Welp, I can already tell November and December are going to be two extremely busy months. It seems like we're getting a new, exciting game every week. This week's exercise in manly grunting and weight-lifting was Gears of War 2.
My history with the Gears franchise has never been a strong one. I thought the first game was mediocre, and I really couldn't understand why people were giving it such glowing reviews. But people said that this time around there would be vast improvements in nearly every category. Teach me to listen to hype.
Looking back, I'm almost embarrassed at how deeply the hype claws sunk into me. I bought the Collector's edition and strategy guide, which totaled to over 100 dollars. I paid for it in advance throughout the year, so the strategy guide (Which I never had to even use) was the only thing I paid for.
But anyway, back to the review.
This game was... alright. That's all I can say; alright. The entire game is fairly good, but the individual parts of it bring it down.
The unique cover system is pretty much what makes the whole game tick, and it does so quite well. You can get into cover, jump over it, blindfire and so on. However, some of the controls feel delayed, especially the sprint button.
The aiming system also feels sticky. If an enemy gets behind you, then you're pretty much fucked for about 3 seconds. Attacks from behind are very, very cheap.
The plot is actually not that bad compared to Gears 1, which was simply a linear progression of stop-go shootouts with no real goal in sight except to detonate some bomb or something. But again, it's simply adequate; a big step over the original, but still only so-so.
The battlegrounds and where you fight are where this game suffers the most. There are only 5 levels in the entire game, broken up into 7 parts each. These sections take FOREVER to complete and just make you wonder when you're ever going to see a change in scenery. Especially when you're underground (Which is about 70% of the game, I might add) the environments are nearly the same everywhere, which makes it very confusing to navigate.
On the surface, things are a little better. In the bigger shootouts, I actually felt like I was in a huge, gigantic war against creatures that threatened my very existence.
But underground, everything just muddles together; one gunfight seems identical to the one before. It gets so goddamn repetitive.
But the acting... oh boy, this stuff made me want to throw up. John DiMaggio is great as the voice of Marcus, but he presents his lines worse than Ron Pearlman in Turok.
But the true champion of bad acting definitely Dominic Santiago. There's this pointless and shoehorned story about his love interest being captured by the Locust and blah blah blah. And when he actually meets his wife, I just gave up on him.
I honestly can't understand why so many people love this sequel so much over the original. Hmm... I have been hearing the multiplayer is vastly improved over the first game. Lemme go check.
Okay, it's a little better. Not by much, though. There are a few new maps, but nothing spectacular, all just variations of the same destroyed environment theme. The biggest (And perhaps only) thing I liked was Horde mode, where 5 players can face off against increasingly difficult waves of Locust. I've never even made it past the tenth wave. I hate to think what they do once you get up to the higher levels; probably replace all the monsters with velociraptors and give you a shotgun with no ammo.
I'm being overly mean; some of the shootouts are pretty fun and multiplayer isn't bad. Perhaps I'm just miffed because I spent so much unneeded money on it. But it's repetitive, badly voiced and holds very little replay value for me.
I give Gears of War 2 a 7/10.
I think I'm going to start renting games from now on, so I don't fall into these kinds of traps anymore.
BONUS REVIEW!
I downloaded the Call of Duty: World At War demo yesterday, and I'm a bit torn on it. On the one hand, I like the maps, the fact that you can drive tanks and such, and the World War 2 setting.
The reason I'm torn is because it rips nearly every single aspect off of Call of Duty 4's multiplayer. This would be fine if Infinity Ward was developing it, but Treyarch is (There's this weird system where Infinity Ward develops the even numbered sequels, and Treyarch develops the odd numbered ones). It looks amazing so far, but I'm probably not going to buy it; mainly on priniciple. A studio should put more work into making good games, instead of copying ones from earlier in the franchise.
Whatever, I'm done and this is probably longer than the Fallout review. And Left 4 Dead is coming out next week. Ugh...
Hentai forever,
Kyouger.
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