Spring Break Palooza Pt.2

Gears of War 2 Review

For the next part of my Spring Break series, I'll review Gears 2.  Just to get it over with, I WAS JUST ABLE TO BUY THE GAME. Now, lets get into it. First, we'll discuss single player. The campaign in Gears of War 2 is great. I was just astounded (or even moreso) at the story, characters, and gameplay. The story was very well thought out and really engaging. I liked how, in the start, you could choose Marcus' personality; to some extent. It throws you in with a choice to train Carmine (do the toutorial), or tell him to take point without any training (don't do toutorial). I love the difference in playstile of the levels. At one point you're on a giant transport shooting mortars to drilling underground and locating Carmine in a labrynthian hollow. The change of mobility is amazing. Epic uses the, "Anything You can do I can do Better" phrase for their idea of comandeering locust mounts, like a Reaver. The only thing I would like to add, (and this is not a gripe), is when you are forced  to choose which path you are going to take in combat, it would be nice to be able to choose the character you are paired up with for the time being. The finale is a sort-of cliffhanger, leaving the player to think, "Where do they go from here?" The cast is a colorfull bunch, and my favorite is Cole Train. He is like Grayson Hunt in Bulletstorm with his intercom speech, insulting the queen with a slew of curses is pretty manly. I'll describe the other characters in one word: Marcus-Christian Bale in tights, Dom-Liam Neeson, Baird-Every character when they don't perform an active reload correctly, Carmine-Johnny Depp as a pirate, Hoffman-Thor, Anya-Cortana. The gameplay is pretty good, but at some points in the game I felt like I forgot how to play except for shooting and chainsawing. Multiplayer is a blast to play, but sometimes people who are level 100 play with or against you in games when you yourself are only a newbie. I wish the ranked matches were filtered better. Most people in multiplayer rely is shotguns and luck. Once, I was playing a game called "wingman" where you have one teammate and are both the same character. My teammate and I were one of  the last teams alive until someone from the other team killed my teammate at the same time he got killed. I was all alone in there, so I pulled out my shotgun and hoped for the best. I leaned out of my cover and blind-fired at him and got the kill. That was the only time it happened, and it hasn't come around again ever scince. Overall I think Gears is, in a word, great. One last fact. My dad loves the game, he was the first to notice it looked like a comic book. Gears of War 2 gets a 4/5