At a glance: Gears of War 2

It’s been a long while since we heard anything about the up and coming sequel to last year’s critically acclaimed Gears of War by the kids at Epic Games. Well, that’s all about to change, with Cliffy B taking us on a grizzly rampage through the world of the second instalment of one of the most successful franchises on Microsoft’s popular platform (i.e. not the PC).

What we’re given is a five or six minute look at an early mission taken from Gears 2, Act one / Chapter three: "Assault", to be precise. As the “B Meister” explains, the Locust now have a technology which allows them to "sink entire cities", which sounds pretty terrifying if you ask me. Gone are the days where a well-aimed grenade would stop a Locust Hoard from appearing; now, the COG have to work on a much larger scale to stop the locust from wiping out the entire human civilisation. Cool, isn’t it?

When the sequence starts, we see a huge three or four tiered moving structure called a Derrick (hopefully that’s the correct spelling...) coming up over a hill. It reminds me of something straight out of the “Mortal Engines” series of novels, and looks as though it could crush the largest of foes, but as Cliffy explains, the Derricks are only pulling machines, which tow something even larger to their destination.

These Derricks are towing Grind lifts (spelling?), which are what the COG are going to use to "borough down into the depths of the underground" to take out Locust resistance. From the looks of things, the COG have to protect the Grind lift at all costs, and so once again, you take up arms as Markus Phoenix in an attempt to save the human race.

I think that there’s so much to talk about that I guess I’ll have to do it systematically, starting with weapons. As far as we can see, there appear to be quite a few upgrades, changes and additions to your arsenal in GoW2. The first thing to change is the design of the chainsaw gun, although the changes made appear fully aesthetical. It looks as though Epic have decided to go into minute detail with their weaponry, and now you can actually see the florescent cross-hair of your chainsaw gun as Phoenix aims to kill. Additions to the quantity of guns have been made, and it looks as though most of the weapons from the first game remain (although there’s no word on the long shot) with the addition of a new acid grenade and a new automatic pistol. There’s likely to be much more announced on this front closer to the release of the game in November, so watch this space. To top it all off, Epic have tweaked the active reload system, which hopefully means that different weapons’ active reloads will activate a different power, which would definitely make the game play a little more tactical.

Most of the other neat things that we saw were mainly to do with combat. At the COG progress down the Derrick, they come across new types of enemies and their new abilities. For starters, there’s now a locust which can climb up walls using metal attackable claws. In the footage we saw for example, a Locust climbs up the side of the Derrick and runs at you, but with a quick blast form the Lancer (chainsaw-gun) Markus gets him down. What’s really cool is that when downed, Phoenix can pick up an enemy and use them as a human (/locust) shield. Then, when their purpose has been fulfilled, they can be disposed off with a finisher. The one that we saw was a quick and painful snap of the neck, but we’re guessing there’ll be a few more. Another addition we saw to the combat was a higher level of contextual moments For example, everyone’s chainsaw executions are back, but now, depending on where you go at your enemy from, you’re chainsaw will do a different animation. In the one that we say, Markus goes at his enemy from the back, resulting with a bloody upwards slash, ripping them in two. Other tweaks to chainsaw combat have been made, with button mash battles now occurring if two chainsawers get together. For example, if Phoenix tries to chainsaw someone who has a chainsaw gun and has their chainsaw out, the two will have to enter a furious battle of the thumb; having to tap B, rather like in God of War, before the victor receives their precious kill.

The amazing cover system from the previous game is similarly returning, with only minor changes, increasing the difficulty of being able to shoot at someone from behind cover. Thank god, because it was one of the things that made the original Gears one of the best shooters I’ve ever played.

What’s also returning is the exceptionally high graphical standard, both artistically and technically. Throughout the whole presentation there were no frame rate drops, consistently running at around 35 frames, which was hugely impressive, considering the amount of enemies and partial effects on screen at any one time. Explosions from the Derrick, sparks from your gun, blood from the chainsaw and great lighting effects are some of the most drastically improved areas to take advantage of the newest updates of Unreal Engine 3, along with an over-all sharper look to pretty much every area of the game.

There you have it. I’m sure by now you can tell that I’m stoked about Gears of War 2 and why wouldn’t I? It looks as though Epic knew they were onto a good thing with their new franchise, and thankfully they’ve not tried to do too much new to it. Roll on November 2008!

Check out the footage now:
*Update: HD footage from GT!*

--Tom Rhodes, 360Stage Editor--