Gears of War 2, Overhyped and Underdeveloped... More of a Tech Demo of the Unreal Engine 3 Than an Actual Game

Gears of War 2 is one of the most anticipated game sequels of 2008. A lot of advertisements, trailers, and interviews were all over the internet hyping up this game to be the second coming. Cliff Bleszinski is known for hyping everything he creates out of Epic Games as greatness. We all remember how mediocre Unreal II, Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal Tournament 2004 were.

Gears of War is not a horrible game, but it seems that it was rushed out the door and suffers from the same poor story structure of the first one. The first Gears of War was more of a tech demo to show off the Unreal Engine 3 to prospective licensees and therefore had a very weak storyline that was not even fleshed out. There was never a sequel intended until the game became a success because of its multiplayer aspect. The second Gears of War was an attempt to flesh out the story a bit more and to showcase what the updated Unreal Engine 3 could do.

The graphics in the game for the most part are high quality. Numerous times during the game I paused and looked around at the architectural elements that felt a bit like first Unreal game released on the PC in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, at numerous times a graphical glitch would occur where the textures would not load properly and all I saw was a blurry floor, character, and walls for about 5-10 seconds while the textures loaded. Another occurence was when playing the single player game, at certain points in the game, my character would "pop" forward to a certain scripted point which is expected in a coop match so that both players are in the same place, but should not happen when playing alone offline. The musical score does a great job at adding background atmosphere sounds at just the right time and the sound effects sound a bit more crisper in the sequel.

Another inherent problem in this game are the hitboxes, the shotgun has become almost useless in this game. I have gone up to an enemy point blank and shot them with the shotgun only to see my bullets go through the enemy and do absolutely no damage. It is not only the shotgun in which this happens randomly, but the shotgun seems to be the weapon in which it occurs the most. Apparently, you cannot grenade tag the monks either, they must have rubbed oil all over their body prior to engaging in battle, so the grenades would just slip off. Where was the QA team on this game?

Also, in this day and age, enemies should not just appear out of thin air. In the second act, there is a mission where you are supposed to be extracted by helicopter off the second floor of a delapidated building which is a fairly open area. On one side of it there is a staircase in which you can look down upon the first floor and see the enemies materialize out of thin air to come fight you. Either a wall needs to be placed their to prevent the player from seeing the actual spawn point or the spawn needs to be moved elsewhere. That kind of poor design and negligence should not even occur from a high profile developer such as Epic Games. I have seen a bunch of poor reviews from major sites complaining about how Legendary the Box is so bad (the same developer that created Turning Point Fall of Liberty), but none have so far pointed out the obvious flaws in Gears of War 2.

[SPOILERS]

The story in this game is just as weak as the first one, and you will be disappointed with the final boss battle and the ending. The battle with Skorge (the locust with the helmet that looks like dreadlocks), is almost completely scripted with just the main player pressing "B" to play out a chainsaw battle in close quarters while avoiding his range attacks with poison grenades and falling columns. After that, there is a boss battle with the player riding a Reaper and shooting at a large flying creature that Skorge is mounted on. The only thing the player has to do is shoot the creatures arm and it crash lands into the ground killing Skorge. I had more fun fighting RAAM in the first Gears of War on the train. I felt this battle was watered down too much. The final battle involves a Brumak that has turned into a large Lambant from direct exposure to Immulsion and it is heavily scripted with just the player activating the Hammer of Dawn to kill it. The player almost feels like he/she has been walked through the ending sequences with their hands held.

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The multiplayer is the only area where this game still partially shines. A few classic maps have Gears of War 1 have been refinished and added to Gears of War 2 through an Xbox Live download for free (Gridlock, Tyro Station, Mansion, Subway). They fixed most of the major complaints from the first one such as the sniper rifle and the shotgun issues of balance, but created new ones that honestly are worse. I enjoy the multiplayer in this game from the horde mode to the regular team deathmatch, but it has major flaws.

There are problems with the multiplayer as well though which have prevented me and many others from throughly enjoying it. The matchmaking service is horrendous. For a ranked game you must wait for four other people to join a party with you if you do not create your own party with friends and then you must wait while the game attempts to match you with an opposing team of similar skill. The problem with this procedure is that if anyone quits the matchmaking process while it is in progress, the process starts all over again trying to fill in the empty slots of players who left. Also, sometimes you will get uneven teams because the game considers your rank as proof of your skill. I have been in games where it was three versus five because my team had higher ranks than the opposing team. Ranks are not a true determinant of skill, it just means one has played the game more than someone else. I had a very low rank in Gears of War one because I played unranked matches almost exclusively, but my skill in the game was above average. The waiting time for finding and starting a match can span up to and beyond thirty minutes from all the players who get frustrated trying to get a team together and quit before the matchmaking process is complete. In a one hour time period it is possible that a player only participates in two team deathmatches because of the search time. Also, another bad feature is that the only way to quit the game in multiplayer is to enter the Xbox 360 dashboard or reset the console. When you pause the game, there is no quit option. Forcing the player to play a match is absurd. Penalize them with negative points, but forcing them to turn off their console or enter the dashboard is ridiculous. Another aspect that is absurd is if the opposing team quits the game before it even starts, the game will force the remaining team to wait for the match to load up and get an automatic win. The delay can be up to five minutes of waiting and then restarting the whole matchmaking process. Finally, when the match is over, you have to endure 30 seconds of agonizing pain while the game just sits in limbo, listening to annoying kids complaining that you killed them with "noob" weapons or that you are a "noob" for dying to them.

On a scale of 1-10, this game gets a 6.0. The obvious flaws in this game hamper the fun especially on the higher diffculty levels in the single player campaign and honestly for a developer of this high caliber to be so negligent is inexcusable. I expect better from professionals and this just was not top quality. Cliff Bleszinski should quit his job and flip burgers at McDonalds for creating this crap and attempting to hype such a pile of garbage. Anyone who owns this should promptly put their copy on Ebay for some other poor fool to try out (I did).