A great game that adds enough content to justify 60 bucks.
This Review was written on Nov. 17 2008
I have to say that the story in this game is down right horrendous and borderline stupid. I just get this since of confusion after beating this game story wise. It is almost as if the game was broken up into 2 games. You have gears of war and then you have the Dom show. In all the story just feels kinda forced down your throught with all this drama when all gamers really wanted was an extension of first game. Not the mess that we were given wait what we paid for.
I mean this game asks more questions than answers and then there are some design issues where you get the feeling that hey i fought this kind of enemie before? Wait Halo bring anything to mind?
At one point the story completely changes shifting from Dom's search for his lost wife to something about mutating locost . I also have to question the dialogue or more so the lines that were use. While the first gears wasn't really known for its excellent use of words but they were good enough to make you laugh and not cringe. Well in Gears of War 2 some of the lines are just plain bad in particularly a certian "Cole Moment" happens and it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Makes you wonder were the speech writer was at during this process?
But then again I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up that this game was going to deliver on story. In the end the story just plan lame and underwhelming. I will say this though. The game is truely epic with certain segments having that feeling of being part of a larger battle. While this doesn't really happened in the begin but towards the end you get the sense of part of an army instead of 4 man army. My major complaint is the vehical stages. I DON'T LIKE THE VEHICAL STAGES.
Not only are these segments fustrating because this game was never design for you to be shooting at enemies in the air like that but for the sheer cheapness of it. I understand you wanted to bring in variety you your game but this is not what I had in mind. The Ice stage with the tank is probably the most annoying of the bunch nothing beats the so called boss fight towards the end.
The enemies in the game are numerous and different enough so that way you don't feel like you are fighting the same enemies over and over again. Also the AI is very intelligent and will revive enemies you failed to kill. Some of the boss fights in the game......... wait a min now that i think about there was only 2 boss fights in the game. While the first one was pretty obvious but the second fight is kinda lame and left with the feeling of WTF feeling.
Now for Mulitiplayer.
In its current state MP needs some major fixes. Particularly for the lag and frame rate drops. I guess they can go hand and hand. I mean i have played about a dozen or so matches and every match so far was either just a little lag to sliding across the screen lag. It seems to lag the most with these game types : Annex, Submission, and King of the Hill. But overall the MP just lags all the time no matter what. Then there is the issue of the frame rate drop whenever alot goes on the screen. In particularly when you are hit by a smoke nade which knocks you all over the place thanks the physics system but there is a problem with that. It tends to make the lag even worst and tend to teleport people which happened to me on Canals. Smoke nade hit me under the bridge next then you know I am on top the bridge.
The matchmaking could be better but I am glad it is there because it saves me time from having to search for rooms in previous game which is always welcome. Other than that Gears is a good game just not the mega blockbuster hit I was expecting.
This Review was written on Nov. 17 2008.
