Game designer Cliff Bleszinski stated earlier this year at the Games Developer Conference that Gears of War 2 would be “bigger, better, and more badass,” leaving the question of how to improve on an already fantastic game and how they could up the badass level when you could already chainsaw through enemies at your own leisure? However after diving into all that Gears 2 has to offer, I can confirm that:

1. It is Bigger
2. It is Better
3. It is certainly more Badass

While anyone that has played the first entry in the series will be instantly familiar with combat and the way it controls, Epic did a fantastic job of varying the combat situations, adding new enemies, improving and rebalancing weapons from the first game as well as adding a couple new ones. While this is to be expected in any sequel, it feels like a surprise that so many improvements were made, rendering the first game inferior by a wide margin. While many people made fun of the “meat cube” demonstration at the GDC, it is amazing how much further Epic has been able to push the Unreal engine to make already amazing graphics even better.

Multiplayer in the first Gears was simplistic at best but still garnered much of the Xbox 360’s online player base after its release. With Gears 2, the multiplayer portion definitely follows Bleszinski’s mantra and goes far beyond what I was expecting with new modes, as well as expertly designed maps. The new “horde” mode, which seems like the new fad in co-op game play (see Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty: World at War, Resistance 2), is some of the most fun I have ever had in an online game. Where it has been evident in other games, the transparency that Gears of War 2 provides into showing the benefits of co-operative gameplay is overwhelming.

The story is definitely an improvement over the first making the plot a tad more focused. While the cheesy one-liners is what gives Gears a lot of its charm and the ability to keep the gruesome bits from being too overwhelming, trying to attach a serious dramatic did seem like an odd narrative move, but worked for the most part. Thankfully there was no huge cliffhanger at the end in the vein of Halo 2, which left gamers aghast that the game was complete, Gears does just enough plot development to keep it fresh and not tire out the world. Where Epic made mistakes in trying to give Unreal Tournament 3 a story, Gears has remedied the situation quite a bit, proving that less tends to be more.

Gears is such a fantastic game that my only complaints really lay with the poor handling that Microsoft has seemed to have with the game. Where the first title was pegged as one of the marquee titles for the Xbox 360, it seems that besides light advertising it has been abandoned by Microsoft who seem preoccupied in showcasing their new dashboard. Where people look at Nintendo for abandoning their hardcore it seems that Microsoft is doing much the same. While the Nintendo School of marketing works wonders for the Wii, with the 360 it is just a lost cause. Where Microsoft could have increased sales drastically by packing a 360 with a copy of Gears of War 2, they instead decided to pack in games that have no reason to be wanted by those usually in the market for an Xbox.

While these complaints have little to do with the actual quality of Gears Of War 2, I still feel like it is an abandonment of Microsoft’s bread and butter. Whatever anyone tells you as to the genesis of casual games with both Nintendo and Sony focusing their holiday efforts on Wii Music and Little Big Planet respectively, there should always be a place to shove a chainsaw through someone and saw them in half. Gears of War 2 is a fantastic game that showcases the technology of the Xbox 360 and the Unreal engine, and for once was a game that lived up to the hype of truly being Bigger, Better and More BADASS.

-Eric Wall

Tags: Gears of War, Microsoft, review, Xbox 360

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