Gears of War 2

25.04.2008

And then it started. The eternal speculation about a follow-up. As soon as a magazine gets Mark Rein or Cliff “Cliffy B.” Bleszinski in front of a microphone or Dictaphone, the same question would be asked again. How about a Gears 2? And again and again they gave the same reply: we are thinking about it, but there is as yet nothing concrete. Epic called an announcement by US magazine GamePro “complete rubbish”. Gears of War 2 was not announced to this magazine, nor any other.

And then it arrived. February 20, 2008. At the Game Developers Conference 2008, more or incidentally, Cliffy B. appeared on stage and announced Gears of War 2 with a few short words. A short but by no means convincing teaser showed the assembled specialist press that Epic is serious about Gears 2. With the words “The funny thing about rumours on the internet is that they are sometimes true”, it disappeared from the screen.

Weeks passed before further information on Gears 2 found its way into the public. A graphics presentation of the Unreal 3.5 engine displayed the first game play scenes. Whether these will appear in the final game is not clear. Epic also announced impressive water effects (sadly missing in Gears of War), destructible level elements (“The first thing gamers want to do when a game is finally released is to destroy everything”) and hundreds of locusts that appear on screen at the same time. New light and shadow effects are further integrated into the new Unreal 3.5 engine, such as “swirling” elements. A not very realistic flesh cube and a sphere that looked a lot like mercury served as demonstration.

But now on to the game play aspects. Gears of War 2 essentially offers a lot more than its almost perfect predecessor, because Epic have not chosen to rest on their laurels. The covering system has been extensively overhauled. In Gears 2 it is now possible to move forward while remaining under cover. This obviously allows some great inconspicuous flanking manoeuvres. They are also badly needed, because in GoW 2, besides the already mentioned locusts, the Kantus monks are part of the bad guys. These unfortunately have the ability to bring slaughtered locusts back to life. It is thus advisable to first kill off the shamans in the battles. Apart from new weapons, perfected (probably bloodier) chainsaw duels and new team-mates (Tai Kaliso and Dizzy), there is also a vehicle level. This time with the Centaur tank.

Do you also remember the dog tags of your fallen team-mates? In GoW these were more or less just a stimulation to painstakingly search through each level. In Gears 2 this is different. You can now inspect the dog tags more closely and this way find out more about the tag’s “owner”.