife was neat, and had an interesting twist. Taz was interesting as well. They really strived to do something more than the last one, and it showed.

Where did it fall short though? Sometimes the plot was just obnoxious. The vehicle level was annoying, and almost forced you to die. The enemies developed a keen sense of when you pull the trigger on the sniper rifle. I BS you not 75% or more of the time I shoot at them they duck the moment I fire. That was the number one cause of my frustration. There were a few glitches where a squad made would freak out. The new recovery system made the game easy compared to the first, but I guess games are becoming easier every day. Oh well.

Overall I would probably give the game a 50% improvement over the last title, earning overall about a 7.5 from me. It wasnt exceptional, but it was fairly good.