Gears of War 2 for Xbox 360

If you played Gears of War, you’ll be able to hop right into Gears of War 2. There are some new gameplay mechanics and a plethora weapons to learn and master, but for the most part, the gameplay feels almost entirely unchanged. Which is a good thing. The rule of the game remains the same: take cover, move cautiously, take your shots wisely, and ration your grenades sparingly. Anything else on any difficulty other than easy pretty much will get you killed instantly.

Some aspects of the gameplay have been noticeably improved though. The most note worthy has to be the improved cover system. A large problem in Gears of War was that gamers would often find themselves getting killed because they would go into cover when they intended to dive (or vice versa) and I found in Gears of War 2 that this happened with far less frequency. That’s not to say that Gears of War 2’s campaign is identical to the first Gears of War. It’s paced a lot better this time around, and the scale is a lot bigger. You’ll be sparring off with humongous monsters, manning gun turrets, and driving around in tanks as well. And of course, the entire campaign can be played with a buddy too, making the game all the more enjoyable.

The single player mode is fun. It’ll last you anywhere between six to ten hours (my roommate and I burned through it in a little under nine hours) but once it’s done that’s pretty much it. The campaign’s storyline is pretty much as forgettable and unremarkable as the original. It’s evident that the developers attempted to flesh out the characters and inject more emotion into a story almost exclusively dominated by aliens and grunts chopping one another into pieces, but the effort (while appreciated) really fails to translate into anything more than a few periodically placed cut scenes that most gamers will watch once then promptly skip over during any subsequent play throughs. There’s nothing bad about the writing or the voice acting, but it’s nowhere as emotionally engaging as its excellently crafted trailers would seem to suggest. At the end of the day, its a story about marines killing aliens which is fine. I don’t really think a game that revolves around burly marines with chainsaw machine guns really needs a strong narrative.

The graphics look as beautiful as ever. While they do look very similar to the original, the scale of the game is substantially larger. The first time you go head to go with one of Gears of War 2’s humongous boss monsters, you’ll definitely be able to appreciate just how amazing the game looks in glorious 1080p high definition. Additionally, I noticed that there’s a lot less texture pop-ins than the original. Also, I can't emphasize enough how awesome all the gore looks. From limb dismemberment to decapitations to being chainsawed brutally in half, there's enough blood and gore to make even the most hardened gamer a tad bit queasy. And it looks absolutely beautiful.

Where Gears of War 2 really shines is its multiplayer. The “Horde” mode where you and your buddies defend yourselves against wave after wave of Locust is amazingly fun. It’s a lot like playing Tower Defense or something. Only with machine guns. The gameplay becomes frantic and frenetic, and it’s definitely one of Gears of War 2’s exceptionally awesome gameplay modes. Even after you’ve beaten the campaign and dabbled with its other multiplayer options, I think “Horde” mode will definitely be something gamers will return to.

Gears of War 2 also offers a bunch of new multiplayer options, none of which I have had a chance to play extensively since I can’t get on Xbox LIVE with my copy yet. Playing offline, though, I noticed the shotgun has been toned down with a noticeable delay in between shots. How this will translate online with latency issues is unknown, but I’m hoping that multiplayer modes deviate from the shotgun-centric battles that dominated Gears of War’s matches.

In conclusion, Gears of War 2 pretty much reminded me why I loved the original so much. It doesn’t pretend to be anything that it isn’t. It makes no real effort to revolutionize the franchise, and I guess I just have to content myself with that. It’s very true that Gears of War 2 feels very much like its processor, but simultaneously, there’s absolutely no denying the massive amount of content that it has added. With its wealth of new multiplayer options, amazing new weapons (including my favorite: the flamethrower) an action-packed campaign, and an addictive and awesome “Horde” mode, Gears of War 2 may not be 2008’s most innovative or original titles (I’m reserving that title for Little Big Planet or Mirror’s Edge), but I’ll be damned if it’s not one of the most fun and enjoyable.

Just because someone rated halo 3 above this I feel the need to add another 5 stars. Its bad ass but does not have that many guns, but who cares? its BADASS!

Okokok, we all played the first one... and if you were a die hard Gears of War one fan... you might be skeptical about buying this game. They tried to change too much and the shotgun... well its got less spread and more range... and its extremely hard to judge the opposing players damage.
For example you might swear the one more 'flick' to the body would kill them... yet two more direct shots and they still manage to get away... or even worse they turn around and somehow manage to blow you away.

The plus side is that the 'host' doesn't have as nearly as much of an advantage as the last one. But its still there. Still if you keep on playing this new installment it will grow on you and you will get used to all the new additions they threw in there.

Oh big plus for those who love story lines and picture. The added graphics make the characters look great... you can really see the emotion.
And this second game plays more about find Dom's wife... just an FYI

If you liked Epic Games original Gears of War then you'll find more of the same in the sequel. The game that started the over the shoulder shooter and invented today's most commonly used cover mechanic is back with a continuation of the terribly written story featuring everyone's favorite burly space marine Marcus Phoenix.

If you can ignore the terrible dialogue, overly sentimental story and color pallet of grey, brown, black and red you will however find an excellently made shooter bristling with more testosterone than Barry Bonds' swelled up dome. It's a fun game that I won't deny I played nearly straight through over the course of a couple days. Despite any criticism I can render nothing will ever sully the fact that cutting evil alien humanoids into tiny bloody pieces with a chainsaw bayonet is damn fun almost every time I do it.

I'd be remiss to not mention the multiplayer modes are all worth hours of fun, especially now that the countless bugs this game came out of the box with have been patched into submission. Strong recommendation goes to Horde mode, where you can fend off waves of alien spawn with up to 4 other buddies.

This game is amazing and if you like the first one you are going to love the sequel. Gears of War 2 continues its campaign where you fight off the locus but this time they have huge monsters that are destroying entire city's and you have to defeat them. The online play is probably the best part of them game. There are many game modes that are very fun online. You have lots of weapons such as in the previous Gears but this time they are way more deadly. If you are not so great at online then you can go into a private match with either your friends or you can but NPC and set what difficulty and how good they can be. You can also play this brand new game mode called Horde. Horde is where loads of locus come at you in waves up to wave 50 and you have to defeat them all. You can play this game mode with yourself witch i don't recommended or play it with your friends with is very fun and you can also set the difficulty for the locus. Overall I don't want to give out the amazing campaign and the online play but i highly recommend that if you are into third person shooting games and if you liked the first Gears of War then you will definitely like this game.