Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360)

The first Gears of War won plenty of awards, sold like mad, and helped kick off the cover shooter craze of the seventh generation of video game consoles, so Epic Games obviously would want to get to work on a sequel as soon as possible after their breakaway hit. Releasing two years after the first game, it could have very well just been more of the same, and considering that some systems and weapons were clearly carried over with little alteration, it might seem that way at first. However, when you really start getting into Gears of War 2, you’ll find that not only did Epic Games try to address as many issues with the original game as possible, but they let their creativity thrive, taking the chance to truly explore their mechanics and game world.

 

Perhaps one of the biggest improvements happens right as you kick off the campaign, as Gears of War 2 does in its opening cutscene what the first game failed to do: clearly establish the setting of Gears of War. We are introduced to the sequel by hearing narration from the Locust Queen fresh off her army’s apparent defeat in the previous game, but the monstrous humanoids known as the Locusts had an entire city even deeper underground where they rebuild their forces and begin a new, more powerful offensive against the remaining people on the planet’s surface. The Coalition of Ordered Governments realizes that they’ll need to take the fight down below to wipe out the Locusts for good, and in introducing this new offensive, the player gets to hear a speech from one of the military’s leaders that clearly establishes the fact that we’re on an alien world called Sera and there is no question about what the COG’s army will be doing.

 

Now that you know all of the basics of the game’s setting and the main plot’s stakes, Gears of War 2 can take things in an interesting direction as it isn’t just interested in chaining together interesting places to have gun battles. More attention is paid to the characters and the toll of the war this time around, with there being actually deep and impactful emotional moments found in this game where your obnoxiously muscular soldier can carve a monster in half with the chainsaw attached to his machine gun. The main character is still the gruff and easily irritated Marcus Fenix, but his friendlier and more level-headed companion Dom Santiago has recently heard there is a lead on his missing wife, the mystery of where she is hanging over Dom and influencing his actions as you delve deeper into the plot. The Locusts are made a much more loathsome menace this time around as they aren’t just creatures capable of shooting back at with you with the same weapons but a monstrous society who does unspeakable things to their human captives and sinks entire cities in their purely destructive campaign against the humans on the surface.

 

Gears of War 2 does not shy away from the horrors this war can lead to, but it doesn’t forget that much of the audience coming into the game is likely looking for thrilling gunplay and some of the humor that helped the first game’s story have more personality. Marcus and Dom are joined by a much bigger but still rather tightly managed cast this time around. Baird is back to be the ever-suffering pessimist the others rag on, and Cole Train continues to bring an incredible energy to the action as he delights in the team’s successes and isn’t afraid to crack jokes or indulge his impulses. The player encounters a few other characters at different points too like the raucous redneck Dizzy, the reserved and serene Tai, and Benjamin Carmine, the brother to a rookie who was unceremoniously killed off in the first game. While the core four characters have their strong companionship still shining strong, these new characters offer new perspectives in this war, and since Gears of War 2 is even less afraid to kill characters than the first game, it also adds a sense of danger as you can’t be sure who makes it out of this story alive. As combat partners they’ve even received upgrades, able to help revive you in the campaign if your partner in co-op isn’t around to assist, and having the extra guns backing you up certainly makes the gun fights feel less one-sided even if you aren’t playing the adventure in multiplayer.

Gears of War 2 is a third-person cover shooter, and while it features many of the waist-high walls, ledges, parked vehicles, and rubble you might expect to serve as areas to hunker behind during a firefight, the devastated world of Sera has plenty of interesting new ideas for how cover can become a more active element in the combat. New mechanics are introduced like worms with rock hard shells that move along the ground while serving as cover, pressure pads that only raise their walls when you’re standing right on them so the battlefield is less cluttered but still features cover, and levers you can pull to make cover rise or fall depending on whether you want some protection or wish to reveal the opposition. The roadie run allows you to barrel forward and reach cover at a good pace, the dash allowing you to push forward during lulls in the gunfire so that you can start pressuring enemies, and the recovering health encourages this aggression as well. So long as you can avoid taking damage for a while, any damage you’ve sustained will be healed, and you can begin to play dangerously once more. Weapons fire can tear you apart easily if you don’t embrace the cover or treat the enemy with respect though. However, to keep the pace of the gun combat high and push you away from hiding behind cover too long, there’s an active reload system where a meter appears any time you reload a weapon. So long as you time the second press of the reload button properly, you can reload the gun instantly, the downtime severely reduced and your bullets even powered up if you hit the sweet spot on the meter.

 

These mechanics really encourage blood-pumping battles where both sides can apply pressure, but where they really get to shine is in the campaign’s incredibly creative setpieces. While it may be a little concerning to learn that you’ll be going underground to fight the Locusts, the game not only still finds plenty of excuses to diversify the actual locations you end up in, but it creates an entire ecology for the underground world that helps it stand out. You aren’t just moving through tunnels, as strange vegetation and creatures add a bit of color to a game that otherwise isn’t afraid to rely on grey and brown a lot. Levels are better structured to push you towards your objective than in the original, and they include some rather creative concepts that leave you excited to see what’s coming up next. One portion of the game has you playing in one of the cities that has just been plunged underground by the Locusts, the ruins far more chaotic than the bombed out cities you explore at other parts of the plot. A gigantic worm is not only responsible for sinking this city, but it becomes one of the areas you explore as you enter it and begin to kill the mammoth creature from within. A mysterious facility with an AI and still active security systems provides eerie experiments and powerful sentries to face off with, and when you leave a strange weather phenomenon known as razor hail forces you to carefully navigate the exterior as you make your way out. From the subterranean structures the Locusts built to new concepts above ground like a small snowy village and more natural landscapes, Gears of War 2 continues to whip out places that both influence the fights, add twists to the story, and serve as interesting battlegrounds as they embrace new ideas for cover, navigation gimmicks, and hazards.

 

Not every idea is top notch, but luckily the vehicle sections that keep cropping up aren’t all weak either. Sometimes you hit against the issue where it’s hard to tell if that turret on the car is really doing much damage, but other times the game indulges you and lets you pilot the flying Locust monsters known as Reavers which are practically just there for a power trip. Some sections like these aren’t even difficult so much as a chance to go wild and obliterate everything in your path, while others are a little dull as they take too long for how simple they really are. None drag too long and the weaker ones aren’t too difficult either, but speaking of difficulty, the final boss is an unfortunately tame note to go out on as it’s definitely the easiest of the game’s few bosses. Gears of War 2 is definitely at its best when its focusing on its regular gun fights instead of vehicles or bosses fought in nontraditional ways. The Locusts themselves still can carry most of the same gun types as you and are thus a good match for you as they use the same mechanics to their advantage. However, they have some other breeds that assist like the Wretches that scramble towards you at speed to overwhelm you, the detonating Tickers that employ the same tactic with explosives, the Bloodmounts that charge you with riders on their back, and the Kantus priests who can invigorate enemy soldiers. Sturdier Locusts such as the Boomers, Grinders, and Maulers all bring heavy weaponry into play while also taking a lot of punishment so you have to watch you’re not blasted apart, chewed up by minigun fire, or smashed by a swinging flail while you whittle them down. The interplay of regular Locusts troops and these special breeds not only keep the firefights exciting, but they contribute to the weapon options and ammo you need to succeed.

The weapons in Gears of War 2 include plenty of carryovers from the first game such as the Lancer assault rifle, the Bolo grenades that you can now stick to an enemy or surface as a trap, the seemingly weaker Gnasher Shotgun and Longshot sniper rifle, and the much more easily utilized and quicker to active Hammer of Dawn satellite laser. They all pack an incredible punch despite some power rebalancing, and seeing enemies burst into chunks is possible from almost any weapon if it is used correctly. Their killing power means that automatic healing isn’t such an edge that battles stagnate, and some new weapons join the old selection that add some new concepts to how you face your foes. Ink Grenades fill an area with poisonous smoke for area denial and visual obstruction, the flamethrower lets you incinerate anything in a short area in front of you, and a new set of weapons actually prevent you from using anything else unless you want to drop these new special tools. The Mulcher is a high-powered minigun that makes you move obnoxiously slow but chews apart any opposition with only a little sustained fire, the mortar takes a while to fire but obliterates anything it can land its explosive shots on, and while the Boomer Shield is a more defensive counterpart to these powerhouse weapons, it can protect your advances even though you can only use pistols while carrying it. For brief power trips, something like the Mulcher is able to spread even more visceral carnage than something like the rocket launcher or the explosive bolts of the Torque Bow, it’s just a shame they come with such movement penalties even during parts of the campaign where you will have to walk quite a distance.

 

Multiplayer has seen a lot of improvements as well as many new modes recontextualize the already excellent maps for different sorts of battles. Warzone and Execution are the modes where the goal is to simply kill the entirety of the enemy team, Execution adding the caveat that you’ll have to get in close and finish them off for it to count. Map knowledge, good aim, and knowing when to pick your battles will help you here as well as in the modes about area denial and control like King of the Hill with its one point of interest and Annex with its multiple spots to claim for points. A few unique ideas like Guardian exist where the team aim to protect one VIP player at all costs with all other players respawning after death, but this mode has received a tweak that makes it more interesting as losing that player won’t mean an immediate loss, the leaderless team now lacking the ability to respawn but still having hope for a comeback. While most modes go for two teams of five, Wingman reduces it down to five teams of two each for a much tenser experience, but the Submission mode’s concept is a little weak with the need to move an aggressive AI character to a capture point feeling like a less than thrilling twist to the typical Capture the Flag formula that focuses on engaging with the enemy team instead of both jockeying to wrangle an ornery computer player.

 

Horde mode is the most unique addition to the multiplayer though, turning away from player versus player as up to five participants can work together to hold back waves of AI opposition. The excellent Locust variety from the single-player shows up here as you hold off groups of enemies that begin to draw on the tougher enemy types and up their skill and damage output to make them more formidable the deeper in you get. While having 50 waves makes it a daunting challenge, especially if you don’t have a full group, it’s certainly an interesting and unique way to play with mechanics that thrive just as well here as they do in the other modes. For the most part, the other multiplayer modes of Gears of War 2 adds a few small twists to the kind of multiplayer play you’d expect from a shooter. These twists all benefit that aggressive combat approach the game design encourages, so even after you’ve played through a campaign that did an excellent job tidying up the story problems the original Gears of War had, you still have an excellent multiplayer component that surpasses the original in design as well.

THE VERDICT: Gears of War 2 is the best kind of sequel. Epic Games identified every small issue with its predecessor and aimed to correct them here, from big things like making the plot more meaningful and the world-building more clear to the small things like making the Hammer of Dawn more satisfying to use. With incredible creativity in the setpieces for the already exhilarating gunplay and plenty of unique weapons that play into how you face off against other players or the varied Locust army, Gears of War 2 can overcome its small issues with vehicle sections and boss design and truly stand as a spectacular example of how to design a third-person shooter.

 

And so, I give Gears of War 2 for Xbox 360…

A FANTASTIC rating. When I reflect back on the Gears of War series, most every memorable and interesting setpiece that immediately comes to mind comes from this game. The Locust’s underground city, the giant worm, the strange laboratory, they all serve as highlights of the entire franchise, and the fact these all seem to come from the same game is no coincidence. Gears of War 2 is where Epic Games really whipped out everything they could to improve the series, from tidying up certain weapons and multiplayer modes to making an effort to have emotional moments in the plot and a world you can actually understand well enough to care about. Gears of War 2 is still the game where you can carve people apart with chainsaw or send bloody chunks flying after landing a grenade in their midst, but it’s a game that cares to deliver both on the visceral violence and a narrative with some emotional weight. It provides a more robust experience with things like Cole Train’s optimism still a joy to listen to but the Locusts are made an even more despicable threat as you get to see them at their most awful. The vehicle sections definitely have room for improvement as they don’t often put up a fight, and the simplistic final boss is a sad way to wrap up an otherwise excellent campaign full of memorable moments, but because of the strong shooting mechanics, the thrill of playing Gears of War 2 is present both in the single-player and multiplayer despite a few moments where the ideas didn’t come together perfectly.

 

While the original Gears of War was excellent in its own way, the second time’s the charm when it comes to providing something truly fantastic. Gears of War 2 didn’t just have an already strong set of mechanics supporting it, it had a degree of care and imagination put into its plot and level design that help it prove to be the most memorable entry in the franchise. With both plot and play working together well, Gears of War 2 really goes to show that Epic Games’s success wasn’t a fluke as they were able to bring plenty of effective new ideas to how the game is played. A varied story and diverse gameplay options sweep away the small stumbling points, the excellent shooting elevated to incredible heights thanks to the excellent work on show in most every major part of the title.