Gears 2 is worth every single penny you spend on it. A must own. Not owning it will make others question your manhood
*gets blasted in the face with overwhelming awesomeness* Holy crap gears 2 rocks!!!! The story mode is fun even though its one of those linear holographic corridor games that I hate so badly. The rest of the game is so good though its easily overlooked. The only real hiccup is later on when some of the stages have instant death hazards. Single Player isnt what makes the game shine though.
What makes the game a must own is the co-op and the controls. You can co-op through the story(which is freaking awesome if you crank up the difficulty). You fight more enemies and you get wounded more easily. I never play games on hard and always play on easy but this game inspired me and my dad and I went through on hardcore our first time through. That unlocks "Insane" and we tried that out before we had to take it back and that looked like it would take us a very long time to get through with tons of deaths lol, but enjoying every second of it.
Anyways not only can you co-op the story. What makes it 10x better than Halo is that there is also a Hoard Mode where you alone or co-op goto a multiplayer map and try to survive through 50 waves of enemies that get progressively stronger. It takes alot of teamwork to pull it off.
Not only is there Hoard Mode but then you ALSO get Training Mode. Training Mode is basically OFFLINE multiplayer with bots and can be played solo/co-op. You get to pick the number of bots but sadly you dont get to rearrange them how you want. They just auto-distribute to form equal teams. The different kind of multiplayer modes is pretty good and interesting. You can set the number of rounds you have to win, the weapon pick ups on the stage, and a couple of other things.
Some of the best modes are the ones that only let you kill people by execution. When you take enough damage your guy goes down and begins to bleed out. If a team-mate can get to you they can revive you. If the enemy gets to you then can stomp on your head, mount you and punch you in the face a bunch, pick you up and use you as a shield or snap your neck. A bunch of other things. I think there are 11 executions in the game most dependant on the weapon you have equipped. Sniper, Shotgun, Chainsaw, pistol, grenade launcher, shield. Maybe there was 15 executions lol.
ANYWAYS the best multiplayer modes are the ones where you can only kill people by executions. When you do enough damage to make a guy go down and begin to blled out he becomes invulnerable to bullets and grenades. Headshots also count as executions. So not only do you have to shoot people but you also have to get close enough to execute them which usually puts you into the path of his buddies bullets lol.
So you got three ways to enjoy the hell out of this game solo or OFFLINE co-op. After going from Gears 2 to other FPS games I got to say how much I love the controls and the enemy size and stuff. The cover system is probably the best of any game. You can easily snap to just about any surface, pulling the aim button pops you out of cover and into aim mode, if you want to move out of cover you can easily go around, over or away from it. That sounds logical and mandatory doesnt it but there are games out there who fail at even those most basic things.
The size of the bad guys and your level of zoom when aiming is perfect and lets you actually se what you are shooting at and go for headshots. I am playing Brother in Arms Hell's Highway and Battlefield: Bad Company and you can't see the bad guys in either of those games unless your close enough to stick a grenade up their butt.
One thing thats kind of broken in this game is Chainsaw/Melee duels. Something wierd is going on with that mode because if you press the B button as rapidly as you possably can you can lose the duel. I actually had to slow my tapping down in order to win them. It makes it feel unresponsive. There are a couple of duels throughout the story and one of them I had to repeat way more than I should have.
Army of Two would be a great game for Epic to play and try to rip-off most of the mechanics for Gears. When people go down in AoT they can still shoot and their partner can drag them around(to a safer spot to revive them , because its not instant). And the other thing AoT did that could help gears is it really puts the AGGRO mechanics in the forefront. When one person shoots at the bad guys they choose him as the threat and all start firing on that person. This lets the other person flank the enemy.
I saw something similar happen in Gears 2 but not to the extent that it does in AoT.
I can't wait for gears 3. You got single player, co-op AND Online Multiplayer modes in this game. Combine that with the great controls and you simply must own this game. If you own this and Earth Defense Force 2017 you will be set for life for offline co-op.
If I was going to tinker with Gears I would try to add weapon upgrades and focus on making the maps more open and free-roam. Weapon upgrades would only affect offline modes and not online multiplayer. Give you yet another reason to keep playing the game.
Im giving this game a 10 not because I think its perfect, but because it all comes together to form something special. It is above and beyond most games.