The tactical, Sci-Fi, 3rd person shooter series continues with the critically acclaimed Gears of War 2 for the Xbox 360.
Where Gears of War excelled in was its brilliant arsenal of weapons, and in GoW2, your arsenal has been made a whole lot better. As well as all the guns off the first game you have a selection of new guns, like the Gorgon pistol, and the Hammer burst assault rifle has been tweaked to shoot slower with more power, but its the new heavy weapons that impress the most. You have the Mulcher, which is a Troiker style gun, and you have the Mortar. Both of these guns are extremely powerful but this is evened out by the fact that you move extremely slowly with them. Another new gun is the Scorcher Flamethrower, which is very effective from close range, but its range can become further if you active reload perfect when you reload.
There is also a new grenade to use, apart from the Frag and Smoke grenades that were on the first game, the Ink grenade has been added, and this emits a cloud of poison which if you get caught in makes you choke to death. And you can also get a shield called the boom shield, which you can either plant in the round and cover behind it, or carry it around with you to defend on the go. But the down-side to it is that you move slowly with it and you can only use your pistol while carrying it. There are also some new execution attacks on GoW2. Now when a Locust is downed, instead of just curb stomping him, you can rifle but him, punch him to death or pick him up and use him as a living meat shield, and when you want rid of it you simply snap their necks, but when you have a meat shield, you can only use your pistol.
Another thing you can do in Gears of War 2 is ride on Reavers. You can't do it all the time, just at certain points, but it's great. Well you don't actually ride them, they go by themselves, but you can make them dodge attacks, and you can use the grenade launcher and Troika on them, but at the speed you go you may find it a little bit difficult to aim properly.
The biggest change in Gears of War 2 from the first game is the environments. On the first game, there were lots of buildings and the game was dark, but on Gears of War 2, there are more organic environments, like snow capped mountains, forests and natural underground caves, which shed more light on the game.
Also Gow2 has a much deeper and lengthier story mode. The story starts six months after the first game, and after the Light Mass Bomb failed to kill them all, the Locust are back, and more powerful than ever. Jacinto is the last safe place for the humans because the Locust can't emerge from underneath it, but even that is no longer safe. The Locust have come up with a plan to sink Jacinto, so it's up to Marcus Fenix, Dom, Baird and Cole, and the rest of Delta squad, as humanities last hope, to stop them. Epic have also added three new main characters to the game. Tai, who is a friend of Marcus, and some one who Marcus says, is indestructible. Dizzy, who was one of the many Stranded before joining the Coalition as a driver. And there is Ben Carmine, the brother of the Carmine of the first game, and it's up to Marcus to train him up.
There are also loads of new Locust species. For example, you get Tickers, which are little creatures who explode when they get shot or when they get close to you, and you get Mauler Boomers and these use maces to attack you. There are more, but I'm not going to name them all.
Also the games visuals and sound have been upgraded from the first one. Gears of War was, and still remains one of the most graphic and most brilliant looking games to ever appear on a home video console, but Gears uses the technology of the new Unreal Engine 3, unlike the Unreal Engine 2 used on the first, so the graphics have been made even better and the game sounds a lot better, and expect even more gore. This is hard to believe though because the first game looked and sounded brilliant, and it wouldn't have been a crime if Gears of War 2 didn't look better because the first game looked so good anyway.
The multiplayer in Gears of War 2 has been buffed up to. Each team now has five players each, and as well as having the Warzone, Execution and Annex game types off the first game (King of the Hill too, the one that only appeared on the PC version), Epic have added three new game types. You get Guardian, Submission and Wingman. Guardian is a round divided game, and in it one player from each team is selected to be the guardian, and as long as the guardian is alive, when you die you can respawn. In Wingman, there are five teams of two players, and you have to reach a certain amount of points to win, you get points for killing and downing enemies. Submission is a kind of capture the flag mode. There is a Stranded person on the map, and you have to down him, and hold him as a meat shield for a certain amount of time to win. The multiplayer modes on Gears of War were fantastic, but all the additions made to Gears of War 2 make the Multiplayer modes, whether playing online or local, that much better. Another option added to Gears of War 2 is the ability to add bots, and choose their levels of difficulty, to the multiplayer match you're in. I know this isn't the first game to have this option, but it's a nice little addition never the less.
Rather like on the first game you can go through the campaign on either Local two player split-screen or two players online over Xbox live. The campaign is the exact same on the single player as it is on the multiplayer, but the formula is another thing Epic have tweaked. This time, each player can choose their own individual difficulty level, so player onc can be on Casual, and player two can be on Insane. This is a brilliant feature.
Gears of War 2, is a technical achievement to be admired, but will never be as technically groundbreaking as its predecessor, and that's where its biggest problem lies. Epic have taken all the good points about the first game, but haven't quite managed to rid the game of its flaws. But Epic have added just enough features to make the game deeper that its predecessor, without over complicating it. It's true that if you didn't like the first game, nothing in Gears of War 2 will make you change your mind, but Gears of War was good game and all fans of it should definitely check this out.
Review by: James Widdowson
Score:8/10