The story picks up a short period after the first game, after the light mass bomb ended Gears 1. The locust have been regrouping from their severe bloody nose. Jacinto is the last city safe for humanity due to is foundation on bedrock. Dom is searching for his Missing wife Maria and delta squad are garrisoned in Jacinto. Imulsion sickness is on the rise as a new plague which can’t come at a more inopportune time.
Rather than cower and wait for the locust war machine to get back to full strength and attack Jacinto. The human leadership has decided to take the fight to the locust again and launches the landown assault on the locust breeding grounds. Using huge rigs with drills that send two man grind lifts down into the underground, every last soldier is sent underground to take on the locust horde.
Underground things don’t go exactly as planned and Delta squad find a new locust super weapon that can destroy a city. Marcus takes on the task to destroy the weapon. Also introduced is a backstory about secret government experiments, which raise a lot of questions as to the origin of the locust. Marcus and the rest of Delta squads journey takes them into the heart of the locust territory and an encounter with the queen herself, who is nothing like you will expect. There is also the revelation that all is not well within the locust ranks and they may be as factional as humanity. Dom’s personal quest to be reunited with his wife has an inevitability that will bring a lump to your throat, and possibly a tear to your eye.
The finale sees a desperate plan that will hurt humanity almost as much as it will the locust and leaves the events to come in the last game anyone’s guess. There are also plenty of unanswered questions about the locust and the experiments. Marcus’ father it seems will also play a role.
The characters have been given greater depth, Dom’s quest to find Maria may seem tacked on, but it does provide strong emotion. You understand that though these men might seem like stupid adrenaline junkies that love to fight, they are also people with hearts that can be broken and they are all on the edge of extinction. Cole is as brain dead as before, I found myself actually warming to Baird, who this time seems to play a mothering role to the rest of the squad and is constantly tired of them breaking equipment and doing stupid things.
Gears 1 had a fairly confused story, there was a great premise, but some confusing game type make work plot elements made for a muddled pointless plot arc. The characters were big muscled and dim witted and mostly unlikeable apart from Marcus. That didn’t matter though, because as a game it really shone, and the story was adequate. Epic had two options here, leave things as they were and probably not have any dent in sales whatsoever, or takes the story and the characters and work on them. Everything has been pumped up this time around. The characters have all been given bigger biographies and story arcs. The locust have been beefed up from being generic cannon fodder evil bad guys to a species with a hidden history and their own factions and internal struggles. The possibility of their origin being alien is also hinted at, as is the possibility that they may be a human creation or humans have been poking them in the past with the experimental secret government lab stick.
The worms and underground food chain have been introduced, there is also a broadening of the Cog government and the introduction of the President as a character.
In short when Cliff Blezinski said that it was going to be bigger and more badass, he was also talking about the story, not just the bangs and the flashes. For me this was the biggest surprise of all. I never expected to have a teary eye whilst playing Gears of War.
Gears uses a third person view which combines with a cover system. I am not going to go into detail about the controls, as most people will have played Gears 1 and know what to expect. If you haven’t by the way you really should, it is a great game.
Many new elements have been added to the game play. If I was to criticize Gears one I would say that it was a series of set piece fights in box like areas carrying on until all the enemies were killed and the door to the next area opened. Though any game can be boiled down into a few words like that to make it sound bad that is essentially what Gears 1 was. Epic has addressed that criticism mostly by breaking from the formula for short periods and opening up the areas in the game to make the square footage of real estate bigger. This means that the player can be more mobile, rather than being penned in a small area of cover for large parts of the time.
There are many large and small additions to the gameplay, little additions that seem obvious but were missing in Gears 1 like climbing ladders, your chainsaw opening light barricades and exploding barrels have been added.
The amount of enemies on screen has been given a huge boost. While you don’t actually fight hundreds of locust at once you do find yourself in the middle of battles that include lots more of each side. There are also helicopters and Reavers buzzing around to add to the chaos. The first game felt like four men alone against large odds, and although that does happen this time around, there is much more sense that you aren’t the only ones fighting this war.
The Reavers are flying locust horse analogues ridden by two grubs, these were mainly cannon fodder for emplaced gun sections in the first game, this time around they fly around freely and can land and stomp you to death if their guns don’t shoot you first.
The locust now have the ability to revive injured soldiers, shoot and wound a grub and he will crawl along the ground and eventually die from blood loss, however if one of his squad get to him they can revive him back to full fighting strength again. This system was employed in the first game for your own squad, but not for the locust. There is also an enemy type later on in the game called a Kantus Guard and they can revive downed soldiers without actually going near them. This means that taking out the Kantus becomes a priority or you just fight the same soliders in an infinite loop.
The first novelty game mechanic comes in the form of your ride on the rig. Basically an on rails section where you fight through various set pieces from the deck of the rig. The rig gun is powerful and only limited by overheating, which can be aided by cooling the gun using the right bumper. Boarders with grappling hooks and the huge Brumaks only seen in cut scene in the first game are targets for your gun here. The only enemy from the last game not to get much screen time is the spider like corpsers. They do put in an appearance here, in the distance jumping around like the spiders from eight legged freaks.
The one enemy that I did want removed from the first game was the exploding lambent wretches. These were so annoying, simple enemies that run at you and explode in large numbers. They are thankfully gone, although the normal wretches are still present. Tickers are their replacement as annoying exploding enemies, though these seem a little easier to dispose off.
As with the first game you spilt the squad at a few points in the game and go off in different directions, most often you can see the other team mates in the distance and end up helping them by providing covering fire or flanking enemy positions for them.
Weapons in games are never my strong point, I am not a weapon geek, I can’t be bothered with technical details of weapons. The most prominent of the new weapons is the mortar, which you fire, and set a distance then watch as the world explodes where you fired. Like most powerful weapons it’s rationed fairly heavily. The flamethrower puts in an appearance and is ok as weapons go but not really a stand out weapon. The Hammer of Dawn puts in a cameo late in the game. There are some small additions and changes to the other guns, however the lancer remains a staple weapon throughout.
Moveable cover is introduced in several ways. There are small rock centipedes that are great to crouch behind and are almost indestructible. Shooting their food supply from cave roof onto the ground can herd the centipedes around. This makes them shuffle over to the food and eat, while all the time a firefight blazes around them. In the Locust city there are walls that raise and lower at the press of a lever. This makes for fun and games as the enemy try and lower your cover leaving you exposed.
Finally you can pick a shield dropped by enemies and also hold downed enemies in front of you as a shield.
The locust horde has been added to since the first game, Grubs can ride blood mounts into battle which are monstrous creatures which bring the enemy close fast and can also attack you themselves once the rider has been killed with a swish of their tail. The boomer type enemy has been given different weapons and a new look to make the grinder chain gunner and mace and shield wielding varieties
Similar to the rigs are the prison barges, huge locust creatures with a structure akin to a sailing ship on their backs. There are several fights in and around these impressive creatures.
Top of the list for gross bodily intimacy is the section of the game where you run around Fantastic Voyage style inside a huge creature. You must avoid being crushed by peristalsis, being digested in the stomach in pools of acid, and don’t get me started on the choking gas in the bowels. You also make your way into the beast’s circulatory system and have to avoid drowning in blood.
Someone does needs to let the designers know that nature does not make bowels with dead ends; it would be fatal to have dead ends filling up with feces with nowhere for it to go.
Small additions in the secret lab area include the carrying of a box between two team members, which limits them to pistols while they carry it. There are laser tripped security guns to deal with also. Razorhail is introduced here as incredibly dangerous rain, which means getting out from under a roof sees you being chopped to pieces, it reminds me of the Kryl sections in the first game.
Driving is present and again much more has been made of it. Much bigger environments and a vehicle with proper weight and inertia make it look much less shoehorned in than Gears 1. You drive up into the mountains and have various skirmishes with Locust and some fun navigating cracking frozen lakes. Mention must be made of the Scooby Doo moment in the dark. If you have watched Scooby Doo at all, you will know what I am talking about.
There are many sections of the game where traditional fight box game play is missing in action. You encounter an underground river system and there are fights on and around gunboats. Tethered fish like creatures at either side powers these boats. This section ends with the boat plunging down a waterfall and being attacked by a huge leviathan sea monster.
There is the section where you fly on the back of a Reaver and the game becomes something akin to Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon. There is a section where you get control of a Brumak and ride it into locust territory. At one point you have to hack into a locust computers system.
While this is all good and well sometimes novelty game mechanics can overstay their welcome, this is not the case here with each change having it's time in the spotlight and not being repeated.
The game takes place above ground in the ruined landscapes of Sera and as defined in the first game there is a grey broken vision of a once beautiful city. The architecture is grand and striking in a kind of fascist way. The underground caves are done as well as underground caves can look, there has been some attempt to vary and add to the cave scenes, however a cave is a dark hole in the ground. The city of the locusts is well done with a busy Goudy inspired look.
The character detail is again amazing with all of Delta Squad and the Locust being eye catching.
The game engine is obviously cranked up several notches from the first game with an awful lot more happening at once and little slowdown or glitching noticeable.
There are many fights with monsters dotted around the game, Reavers, Brumaks, Corpsers etc. Two battles stand out as being traditional boss battles rather than just another monster you have to fight to get past. There is a long complicated showdown with a sea monster and a fight with a super locust named Skorge, the queen’s personal guard.
The final showdown at the end of the game is, well, far too easy. Maybe this is in response to criticism of the first game, where the final boss was annoying. I didn't really feel any disappointment at this easy end scene, it was actually a little bit of a relief after all the effort of getting to the end not to have a boss battle that takes me hours and hours to learn patterns of and learn the skills needed to defeat it. I can see why some might not like that though and they do have a point I have to grudgingly admit.
There were no problems with checkpoints. I can’t remember a time when I was placed further back than I would have liked by death. This is really quite refreshing for an action game.
Multiplayer was an interesting experience for me. I enjoy multiplayer games, which have modes like Rainbow Six Vegas where teams of human players take on the a.i. Horde mode promised to be exactly that. It was and it was great fun, I was enjoying it very much. I play multiplayer games online mostly with a group of friends. They were all enjoying long sessions of horde mode for the first few days of release, indeed I was finding it hard to get to the single player game for constant invites to horde mode games. Then it all stopped, I don't know what happened. Were people burned out with horde mode, were there other problems with the online that I was not seeing. I don't know, my friends stopped playing online and went back to Gears 1 and Modern Warfare. I was happy because I could get around to the single player; I have never gone back to the online component. I know you might feel disappointed reading this but I am not an online gamer really. I play only with friends for the social aspects. I can't really be counted as being qualified for reviewing online components of games. For what it's worth then I enjoyed horde mode and had no problems getting into a game with my friends. Any other aspects of the multiplayer I can't talk about.
I did my first play through on hardcore difficulty and got 365 achievement points for my trouble, I hope to go back soon and try some co-op and the insane difficulty level.
Scoring
Graphics 9
Gameplay 9
Story 9
Level Design 9
A.i. 7
Total 8.6
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