<\/p>\n

At this point of time, I think it’s safe to say that I’m done with Gears of War 2<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I’ve fought through the campaign multiple times, finished all 50 levels of Horde mode and ground out every achievement that I can reasonably expect myself to get.\u00a0 I have no desire to play the game’s multiplayer mode, and if I did, the busted matchmaking would prevent it any way. The only achievement I have left to consider is “Seriously 2.0” with its 100,000 kills, and while I can do it, I probably won’t.\u00a0 I would love those additional 50 points, but I just can’t justify the time needed to do it.<\/p>\n

Now that I’m finished and have had time to reflect a little, I’m somewhat disappointed in the game.\u00a0 The original Gears of War<\/em> was one of my favorite games and, at the time, the only game I restarted to play on the highest difficulty level. The co-op was great, the combat was greatand even though the story was pretty slim, when it wasn’t nonexistant, it didn’t matter.\u00a0 The gameplay made up for it.<\/p>\n

Strangely, rather than build on the intensity of the first one, Epic chose to instead throw a lot more variety in to the sequel, and as a result you end up with a very unfocused game.\u00a0 There are combat sections, platforming sections, parts where you ride on a weapons platform, parts where you drive a tank, parts where you ride Locust beasties.\u00a0 See what I’m saying?\u00a0 Sure, there was more of a story, and the new parts helped clear up things from the first time, while at the same time make the overall plot even murkier, but there were so many other new things as well, that the entire experience isn’t as focused as the first one.<\/p>\n

If the original Gears of War<\/em> could be described with one word, it would be “intensity”.\u00a0 The game simply did not let you breathe, unless you physically stood still.\u00a0 Clearing out an area and then moving on to the next area, which wasn’t that far along your linear path, would then bring on a new selection of things to kill.\u00a0 The action never let up, and, when you were behind cover, fighting for your life, your enemies would not let you sit there, contentedly lining up shots.\u00a0 They were brutally relentless, rushing you in a heartbeat, getting behind you and eviscerating you.\u00a0 You had to be on your toes constantly and when playing on Insane, having a good partner was essential.<\/p>\n

Not so for Gears of War 2<\/em>.\u00a0 For one, there are long, and I mean long, sections of walking around with nothing to fight.\u00a0 An entire chapter takes place in an area where aside from some small critters that are easily dispatched with melee attacks, there’s nothing to fight.\u00a0 There are environmental hazards to avoid, but it’s fairly easy to do so.\u00a0 When you did fight the Locust, they stayed put.\u00a0 Rarely, if ever, are you rushed, with the exception of the Mauler Boomers, who only have a melee weapon, and the Flame Grenadiers with their flamethrowers.\u00a0 All of the other enemies would just stay behind cover and light you up.\u00a0 Or, if they did try to rush you, the size of the battlefield was so large, that it would have taken them forever to get to you.\u00a0 I am the world’s worst video game sniper and I got to be pretty damn good with the Longshot (the game’s sniper rifle) because of the copious opportunities for long range kills.\u00a0 These two changes, made for a considerably less intense experience.<\/p>\n

That’s not to say that GoW2<\/em> didn’t have intense fights, because it did, but the intensity of those fights came from the game throwing more enemies or larger enemies at you rather than having more aggressive enemies.\u00a0 I think that part of this is from the design of the enemies themselves.\u00a0 The Grinders, basically a Boomer with a chain gun, can light you up from across the map, so he doesn’t need to get close.\u00a0 The Reavers, a flying beastie, and the Brumaks, a huge, lizard like creature, also pack some pretty heavy armament, so they don’t need to be up close to do damage.\u00a0 One note about those last two.\u00a0 At different parts of the game, you and your team ride both the Reavers and the Brumaks, and the end result, for me, was to make me feel guilty about having killed both such creatures earlier in the game.\u00a0 In the first game, you killed Reavers, but hey, they’re Locust and Locust are bad, so no sweat.\u00a0 Riding them in this game, made me feel like I had spent a lot of aggression on a very ugly horse, and horses aren’t inherently evil.\u00a0 They just do what their riders tell them to do.<\/p>\n

Getting back to the firefights, when these large beasts show up, you know that you have to kill them, because they pack a real punch, but you also feel like as long as you stay behind cover, you’ll be ok, because they won’t ever rush you. The only real threat from rushing were the Bloodmounts, mini-Brumaks that had no problem getting up on you and tearing you a new one.\u00a0 The fights with the Bloodmounts were intense, but those were few and far between.\u00a0 Now, yes, tickers and wretches would come after you, but tickers could be picked off and exploded from a distance and wretches were easily taken out with one melee hit, even on Insane.<\/p>\n

Even the boss battles lacked punch.\u00a0 The boss battles in Gears<\/em> where you fought Berserkes, the females of the Locust race, also strangely absent from the sequel, were pretty intense fights.\u00a0 You couldn’t shoot them, well you could, it just didn’t do anything, so you had to lure them to a spot where you could use a satellite laser on them. Luring them places meant pissing them off until they charged at you and you dove out of the way, causing them to bust open a door.\u00a0 The final confrontation with General Raam required you to whup his ass quickly, or get tore up for your troubles.\u00a0 In the sequel, one fight is against a giant fish and involved a lot of waiting around, one is against the new baddie Skorge, and involves a lot of you running away from his various ranged attacks while waiting to get in a chainsaw duel and break his weapon, and the third was against a giant mutated Brumak, while safely protected from within a helicoptor.\u00a0 None were intense, and the fight with Skorge wasn’t even a fight.\u00a0 You can’t hurt him, so you run away until you break his stuff enough and then he runs away.<\/p>\n

Where the intensity of the game comes out is in Horde mode, which is, I think, why fans of the first game were so enamored with it.\u00a0 In Horde mode, enemies will rush you and you have to be quick and efficient about taking them down. You have to prioritize targets and communicate with your team or you’ll get slaughtered.\u00a0 As much as I liked the intensity though, once you’ve gone from level 1 to 50 in one sitting, you’re pretty much done with Horde mode.\u00a0 At least I was.<\/p>\n

That’s not to say that Gears of War 2<\/em> is a bad game.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s a good to very good game.\u00a0 It certainly looks pretty and runs well and the co-op is as enjoyable as ever.\u00a0 They even made the achievements easier to get, which the whore in me greatly appreciates.\u00a0 While there’s more to Gears of War 2<\/em>, it’s not more of the right things from Gears of War<\/em>, and that’s the problem.\u00a0 I wanted more intensity and I got more running. I wanted more brutal fights and I got more vehicles.\u00a0 I can only hope that for the third one, Epic goes back to what made the first one so great, that two minute loop of crazed intensity, repeated over and over until the inevitable, nail biting conclusion.\u00a0 A coherent story would be nice too, but I’m not so naive as to expect the impossible.\u00a0 After all, they make games, they’re not miracle workers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this point of time, I think it’s safe to say that I’m done with Gears of War 2. I’ve fought through the campaign multiple times, finished all 50 levels of Horde mode and ground out every achievement that I can reasonably expect myself to get.\u00a0 I have no desire to play the game’s multiplayer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,10,3],"tags":[39,104,287],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","category-shooter","category-xbox360","tag-39","tag-gears-of-war-2","tag-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":499,"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}