Gears of War 2

By: Pepsi

Following the first installment of the Gears of War series comes Gears 2, developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft. It's a third person shooter released for the Xbox 360. I bought Gears 2 mainly to play the story mode then forget about the game eventually. The story mode is average length about 8-10 hours of gameplay. Story mode is pretty much the same shit as Gears 1, with a more in depth storyline (it's no epic, but for a shooting game it's pretty damn good) and explanation of the Gears world.

More of the focus is on Dom and his on going search for his wife, who has been missing for a while. Gears 2 also has more of an open atmosphere instead of the same 4 people throughout the entire game. You meet new characters and fight alongside COG soldiers for a good chunk of the game. There's only a handful of times when the 4 main characters (Marcus Fenix, Dom Santiago, Augustus Cole, and Damon Baird.) are without other COG soldiers by their sides. Something that makes this game so incredibly fun is the voice acting which albeit, can sound pretty damn goofy at times, but I found myself laughing hysterically at a lot of the shit they say. Also with brand new added vehicles, environments, and characters Gears 2's story mode is wthout a doubt the best story mode I've played in a shooting game (shooting games never really have storylines, let alone good ones). But overall I like how they've tried getting into a deeper storyline, and story mode will keep you on the edge of your damn seat from start to finish.

What keeps you playing Gears 2 is the many different online modes. After you've beaten story mode in every difficulty, you're pretty much done with the game, right? WRONG, the online play is completely redone. 5v5 instead of 4v4 in modes such as Execution, Annex, Warzone, and King of the Hill. There's new modes like Wingman, which is pretty much 5 teams of 2, every team has the same 2 characters (like team Dom would have Dom and...Dom) and all 5 teams are against each other (as well as locusts vs locusts and COGS vs COGS haha). Guardian mode, where each team has a leader and teams keep respawning until the leader from each team is killed. Teams win by killing the leader of the opposing team, them eliminating the other 4. Submission mode, where the first team to shoot down a random Stranded and drag him to back to your base (watch out, those bastards shoot you back!) wins. Each mode you can either play with 9 other gamers online or offline with 9 bots, yes it's even fun with bots.

Also Gears 2 introduces Horde mode, which is a co-op mode that can be played by yourself (yeah, uhh good luck with that, it's hard as hell) or with 4 other people online, as you fight off waves and waves of different monsters, at different difficulties. It's easy as hell until you start getting 2 boomers, 2 maulers, and 3 butchers at a time!

Gears 2 was such a good sequal to the first game they have me sitting waiting for the 3rd installment (YES you know it's going to happen bitches). That's saying something, since I'm not one to wait for a video game's release or pre order them and shit. But I know when the 3rd game is released I'll be pre ordering, even standing in line out in the cold rain if I have to. Gears of War 2 should definitely be checked out by any Xbox 360 owner whether you like shooters or not. Whether you've played the first game or not (do yourself a favor and try to play the first one too). Whether you have a 360 or not! (okay get the 360 first, aha)