Gears of War is back. There’s new blood, old blood, bad blood, and true to form, lots and lots of blood blood. Fans of the original will be glad to know that not a lot has changed; ultimately this delivers a top-notch sequel experience, delivering more of what made the first game great in precisely the areas you want.
Having said this, the game does initially suffer from the weight of expectation. The set-ups where Marcus is holed up as emergence holes pop up left, right and centre are gone, the new levels seem more dynamic and see players moving through devastated city scapes at a far higher speed than the original.
This may or may not be the reason the whole thing feels less chunky, even taking the dip down to hardcore difficulty pummelling locust with lancer bullets does at first seem less satisfying. The introduction of a Halo 2-esque battle rifle may be the culprit here: ‘I’m back baby! But what the hell is this in my hands?!’ Indeed the whole thing made me feel like I did playing Bungie’s sophomore effort – like finding out someone has changed your dashboard theme against your knowledge.
Change isn’t always a bad thing though, and subtle change is more often than not excused. Indeed by the end of the second act all is forgotten and it’s destructive business as usual. Thus ends all conceivable criticism of Gears of War 2.
Epic have put a lot of time and effort into making this, well, epic. Remember the first game’s corpser? Try killing three in as many seconds in a purely incidental set piece. Remember admiring the titanic architecture? Prepare for your jaw to drop at exquisite mountain ranges and valleys. Remember Raam? That boy aint got shit, say no more.
54 days ago
Tempted to get this now...