Gears of War 2 review

Kon'nichiwa min'na!

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Gears of War 2 review by Matty~~^_^

Okay, so I just finished playing Gears of War 2 for XBOX 360, and I decided on writing a review for it. Yeah, I know that it’s a pretty old game and that GOW 3 is already out, but I only recently got my XBOX, so forgive me for the late start.

Okay, so not having played the first game (I’m a bad person, I know) I don’t know much about the whole back story of the GOW franchise and canon. Seeing as how this is a sequel, I also can’t make much of the changes between the first game and this iteration. This is looking to be an inexperienced review. LOL.

In the beginning you are given the choice of completing a tutorial or not. If you have not played the first game in the series or you are just not too familiar with third person shooters, or shooters in general, I would advise you to complete the tutorial. If however you are a hardcore shooter veteran and not a complete n00b, please feel free to jump right in. The controls can be a little hard to get used to especially if you haven’t played GOW before, but after about ten minutes of the first chapter (when you start you’re jumped right into the middle of the action) your fingers and controller will feel as if they are fused. Controlling the games main protagonist is simple enough to grasp as it’s all you ever do, you run, you shoot, you run again. Every now and then you’re given the chance at handling a turret or maybe a vehicle and there was this one time, at band camp, where you control a f*#king Brumak! Anyway, these brief tasks distract from the regular run and gun, even if only for a little while.

Speaking of running and gunning, there are a total of fifteen weapons with which you can shoot, stab, decapitate, burn or blow up the evil locusts and lambents with. All of which you will get access to pretty early in the game. The baddies are abundant however, almost unending amounts of the bastards will spawn unless you close the whole they’re coming from or pass over a certain line. The AI of the enemies is pretty well done, considering this is a cover based shooter, they know how to run and duck from your endless supply of bullets coming their way, but every so often one of them will jump out of cover and stand in the middle of the battle field making it only too easy for you to shoot him between the eyes. But don’t stand out of your own cover for too long, because those hard asses don’t stop shooting at you either, and once you’re shot down, there are no health packs which you can use to regenerate your health, you’re left to crawl to safety and wait for one of your AI companions to come and save your ass. This honestly can be a problem now and then because your AI friend will either ignore your pleas for help or be too far away from you to help, in which case you will bleed to death. No one said this was a happy game.

Story wise, this game doesn’t really have any faults. It’s action packed from start to finish and there are no long, tedious, I-want-to-punch-my-T.V. cut scenes, nor are there any major load times, provided you’ve installed the game to your HDD. The dialogue between the characters is quirky mostly because of the various types of characters there are in the game, there’s the tough and rugged army sergeant all the way up to a hillbilly, truck driving commando. Besides the fact that each character is different in demeanour and personality, the voice cast is robust and suits the characters well.

I don’t really like giving a game a numerical value when it comes to rating, but I would probably give this game about 85 out of 100, as there’s not much wrong with it save for a longer campaign maybe. All in all this is a really good game and is definitely one that should be played. I can’t wait to get my hands on GOW 3.