#575: Gears of War 2 (2008, X360)

It feels to me like Gears of War 2 kind of forgot what it was that was good about Gears of War. In their quest for Bigger, Badder, and More Badass - coming in the form set-pieces and 'variety' - they almost lost sight of their core, basic gameplay.

This is not to say that Gears 2 is bad - far from it. But Gears of war was a triumph of the 30 seconds of fun school of gameplay design - the idea that if you can make your most basic interactions fun, everything else will be gravy. A good example of a success in this was the original Halo - simply running around with the assualt rifle and some grenades, fighting a group of enemies was fun enough that it sustained the rest of the game. It took some steps to shake things up - vehichle segments, for example - but for all the additional weapons and such it would throw at you, you were going back to that assualt rifle (and maybe the shotgun) mixed with some grenades. By the time Halo 3 came around, they forgot about this, never providing enough ammo for the weapon you wanted to use (the assault rifle) in an attempt to more or less force you to use all the other dozens of weapons available - forgetting that those weapons weren't as fun - and throwing more and more set-pieces and such at you - forgetting that, by their nature, these segments never give the player the level of control or choice that the regular gameplay does.

Gears 1 was similarly successful on the 30 seconds of fun maxim. Stick the player in a room with some cover, give them a lancer, and throw them against a few locusts. Boom. That sustained the entire first game quite well - it was probably 90% of the first game, but you didn't care.

Gears 2, however, brings this ratio way down so that it can either toss you in neat-looking (and boring) on-rails and vehicle sequences (oh look, I'm in a tank, but it's so powerful it renders the sort of tactical gameplay that makes Gears fun pointless), or so it can toss you variety in the form of new enemy types that are just obnoxious to fight (little exploding things, guys with chain-guns, guys with sheilds, big flying things that sit on the ground and shoot at you instead of flying around and shooting you, &c).

Also - glitches. Somehow I went through all of Gears 1 without really encountering many glitches (though I am aware it was called Glitch of War by... well, many). No such luck here, where I had the pleasure of dying a few times from scripted events in the environment simply sort of happening on top of me (I'm not referring to things that obviously were meant to be dangerous, by the way, I mean stuff like doors).



Multiplayer-wise, they added bots, so I no longer have to deal with Live-types. Much thanks for that.

Gears 2 at least has the good sense to go out on a very strong note - the last few levels are very back-to-basics, under the idea that they've introduced you to all the new stuff, now you can bring it all together (I'll use the lancer, thank you very much) and also ends on at least the most fun of the on-rails/vehicle sequences (the Brumak) - I just wish they'd done this sooner in, or perhaps cut some of the fluff (Gears 2 is much longer than Gears 1, which would be fine if it didn't feel to bloated).

Gears of War 2

Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Epic Games
Released: November 2008
Obtained: 12/25/2008

8.5/10