GEARS OF WAR!

Gears of War 2, finally arrived on saturday afternoon, and that day I proceeded to complete the game on casual in about 9 hours. And I must say..... WOW!!!!

First off the graphics are absolutely astonishing, and they broke away from the color pallet of the first game and brought in a much wider spectrum of color. Even the levels where you fight under ground are colorful in most cases. And the action is so heavy in this one. They altered there engine enough so you could be fighting more then 4 guys at once, and what a difference it does make. Not to mention the cut scenes are vastly better because the war sequences are more then a few guys (such as the moment they introduced RAMM in the first game).

The story is also delightfully entertaining, but has some sad moments here and there throughout (not that the story is all happy considering it is a war game). I don't wanna say to much for anyone who reads this blogs sake, but I will say that, yes you will have plot openings at the end of the game, and no they don't close up all the loose ends of the first game. But considering Epic stated around the time of launch of the first Gears of War that the game will be a trilogy, if you wanna find out what happens, you'll just have to wait!

The games play is also much improved from the first. The cover system seems more fluid and you get in and out of it much cleaner then in the first installment. Also they improved upon the roady run so you can do it for as long as you can find space to run into, and it's more agile to move while running as well, so you can turn around obstacles to get from point a to point b quickly. This also brings up stopping power. I love this addition to stopping power. Obviously the people at Epic were not happy with the roady run in, shotgun to the chest, roll out strategy that was so commonly used during the first installment. So to counter them adding unlimited time to roady run, they added this stopping power feature which makes it where if you are getting shot at, it does phase you and slow you down and in some cases even stop you dead in your tracks. This definitely cut down on the shot gun users from the first games multiplayer. They also made the shotgun less powerful to help a bit, but still a close up shot from it will put down your opponent.

In terms of multiplayer however, currently there is some issues with match making, where it takes usually over 20 minutes to find a match for most folk (some people say they always get a match, but I doubt it). This is a major issue, and I am sure the team at Epic are making huge efforts to get it resolved so I will not hold it against them (Epic should do a beta next time though!). The bots however are very smart, the AI in this game is almost astonishing, so you can use them for multiplayer matches with your friends, and sometimes even lose if you crank up their skills to insane, so even if you can't get a match going online, you can still practice by yourself, or indulge in Horde Mode!

Horde Mode is the new mode added in Gears of War 2 where you do just what the title says. Fight against a seemingly endless horde of wave after wave of Locusts. Currently the only way to play this mode on public matches is in normal difficulty, and I'll admit, it's no cake walk. The mode ends when your entire team dies before they finish a wave, or you finish all 50 waves. The waves include every enemy from the campaign outside of the giant monsters (Reavers, Burmaks, ect.) and no bosses, but that does leave Bloodmounts (a new really tough and fast enemy) Along with the Boomers which now carry everything from rocket launchers to chain guns. I honestly couldn't fathom being able to find 4 other players, or myself being good enough to fight against the wave 49-50 Bloodmounts on the insane difficulty. But I'm sure with time, it'll happen. Horde mode is a great success in my book, and I am glad they incorporated a non competitive mode to the game, which allows you to team up with up to 4 friends to fight against waves of challenging enemies.

In all besides a few minor glitches with the multiplayer which I trust will be patched, I'd definitely have to give Gears of War 2 a ten out of ten rating, and is a must buy for anyone who is into tactical shooters.

Bellow is two videos. The first is the trailer of the game, and the 2nd is a video diary from epic about the graphics. But always feel free to check out more at Gametrailers.com or at Gamespot.com