NIDZUMI+

Two years ago Gears of War stunned audiences with it’s brilliant visuals, intriguing cover system and cinematic presentation. Unfortunately it was plagued with multiplayer bugs and tricky controls that resulted in you inadvertently dying. Now Epic are prepping the release of the long awaited follow up aptly named Gears of War 2. Not only are expectations high to begin with but Epic have been promising an engaging story, a fixed multiplayer mode and an all round better package. Surely it can’t deliver on everything it’s been hyped to do.

Following on the from the events of the lightmass bomb you helped detonate at the end of the last game, you’ll quickly find that the Locust Hordes are still very much alive. Not only that but now they are using emergence holes to sink entire cities. It’s Marcus Fenix along with the rest of Delta Squad’s job to stop the fall of the main human stronghold of Jacinto. The game also follows the sub-plot of Dom and his lost wife Maria that actually plays out a bit better than the main story. The truth is that this time you notice the story and actually end up feeling for a few of the characters. It’s true that this has a much better story than the original but that’s not really a difficult mountain to climb.

The core of the game is very much unchanged as you’re still getting into cover as much as possible and shooting guys in the face. They’ve tweaked it slightly so you don’t start hopping around the level but it comes at a considerable cost because you don’t pop into cover so fluidly but it’s definitely an improvement over the frankly frustrating system seen previously. Epic have also added a couple of weapons from the incredibly fun mortar cannon to the simply destructive mini-gun turret. You can also get into chainsaw duels when you and an opponent both have chainsaws ready to go but unfortunately this only happened to me twice throughout the whole game and I’m a fiend for that chainsaw.

They’ve also amped up the ante by going a lot larger. In the previous rendition you encountered loads of large enemies but you rarely got fight them or if you did it was only briefly and it was often the only thing your up against. Now you wage war against Brumaks, Reavers and so much more, frequently. It’s brilliant but you have to wonder how they will be able to amp it up for the unavoidable third title.

Throughout the game the shooting segments are solid but they do mix it up with a few vehicle areas of the game. These prove to be fun but incredibly scripted and eventually frustrating. You’ll often find yourself replaying the whole section again just because you didn’t notice a small area of interest amidst the chaos that surrounds you. These segments then start to lose their appeal when the highly scripted elements happen again and again. Also it doesn’t help that the controls are slow but despite this they do a good job of breaking up the core shooting areas of the game.

The game’s story also puts you through some of the most incredible looking environments your likely to see in a game for a long time. The elemental snow and rain effects are stunning and the amount of times the underground segments look brilliant is just stupid even after the seemly hundredth time of entering a cave. The graphics are still as solid as they were before but are now backed up by constantly changing locations and some brilliant particle effects that you’ll see all over the place. It’s not uncommon to take a break just to start staring at the sparks from a fire or texture on a rock.

The real problem with the singleplayer is that during the final acts of the game it appears to be a bit rushed. They start to wrap up a few sub-plots and then throw in a couple more that seem a bit crammed in. Not only that but level design seems to fall apart. Enemies will be badly placed, switches will have to be pulled twice and most annoyingly your team-mates will become unhelpful. For example, although it should be applauded that team mates can revive you, sometimes they don’t and it’s especially annoying when they are just standing right next to you doing nothing while you die at their feet. To be honest having this happen is a lot worse than the previous games instant restart angle. This happens a lot during the final stages of the game and when you add in the aforementioned seemingly rushed levels and buggy set-pieces, it really puts a downer on what should have been a great set piece for the game.

You can play the story mode with another player online or if you fancy you can co-op in the new Horde Mode. This is essentially Terrorist Hunt but with Locust that surprisingly works a lot better than Tom Clancey ever hoped. In Gears their is so much more variation in weapons, enemies and levels that offers an overall better co-op mode. They also introduce enemies in waves instead of just setting you off in a level with x amount of guys to down. It’s simply brilliant fun and helps extend the replayability to no end.

The games multiplayer is still present but is polished in nearly every way imaginable. The previous game served up some good multiplayer but failed to fix the countless number of bugs that were present. Here we’ve got a more solid online aspect that seemly has cast those bugs to the fire and finally gives you a fair mode to battle it out in. Now hosting duty is spilt across multiple players so your not going to find the hosts advantage here. There are a decent number of maps and modes that should keep you hooked for the foreseeable future.

It’s just a shame that the multiplayer still has it’s flaws because when it’s working it’s terrific fun.  If you want to play x mode the chances are you can’t because it won’t have it’s own playlist and at the time this review went live the servers were seriously jacked. Sometimes it’s not uncommon for you to wait up to ten minutes just to get into a game for some one to leave or lag out which then gives you uneven teams for the rest of the game. Nevertheless the Halo-esque matchmaking is a good improvement and the chances are these problems are down to server issues happening at the moment.

Although they have delivered on every promise they made through the development, the game still has it’s drawbacks. Some levels are awkwardly designed, some of the story is a bit cheesy, the game starts to fall apart towards the end and that’s without mentioning the slightly buggy online. Luckily though the stellar graphics, brilliant co-op and online modes and all around better game makes this worth picking up if your a fan of the series although if you didn’t like the original don’t expect this one to drastically change your opinion.