Bush Mackel

My wife usually gets me… “useful” stuff for Christmas. This year I was sure she was gonna it again and I joked with one of my friends that she was gonna get me something stupid like underwear.

And of course that’s exactly what she got me.

But she also had ANOTHER gift for me and it happened to be Gears of War 2! Now I know that buying the game killed her, but it was PROBABLY the best gift she’s ever given me because I absolutely love it!

The New Gears
Now I know I’m late to the party… But honestly, compared to when I USUALLY review games relative to when they come out – I think I’m doing pretty good. (#):) So if you’ve played Gears 1 (as I did), this game is really the same game, but expanded ever so slightly in a couple different ways… Really. This is one of the few sequels where I could go back and play the original and not feel like I’m stepping backwards in terms of gameplay. (Which is great since I still have plenty o achievements to pick up in the original).

Scope and Story – New and Improved
My big (and really only) gripe with Gears of War 1 was that the story could be summed up as, “Aliens are invading the world and you must kill them all”. And worse than that, there were multiple times in the first game where you would be investigating some house or some place and you were asking, “Ok…Why am I here?” or “They ARE going to explain this right?” And of course they never did. Now I’m not saying that in Gears of War 2 that they explain everything but they do a MUCH better job. They even give you a little bit more with the main characters too (though honestly I don’t know that it really adds anything substantial).

Outside of story – Gears of War 2 always plays “bigger” than the original game. On the weapons side you have a few more but personally none of them wowed me. However what did were the battles and enemies. In the first game, there were huge monsters you never had to deal with but often in cut scenes. This time around, you have to deal with them all over the place! And not only that, but during almost every battle big things are happening in the background… Helicopters are going down, buildings are being destroyed… You get that God of War feeling where everything is just BIGGER than just the character you’re controlling which is obviously a very cool feeling.

Achievements
I think this is a section I’m going to start adding to all my reviews now since I’m pretty much all about them these days. Well in Gears 2, the achievements are definitely fun to get, and while a few of them are for story progression the others are pretty varied… Kill 30 enemies with this weapon, Get all 15 unique beatdowns etc. And thankfully while you’re going for these achievements, the game tells you every once in a while when you’re making progress towards them which is helpful for the bigger ones like 100,000 kills. (Yeah, I know that’s a lot).

Conclusion
It looks beautiful, plays great and is a blast to play through with a buddy. A new mode called “Horde” is awesome and you can even play that with 4 people co-op! Speaking of multiplayer, I haven’t done much online but from what I hear it’s buggy like a mug. Epic just said they were going to release a patch soon to fix these problems but until then… You know. Oh, and in case you were wondering… Yes. It is worth $60. Do it. Do it.