Gears of War 2 is a tactical third-person shooter video game, developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox 360.[4] It is the second game of the Gears of War series (as the sequel to Gears of War), and was announced by lead designer Cliff Bleszinski during the February 20, 2008 Game Developers Conference. The game uses a heavily upgraded version of the Unreal Engine 3.[5] During E3 2008, a worldwide[6] release date for the game was set for November 7, 2008.[1]
In Gears of War 2, the Locust have found a way to make giant emergence holes capable of sinking entire cities at once. Marcus Fenix and the rest of the COG Delta Squad are now drilling underground to "take the fight to the Locust." In a teaser of the first scenes of gameplay of Gears of War 2, COG soldiers engage in battle with a large army of Locust as they travel to drill into the underground region. Comic book writer Joshua Ortega says, "The stakes are raised. This is humanity's last stand. Nothing is safe. Everything is at risk."[7]
Since its release, Gears of War 2 has been received with critical acclaim,[8] and in its opening weekend the game sold over two million units.[9]
Gameplay
Gears of War 2 is a third person shooter with an emphasis on the tactical use of cover, and retains much of the same gameplay from the first game. The player, playing as either Marcus or Dom in the campaign mode, or as any of the human or Locust characters in multiplayer mode, can only carry a pistol, one type of grenade, and two other weapons at any time, though they may swap these for weapons found in strategic locations or left by downed foes. Each weapon can be used for normal fire as well as for melee attacks; the game's signature Lancer, an assault rifle mounted with a chainsaw bayonette, can be used to instantly kill foes. The game introduces the ability to engage in "chainsaw duels" should the player attempt to chainsaw an opponent also using the Lancer; the player is presented with a controller button to press rapidly in order to try to win the duel.[10][11][7] Gears of War 2 introduces three new weapons, a chain gun, flamethrower and a mortar cannon. The chain gun and the mortar are heavy weapons, forcing the player to move at walking speed while carrying it in both hands. Existing weapons have been "tweaked" to improve their balance.[12] Grenades can be planted on walls or floors as proximity traps that go off when an enemy nears, and have the ability to kill foes when they go off.[12]
The game encourages the player to use and move between cover effectively to avoid taking damage. The player's health is represented by a red "Omen of Death" that fades onto the screen the more damage the player takes; staying out of the line of fire allows the player to recover their health. Depending on the game mode, if the player takes too much damage, they will enter a downed state which they can crawl around the map to get out of battle and seek help; during this time, a fellow teammate can revive him, an enemy may brutally execute the downed player, or the player may "bleed out" if too much time has passed. In Gears of War 2, the player can grab a downed character and use them as a "meatshield", allowing the body to absorb damage but forcing the playing to use a one-handed pistol.[13] Explosive weapons will simply destroy the character it strikes.
Like its predecessor, Gears of War 2 features an optional mature content filter, which, when active, makes blood appear as sparks and removes harsh language from the dialogue.[14] Furthermore, progress towards most of the Xbox Live achievements for the game can be earned in either campaign or multiplayer modes.[7]
Campaign mode
The campaign mode allows for a single player or two players playing co-operatively to complete the game's story mission as Marcus and Dom. A new "Normal" difficulty was added between the game's "Casual" and "Hardcore" difficulties, as senior producer Rod Fergusson admitted that — for the first game — "We overshot on [the Casual] difficulty and a game that was a little harder than we intended."[7] There is also an 'Insane' difficulty. Players in co-op mode can select different difficulties, and a "communal combat system" will adjust the game's artificial intelligence to give both players a fair challenge.[7] The co-op campaign can be played in a "drop in/drop out" manner, with the second player able to join the first player's game in progress.[15] Instead of collecting COG tags as in the first game, players can search for story-based items such as personal letters and medical records, with discovered items being added to a "war journal".[7]
The campaign features a deeper story with new characters, new weapons, and new enemies, according to John DiMaggio, the voice actor for Marcus Fenix.[16] New vehicles have been added to the game, such as the Centaur Tank which lead designer Cliff Bleszinski describes as a "tank with monster truck wheels."[17] Players will also ride a Brumak and Reavers in the game.[1] Cut-scenes use the better facial rendering technology of Epic's Unreal engine, and engage in more dramatic angles for the conversation, as well as using a video screen on Jack (the all-purpose robot used by Delta squad) to talk with their commanders "face-to-face."[7]
Multiplayer
Gears of War 2 features an upgraded multiplayer mode that allows up to ten users to simultaneously play in teams of five-on-five.[18] Gears of War 2 includes most of the multiplayer modes, including "Execution", "Warzone", "Annex" and "King of the Hill", and adds in three new modes.[18][12] "Guardian" is a modified version of "Assassination" from the original Gears of War, but allows players to continue fighting after the leader has been killed, but losing the ability to respawn.[18] "Wingman" splits all ten players into five teams of two, where both members of a team play as the same character.[18] "Submission," formerly known as "Meat Flag,"[12] is a version of capture the flag in which players attempt to "down" an enemy controlled by the game's AI and move its body to their team's base to earn points.[18] A Halo-like matchmaking system has been utilized for the online multiplayer[7] Players can now engage in multiplayer scenarios with any combination of human players and "bots" controlled by the game, with the ability to set the bot's intelligence level.[19]
"Horde" is a new co-op mode for five players, fighting off waves of attacking Locust together, with each wave becoming more difficult.[1] Horde Mode does not feature bot support as in competitive multiplayer, and can be played alone.[20]
Cameras in the multiplayer modes have also been improved significantly. Rather than static views from different points on a map, the new Battle Cam allows players to pan around a map as the camera focuses on areas of intense fighting, and the Ghost Cam allows a player to roam freely around a map. A photo mode is also featured, with each photo taken by a player rated on the amount of action in the shot and can be uploaded to the official Gears of War website.[12]
Graphics
At the 2008 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, as a showcase for the functionality of the Unreal Engine 3 (only rendering grey and blue), Gears of War creators Epic Games showed various improvements to the engine with specific reference to the sequel itself. The video showed several demonstrations of the improvements, the initial being improvements to the in-game lighting through ambient occlusion, in which dynamic shadows could be generated through the use of a pixel shading technique to render more realistically lit and shaded objects and actors, illustrated through comparison between character and environment models in the original game engine to that of Unreal Engine 3. Also showcased was the ability of the engine to render hordes of actors within the engine, as demonstrated with a large crowd of locust flocking through the "Gridlock" multiplayer map from the original game. Alongside this technology was improvements to "Matinee," an artistic tool used for the rendering and editing 3-dimensional scenes within the game.
Other physics-related features included improvements to the rendering of water in which specular light and physical interactions with were displayed more realistically, improvements to soft body entities demonstrated with a "Meat Cube" and a floating ball possessing properties similar to that of liquid helium. The largest of these physics engine related changes was the introduction of destructible environments due to the implementation of real-time structural analysis tools to generate the damage of the materials and subsequently their deformed shapes based upon resultant forces placed upon them. This was demonstrated with the use of explosive arrows fired from the "Torque Bow" of the original game causing damage to wooden planks, and also revealing rebar present after destroying areas of a stone structure.[36]
Gears Of War 2 By Microsoft Games Studio
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