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[ArcAirbender]

I used the search option, but to my surprise there was no topic created to share our expectations, experiences and stories about Gears of War 2 (GoW2).

Did I miss something here? If I fucked up please explain!


I bought this game today, after selling my GTA4 copy for 45 bucks and paying the difference. I just finished the tutorials, and in a couple of hours gonna try to horde mode.
I got a very familiar feeling when first trying it out, but noticed the visual upgrade, a little more refinement in the controls (things stuck way less than before, easier to do the stomp, so on and so forth) ; but these are only my preliminar impressions, and I'm about to dive into the game in the next few days.


Thoughts, comments, references?

Oh, and speaking of references, here's the complete poem the game used for its trailer, and a little history of how J.F.K. liked it very much:


"I Have a Rendezvous with Death"
by Alan Seeger.
Alan Seeger (1888-1916) was a young, early 20th century U.S. poet, a contemporary of T.S. Eliot, although very different in poetic style.  Seeger died at Belloy-en-Santerre on July 4, 1916 while serving in the French Foreign Legion.  "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" was one of John F. Kennedy's favorite poems and he often asked his wife to recite it.
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air-
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath-
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

And of course, here is the link for the trailer in low quality: http://trailers.gametrailers.com/gt_vault/6236/t_gears2_e32k8.mov

I'm sure you can find the high quality at gametrailers.com

[CursedMortivore]

Absolutely pointless to play online. With all the glitchers it is completely pointless to play online.

Have fun with the campaign mode. I hear it's alright.

[TheFuriousWombat]

The review in the New York Times considered it a very fun, if banal and overly cliched, action game with laughable attempts at story and emotional depth. It makes me happy when the Times reviews video games.

[Jimmy the Squid]

Wait, I thought the Gears of War thing was to intentionally poke fun at action/war film cliches while providing a reasonable game. I just naturally assumed that no one thought it was a serious story and script, what with the token, incredibly urbane black guy, the tough as nails main character who is at odds with his superior officers despite being a more than capable solider. etc... I mean in the first one they even made reference to one of the dead Gears having a two year old kid, c'mon they can't have produced this and thought people would take it seriously (unless I am much mistaken and Michael Bay had a hand in the production of the game).

[dennis]

I find I enjoy the game more if I think of it as a summer action blockbuster, as CliffyB asks in the introduction to the manual.

Co-op play is greatly improved from GoW1. Good things include: being able to crawl when downed, NPCs in party able to revive you. Bad things: the divide and conquer play scenes are still frustrating when one of the human players dies.

The "A for everything" control philosophy still sucks. So many times, your character does something you don't want him to because of overlapping contexts. Too many times, you die because your character SWAT turned instead of mantled, or instead of roadie-running through the doorway, he takes cover next to it, meaning that Mauler you were running away from kills you.

Love the new weapons.

Haven't played deathmatch yet, but news of glitches and glitchers is disheartening.

[Dimmukane]

Yeah, if you don't take the story seriously, it's the best story ever.  You cut your way out of a gigantic fucking worm.  In the second/third chapter.  Right now I am riding a Reaver.


As far as the A-context issues...I haven't really had any problems.  It kind of depends on how you angle the stick when you want to move. 

As for multiplayer, I've only been doing system link at LAN parties the past couple weekends.  So far it's been pretty good. 

Wingman (for the uninitiated, 2v2v2v2v2, one life per round) is pretty awesome.  Occasionally me and my teammate would just pull off really awesome feats of not dying, and we would do, like, 3 fist bumps.

Submission is fucking great.  Capture the flag, with a live flag who can kill you if he wants.  These are probably the most intense matches we've had, even when only doing 3v3. 

Horde gets goddamn intense.  We only made it to level 18 out of 50.  However, managing to fight off 4 Locust by meleeing them all to death made me feel like a god.

IIRC, the rest of the game modes are the same as before, albeit with more players this time.  A lot of the maps are pretty cool...Security will box you in parts of the map, Avalanche has a snowstorm that will kill you if you're out in the open that also lets you reach a Torque Bow in a previously unreachable spot.  What else...Day One has a Seeder sometimes come up and eat people too close to the center, and another map has glass hailstorms every minute or so.  The addition of bots is pretty good.  Sometimes, they'll leave themselves completely open to headshots, other times they'll kill you like it was nothing.

But taking pictures is also a fun activity.  I've got one from a submission game that has 10 bodies on the ground, it got a score of ~3500.

[Alex C]

Wait, I thought the Gears of War thing was to intentionally poke fun at action/war film cliches while providing a reasonable game. I just naturally assumed that no one thought it was a serious story and script, what with the token, incredibly urbane black guy, the tough as nails main character who is at odds with his superior officers despite being a more than capable solider. etc... I mean in the first one they even made reference to one of the dead Gears having a two year old kid, c'mon they can't have produced this and thought people would take it seriously (unless I am much mistaken and Michael Bay had a hand in the production of the game).

The problem is "We're totally joking guys!!!" gets tiresome. "We know the cliche we're using is a cliche! We're delightfully self-aware! Feel the lulz!!" doesn't do a damned thing for me, particularly in this context (a good script can transcend nearly any bias; GoW1&2 do not have good scripts) and frankly, I'm not alone in that assessment. If I were, campy cult movies wouldn't be cult movies at all, they'd just be popular. Are GoW games excellent? Yes; Epic is in no danger of being damned with faint praise, but it is due to the strength of their game design, not the writing. It's still a great game, but the world they created visually is easily evocative enough to get me invested in the action, yet the characters pull me right out of it every time they open their mouths. It just feels like a missed opportunity to me.

[Melodic]

Gears of War? Meh.

[Dimmukane]

In all honesty, it is only a slightly above-average game.  But it is a really fun slightly above-average game.  I don't give a shit about the writing.  You go into Gears of War like you go into a Michael Bay movie, completely aware of its flaws without having actually played it/watched it, because it's just that kind of game.  Simply put, Gears of War is interactive testosterone.  It's strong, dumb, and not very subtle, but if you expected that like I did, then you'll enjoy it a lot more.

I like esoteric movies.  But I also like really bad movies just as much.  Because I expect them to be bad.  See where I'm going with this?

[Alex C]

Yes. And I'm saying I don't like very bad movies. Or Gears of War, for that matter. I wouldn't actually say I was disappointed in the game, but in no way whatsoever do I consider its plot to be a virtue. You're saying if I lower my expectations to the "Michael Bay Movie" level, I would enjoy it better. I'm saying I wouldn't go to Michael Bay movie in the first place. Gears of War and I are at what you would call an impasse.

[clockworkjames]

Good single player, being a non veteran xbox person choosing hardcore to play through first might not have been a good idea but I did it anyway. Now going through insane on co-op with random internets people, not easy.

Horde is awesome, other online competative play kinda sucks but it is alot of fun over LAN.

Horde with internet people who quickly find their way onto your friends list and become frequent allies are awesome as you get each others playstyles, like in horde I always see how many chainsaw kills I can get in a row (9 so far) or whoever just took out 5 locusts with 1 mortar (was sick, I saw it and they all turned to moosh) is all fun. Add me on xbl if you got it 

[Storm Rider]

Horde mode is fucking awesome.

That is all.

[ArcAirbender]

Horde mode is so much fun.

The script is cheesy, but the story feels very epic. But the single player campaign is a bonus to me:
I purchased GoW2 because of the promise of a very rich online world, and to that promise, the game delivers.

So far I have not encountered glitches or bugs, online or offline. But I've only played it for a day.

GoW2 was a surpirse for me. As much as Mirror's Edge was a dissapointed, so the world compensates.

[dennis]

The main glitch I've found is that you can get "stuck" in cover mode sometimes if you take cover behind a moving object. This happened to me during the rockworm level during co-op campaign.

Also, the can't-pick-anything-up bug that was in GW1 is still there in GW2.

--
Horde mode is indeed great fun. Playing with two others, we got to level 30, but couldn't beat it because at level 29, we all died and as such were starting with no weapons or boomshields.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

oops

[JD]

You know when you make a tunnel with that machine? I glitched there when it caved in. after a while I escaped by falling into oblivion. Happened in Co-op

Also, Carmine died, was I the only one who saw that coming?

[Frum]

As much as I loved GOW, GOW2 probably wont be on my games list for quite some time...

Especially since several rude spoilers popped up infront of me... one being the entire storyline with different names, and a "You just read the the game." at the end, with a warning it was the GOW2 story.

Though I do want to play Horde mode....

[Dimmukane]

You're saying if I lower my expectations to the "Michael Bay Movie" level, I would enjoy it better.

I'm saying you go in expecting lots of explosions and 360 degree panning shots, and it delivers in spades.  Sometimes I just wanna see things die in gruesome/awesome/grawsome ways.

[clockworkjames]

Why did Carmine die? because you never saw his face, and his brother died.

Why did Tai die? Because HE NEVER DIES.

[Blue Kitty]

Horde mode?  Ridiculously fun, even if my friend was doing most of the work of killing the Locust.

One thing I find odd is that the Maulers (I think they're the Maulers, the Locust with the giant spiked flail and shield?) can't get by their own shield when you set it up.  We put up two, just in cause, and they would just stand there and wait for us to walk over and kill them.

[JD]

Those crazy test tube experiments are ridiculously easy to kill.  Just saw through 'em

Also, I sniped a boomer, this game is awesome.

[ArcAirbender]

I just finished today the campaign mode in solo (gonna have to try it out in co-op though) and I'm static about the story.
It feels so much compelling, much more epic.

I have no problems with the script or the wording in it. In Gears, it just works.
Never encounter a glitch; the hardcore difficulty was gratifying and never reaching the annoying. Gonna have to try it on insane, but with human company.

I thought about getting left 4 dead, but scratch that, GoW2 is gonna keep me going through this christmass. The horde mode is SOOOOOOOOOOOO much fun.

I love how my victory doesn't have to be my friends defeat. A complete achievement. I'm sure L4D has the same satisfying policy, but what can I say? I got GoW2 first.

The game comes packed so heavily: you have half a dozen different multiplayer modes, free maps from GoW when purchased, a more than solid single player campaign, a very well fused NXE with the game...

And now that NXE allows for games to be saved into the hard drive... the sweetness!



Spoilers

I've heard here and there (I'm looking at you, IGN) that the final boss is a joke. I completely disagree.
Yes, it is true, I felt more challenged when facing the queen's bodyguard, or the communications defense from the reavers, but the ending was more about about the plot (a quick idea, because the bomb was out of commission) than the difficulty. Besides riding a chopper doing ANYTHING feels like such adrenaline rush.


/Spoilers