Gears of War 2

[frostbyte06]

Re: Gears of War 2

Looks like somebody got the game already

Uh oh.....looks like I'm going to have to stop visiting the forums on Epic's site, I don't want the plot of Gears2 ruined for me.

[Brandwin]

Re: Gears of War 2

Hmmm... I might do the Toys R Us deal and buy me a game, my daughter a game on the Wii and then find out what game at Gamestop is receiving the most credit, pick that game up and trade it in towards Gears of War 2.

[Brandwin]

Re: Gears of War 2

So this game comes out on a Friday right?

[frostbyte06]

Re: Gears of War 2

Yep 11/7....crazy I know, talk about encouraging everybody to take off work and skip school

[Brandwin]

Re: Gears of War 2

I'm glad it comes out on a Friday. I'll be able to stay up all night and not have to worry about getting up for work.

[JayBee74]

Re: Gears of War 2

So this game comes out on a Friday right?

Actually a Friday day, right?
What about the bots? Will they be available in a split screen 2 player offline game?

[Brandwin]

Re: Gears of War 2

Actually a Friday day, right?
What about the bots? Will they be available in a split screen 2 player offline game?

Aaah.. so it's Thursday night going into Friday morning then?

This game and then COD 5 four days later, WOOT!

[JayBee74]

Re: Gears of War 2

Aaah.. so it's Thursday night going into Friday morning then?

This game and then COD 5 four days later, WOOT!

I'm just going with GOW2-there are just so many shooters I can juggle at one time. (Halo3+Gears)

[ExtremeGamer]

Re: Gears of War 2

Aaah.. so it's Thursday night going into Friday morning then?

This game and then COD 5 four days later, WOOT!

Woot, I don't work Friday's!

[Flawless]

Re: Gears of War 2

TeamXbox: Multiplayer Hands-On

Considering the awesomeness of the single player mode (oops, almost told you what we thought about the game, wouldn’t want to do that), the multiplayer modes exist almost on their own. A more complete package has probably never been put together. What else could you possibly ask for from a game? To cure cancer? Gears 2 won’t quite do that, but it will give you enough gameplay to keep you busy probably until the final game in the trilogy is released in two thousand whatever. After that, who knows? But if this doesn’t tide you over for the next year or two, then you are officially impossible to please. For the other 99.9% of us, Gears of War 2 might be the most complete shooter you’ve ever played. With this much gameplay, this many unlockables, that many characters, etc., etc., you’ll be killing locust so much you might start feeling sorry for them. Nahhh. See you online.

New Multiplayer Screens



GameDaily Hands-on

There's a lot to love about GOW 2's multiplayer campaign, but Horde stands far apart from the frantic five-on-five competitive battles. In this thrilling mode, up to five players work together to outlast 50 waves of increasingly difficult Locusts. Things begin simply enough, as you and your buddies easily tear through the early levels. Complete the 10th level, however, and things become maddening. In levels 11-20, the Locusts gain double health. For 21-30, they receive double health and double accuracy. If you manage to survive that long, the enemies in levels 31-40 have that, as well as double damage. Blast your way to the final 10 stages, if you dare, and the bastards have 2.5 times everything. In order words, you'll barely scrape past the 15th level before the game throws Locusts of all types your way, from the suicidal Tickers to the chain gun carrying Grinder, who lovingly growls "GRIND" whenever it fires up its weapon.

After completing a wave, you have less than 30 seconds to collect ammo and communicate strategy with your teammates. We cannot stress the word "team" enough, because in Horde, there's no such thing as a one man army. If you break off from your squad in a feeble attempt to play Rambo, something will kill you. That said, it's important to have a plan before all hell breaks loose. Perhaps you'll have two players watch the back entrance while the other three guard the front. Maybe you'll stick grenades (explosive ones, not smoke or poison) at the entrances to your stronghold, or form a tightly knit group in case someone goes down and needs reviving. Whatever you do, always remain in contact and brief everyone on your situation. If something's about to breach the back door, let everyone know.

You can play Horde using the game's 10 multiplayer maps, and their design dramatically alters strategy. Hail, in particular, is furiously exhilarating, since it goes through predictable weather patterns that change from sun to clouds to razor hail, which lives up to its name. Once that starts falling, everyone needs to find cover or risk getting ripped to pieces. Conversely, the hail also tears apart Locusts, so it's not all bad.

[Flawless]

Re: Gears of War 2

IGN: Final Multiplayer Impressions
Every map, every mode, and every bit as good as you were hoping.

Even cooler still is that each of the seven modes, as well as the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Horde mode, can be played on any of the fifteen maps. Why the extra-long adjective to describe the only mode to truly depart from the usual Gears formula? If you've played the five-player cooperative experience then you'd know. Playing Horde mode is sort like the old school Smash TV, all wrapped together with some of the best visuals in our industry.

We played on Blood Drive for a solid hour and a half without ever coming close to Wave 50. In fact, the only time someone beat Horde mode was when they turned the difficulty all the way down to Casual. It's just that difficult. It's also important to keep in mind that we only played on one map and had a blast doing it. Each of the ten new creations can be used in different ways. Pavilion, for instance, is an above and below ground environment with no place to call home in Horde mode. It's basically run and gun or be killed before you know it. Different players are going to have to adapt their skills if they want to reach the top of any of the fifteen leaderboards.

Yes, each map does indeed house its own leaderboard in Horde. At the end of every round your team is assigned a score that factors in elements like difficulty and that score is applied to each of the players. Fail and your score will reset, though you will have the opportunity to retry the wave.

Failing isn't such a bad thing in the multiplayer of Gears of War 2. Unlike the last game you'll now have a few options to check out the action. First, there's the new Battle Cams. They're fixed positions around the map that you can rotate between and they'll always auto-focus on the most battle-intensive parts of the map. There's also a Ghost Cam mode that allows you to float around the environment, calling out locations to your teammates if it's fitting for the game mode. Players will also have the ability to snap screenshots, have them scored by the game for its number of particle effects and general amount of action happening on-screen, then upload your frozen moments in time to a leaderboard.

Hooray for helpful distracters!

So Horde mode was a lot of fun for the IGN editors. I was up until all hours of the night trying to beat Wave 50 with Cliff, Rod and the rest of the Epic people on-hand at the Gears 2 event to no avail. Luckily there are plenty of competitive options to help me take out my frustrations.

Now that we've talked about all the maps (less the run of the mill Jacinto and the ones we've already detailed) of Gears of War 2, it's time to move on to the small additions. For starters: there are now bots. You can hop into Training Grounds mode and fight off up to nine bots as a primer for the real deal. Next, there's a feature called "What's Up?" that's located on the main menu. It's sort of a simplified Xbox Guide. Clicking it opens up a list that displays all of your friends playing Gears 2 and lets you assemble a party at the touch of a button. Oh, and yes there is now a fully-functioning party system that lets you jump from mode to mode and match to match, all the while staying with your pals.

Okay, so here's a refresher course: on November 7 if you get the Limited Edition and wait in line at midnight you'll get the gold Lancer and Hammerburst unlock, you'll get fifteen multiplayer maps, you'll get Horde mode, you'll get six competitive multiplayer modes (Guardian, Wingman, Submission, Annex, Warzone, and King of the Hill), you'll get eight unlockable character models for use in multiplayer, and you'll get a longer campaign mode than you saw the first time around.

Anyone but me excited for November?

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[ProfessaPackMan]

Re: Gears of War 2

I think this might be the first time that I buy a game and go straight to Multiplayer.

[sportsdude]

Re: Gears of War 2

It's like Epic took every great multiplayer aspect from every other good shooter out there and implemented it into Gears 2.

I'm glad this game and Left 4 Dead don't come out on the same day because if they did my head would explode.

[JayBee74]

Re: Gears of War 2

OK, the price difference for Gears of War 2 ($59.99) and Gears Of War 2 Limited Edition ($69.99) is only $10. Exactly what EXTRA do you get with Limited Edition?

[Flawless]

Re: Gears of War 2

GameSpy Hands-On

It'll be very interesting to see how far people will be able to make it on the tougher modes, as the highest we got was level 47... on Casual.

Who's up for some Horde on Insane?

While most of our time with the game was played without the computer-controlled characters, we did create a few bots-only matches to check out how they played. We were surprised to see that the bots actually behaved like real players, saving us when we fell (except for the times when they were selfishly going after the objective) and fighting ferociously.

There's also a new training area that will allow you to play the various game modes with the aforementioned bots, letting newcomers learn how to succeed at some of the more exotic gametypes. Like many of the other new features, this looks to be a great way to entice more casual players to check out Gears of War 2, although there's no doubt that it was still created with the hardcore audience in mind.

While we enjoyed our experience with Wingman, it was Submission that had us hooting and hollering throughout our session. In Submission, both teams will be tasked with capturing an armed, AI-controlled Stranded character who puts up quite a fight. If you're able to make him submit (by shooting him), you can take him hostage and walk him to the designated drop-off point. If you want to score, you'll need to hold him there for a bit, fighting off your enemies the whole time. Submission is made even more fun by the fact that the Stranded character is a badass. He'll get his own kill total at the end of the match, and he actually managed to kill us (that is, members of both teams) over 30 times during a single match.

Kotaku

Once a wave has been unlocked in any match type (public, private, system link, or local), players can restart from that wave in private, system link or local games. Public games always start from Wave 1.