The trailer of Gears of War 2 is finally up, and all rabid fanboy’s are already clutching each others necks to showcase the spectacular might of this hotly anticipated sequel. So the question that arises in everyone’s mind is that does it live upto the hype of the original game and does it take steps to improve and recreate the notion of humanity falling weak on its knees.
We saw Unreal 3.5 being used as the star attraction for Gears of War 2 at the Game Developers Conference held in February earlier this year and saw a radical amount of changes being implemented in the engine. These changes ranged from Ambient Occlusion to supporting greater number of enemies onscreen to recreate the horror of war.
The gameplay trailer for Gears of War 2 has not quite shown the competence of the Unreal 3.5 technology in a direct way. Gears 2 still looks a lot like the original Gears of War which is not necessarily a bad thing. But the team at Epic has definitely added a number of changes in the game, which I believe have been taken from the smash hit Halo 3 last year.
Cliffy B begins the trailer describing a war and that is exactly what is going onscreen throughout the game. Scale is the important feature to notice throughout the video, which is humungous and literally jaw dropping. The action onscreen never seems to slow down for the player and is continuously engaging in one form or the other. However it is important to note that this is still much of a rail shooter, the entire scale of the map is still inaccessible by the player (An illusion of war?).
The cinematic feel of the trailer does add to the tension and creates an aura of susceptibility for the player, since the attacks on the player seem less linear and more spontaneous. Epic is trying very hard to remove this predictable nature of gameplay in order to accommodate a wider variety of gameplay options which every developer is trying to incorporate given the power of this technology.
Gameplay hasn’t exactly received a major overhaul. Players are required to shoot and destroy everything their reticule can set their sights on. The “hostage situation” and “chainsaw duels” are new additions to the game, the former has been seen incessantly in almost every stealth game in the past, but we now witness this element present in almost every third action game (Army of Two was the last game I saw using this technique), but is satisfying nonetheless to grab hold of those darn Locust turds and crack their spines out of this planet, Sorry out of “Sera” I mean.
All your fiendish enemies return to pounce on you including the vicious Monster (Brumaks) that appeared in the PC version of Gears of War. The chainsaw duels were the best part of the game and this is what did impress. Two machines made out of pure steel locking onto each other with a button mashing feature seems like unleashing the players’ ravenous sides seem to be out to re-write multiplayer battles all together.
Surprisingly the number of enemies/friends onscreen engaged in live combat have not increased significantly. Gears of War 2 still seems to show five to six players at one go, even though they do show a brief snippet of Marcus shooting down hordes of enemies down from the “Derrick”. It doesn’t quite fit in the expectations of a massive war that players would probably be expecting as a feature that was initially announced at GDC.
Lighting and color has been added to the game which are very important in creating the sense of the destroyed beauty the game originally promised to deliver. The overall game looks and feels much more vibrant than the original that was shrouded in a mysterious isle of darkness.
Textures and shadows have seen a massive overhaul but the trailer still has a great deal of “Jaggies” present in the environment that requires to be ironed out, which may be because of the demo being taken from a build that seems to be around five to six months old and expect to see a major upgrade in the visuals when the game debuts at E3 and is playable on floor.
Gears of War 2 is still a big system seller despite its minor shortcomings and expect the game to get bigger, better and more badass in the coming months till release
By Neelesh Mukherjee