Marcus Fenix and Nathan Hale take their respective squadrons to battle in the month of November. The official reviews have been laundering around from praising certain moments in both the games and awarding them exceedingly high scores. This article takes a closer look on the different departments that each individual game excels in.
Both games are high priority titles for their respective platforms and must-have for gamers who own both consoles or either of them. Gears of War has achieved the benchmark of 2 million plus units and the numbers for Resistance are yet to pour in. Pushing them side by side, we take a hard look on whether Resistance 2 still remains a poor man’s Gears’, or whether Gears 2 can withstand the Resistance offered by Sony’s power machine.
1. Visual Beauty:
Gears Of War 2: Epic’s second outing consists of more colors than the original, which was criticized heavily to squander players around a grey monochromatic palette. The second outing throws out almost everything the Unreal Engine is capable of, glinting sunshine from miles afar to dark and colorful castles right out the original Quake.
Gears of War 2 does a pretty good job in pushing the sense of a dystopian universe invaded by the ugly locust and as the story progresses, it builds on the notion of destruction by punctuating the gameplay with bigger and grotesque monsters.
But ultimately players will find it rather tiresome when they glance at the same bright orange texture for the umpteenth time. This is specially a cause of concern when Fenix and Co. are out to encounter the Locust Queen underground and inside the god awful Rock Worm.
The game tries hard to be diverse but since there is not too much to tinker with a ruined universe, it somehow feels repeated from the original game (The Mansion with the Razorhail feels like a cosmetic upgrade of the original). Environments still feel dull and depressing, which is a rather good thing but Epic somehow forgot to include the immersion factor into them.
- Grade: 8/10.
Resistance 2: Resistance 2’s graphical comparison becomes hard when pushed against Gears of War 2, since most of the action takes place across a humongous expanse which is literally breathtaking, the developers have done an excellent job in keep most of the detail rather crisp and visually pleasant to the eye. The use of a variety of colors keeps each encounter interesting and vivid in the player’s imagination and since the backdrops keep changing often no encounter exactly feels the same.
The sheer enormity of each level ceased to amaze me, players will actually feel like Thumbelina trapped inside a world which was not meant to be inhabited by sane human beings. Diverse settings and a solid visual splendor gives this game a slight edge over the “orange soaked rooms” of Gears of War 2.
- Grade: 8.5/10.
2. Graphics:
Gears of War 2: The diversified colors schemata of Gears of War 2 come matched with a barrage of hyper realistic textures. Each enemy has some brilliant texture work done to it, the Locust’s skin glow battle as they rush with battle cries. The depths of the earth or the Rockworm’s heart, each environment has been painstakingly crafted in splendid high resolution so that the player does not have to grumble about Epic pulling a 1.5 off on the original.
The original Gears defined a whole generation with its surrealism and the sequel although does not lend the same shock and awe treatment with its graphical quality still manages to hold its ground against most next generation titles.
- Grade: 9/10.
Resistance 2: This is where Resistance 2 will leave players a bit bewildered. The graphics of Resistance 2 do not quite match to the visual dexterity that it soaks in, texture work seems to have been dispersed in favor of a huge environment, your comrades look pretty dull and uninspiring as opposed to what you’ve probably seen in other graphical heavy PlayStation 3 games.
So the player’s eyes will meet some out of the world visuals with very little graphical crispiness to boast about, after Ratchet and Clank and its graphical brilliance, Resistance 2 falls quite a few notches short of expectations.
- Grade: 7/10.
3. Story:
Gears Of War 2: This is perhaps Gears of Wars 2 biggest flounder, the game hardly picks up in telling a definitive and serious story its loyal bunch Gears-heads. After pumping a few rounds of Lancer’s here and there, players find themselves trapped inside a narrative that seeks to flesh out the probable origins of the Locust Horde which in any decent science fiction fanatic views as absolutely abysmal and pathetic, and later on a Halo 2 political syndrome beings to descend into the game, sorry Marcus chap maybe the third outing will make the “English” narration bounce around a bit.
- Grade: 5/10.
Resistance 2: Resistance 2 offers very little explanation about why the Earth revolves around its axis, the variety of locations that Hale travels is not quite clear. New players to the game will not quite understand the origins of the Chimera or what purpose Hale has been assigned to this special squad. His movement along the narrative is also shouldered with only a bunch of mission objectives that are issued to him on the spot, making the entire experience sound more like a tactical game than an all out action title.
- Grade: 3.5/10.
4. Weapons and utility:
Gears Of War 2: Gears Of War suffers heavily from the Star War’s syndrome, the Lancer still overshadows practically every other arsenal in the game. Player’s will tend to use the combination of the Lancer and Hammerburst to complete majority of the game’s campaign. The other notable mentions include the Mulcher and the Mortar, which are ridiculously heavy to carry and are prone severely to overheating and prolonged loading issues.
Players from the original Gears will find it quite sad to hear that “Hammer of Dawn” moments have been marginally sidelined. Even the close quarters arsenal like the Gnasher shotgun, Boltok pistol and Torque Bow are not quite useful as in the original, the reason being since Epic has expanded the entire scope of the game pushing enemies farther and farther away, the result of which the power of these weapons are sinfully wasted. The portable shield lifted straight up from Army of Two finds minimum use in the game and feels more of a burden than an actual toy to tinker around with.
- Grade: 7/10.
Resistance 2: The Carbine, Bullseye and Augur, the Magnums are simply superb in eliminating the Chimera off the face of the planet. The variety and usage of weapons just goes overboard in Resistance 2. The Augur seems to have been lifted right of the horrible Arnie flick titled “Earser” and does a magnificent job in blasting through enemies whilst remaining shielded under cover. The Magnum is perhaps one of the most fun weapons in the game, shoot one off, even if the player misses and is remotely close to his target the alternate firing mode blows everything up to smithereens.
- Grade: 9.5/10.
5. Enemies:
Gears Of War 2: Epic has brought out everything including the kitchen sink in the sequel to the original, however most of the enemies that you encounter will feel like a minor off breed of the original one, the regular Locusts are there, there are a bunch of Brumaks floating around here and there, the Reavers are tough bunch to fend off since they consist of blowing heads, but after a point these enemies have very little flavor to energize the entire experience. The Boomers with Mulchers and flamethrowers are also formidable opponents in the course of the game.
There are a few enemies that somehow so not fit in the context of the game. The first are the funny creatures that are a cross between a T-Rex and a frog come gnashing out from here and there. The “Locust Knight” with his shield and Mace is practically perhaps the most worthless monster seen in videogames.
The digestive organisms in the Rockworm are terrible and the Boss battles (including Skorge) feel underwhelming and pathetic. The original once challenging Raam has been replaced by a puny leader it seems. Missing enemy is also a strange part of Gears 2, the blind Berserker has completely vanished form the Locust Horde.
- Grade: 7.5/10.
Resistance 2: Enemies in the sequel come in all shapes and sizes. As fore mentioned not only the scales of environments are vast so are the enemies. The number of times a player feels like a midget is audaciously hilarious. The towering beasts actually make the entire experience a worthy Alien cause. There are enough moments in the game when the player will let out a blood curling scream when he comes face to face with a few boss battles in the game.
- Grade: 8.5/10.
6. Gore:
Gears Of War 2: Gore has been pretty well handled in the game, every inch of the screen fills with oodles and oodles of blood from time to time quenching players of their thirst of violence and domination. “Chain-saw-domy” still reigns supreme although a few well placed Chainsaw duels would have upped the experience. The sweet taste of Locust meat being splattered all across the screen has never felt so satisfying.
- Grade: 9.5/10.
Resistance 2: This is again a low point in the game. Although the enemy’s bodies take quite some time to disappear off screen, the gore is limited to a bland pool of blood which is similar for all enemies across the game. Headshots which look fresh each time in Gears are a bland and a bit outdated. Some major work needs to be looked into before the entire experience can be called a Gore-fest.
- Grade: 6/10.
7. Online/Multiplayer Modes:
Gears Of War 2: The entire Gears 2 experience is best described in the Horde mode which makes it a blast to play with 5 friends. The online mode apart, features the regular modes that have been seen across the platforms in over the years and aside the bugs remains a satisfying experience.
- Grade: 8/10.
Resistance 2: Co-op campaign puts 8 players into the role of the Specters investigating into Grey tech and the Chimera and there are the bunch of Capture the Flag and Deathmatch modes to go around with.
- Grade-8/10.
8. Overall Gameplay Experience and Final Scores:
Gears Of War 2 can be described in a nutshell by witnessing the Horde Mode where waves after waves of enemies descend on the player’s locations minus the Reaver and godawful Brumak segment, the pace of the game also seems to have been tinkered around with too much placing the intense action from far and between.
The vehicular segments although a quaint upgrade to the previous one still feels underwhelming and needs to be worked upon. The original flavor of the game seems to have somehow been lost in creating a “bigger better and more badass” sequel.
- Final Score: 7/10.
Resistance 2 on the other hand might not be as visually appealing as Gears 2 but the time and space that it places the player in feels both tight, vast and exhilarating the same time, there are still a number of technical issues that need to be sorted out with the game which hamper it from becoming a top shooter this season.
- Final Score: 8.5/10.