First, there is one thing that absolutely must be said: Gears of War 2 plays an awful lot like Gears of War. It doesn't reinvent the wheel. Picking up Gears of War 2 isn't like trying to learn a new language. You still roadie run with the A button. You still take cover, dive, roll, swat turn and chainsaw. Hell, adjusting to Gears of War 2 isn't even as difficult as adjusting to Halo 3 after playing Halo 2.
None of that, however, is a bad thing. Far from it. This is an expansion of the multiplayer offering from the first game, and thus far the choices made seem to be good ones. The most important expansion to the formula is the inclusion of several new gametypes. Each game type adds significantly to the Gears repertoire and gives the multiplayer that extra oomph that was lacking in the first go around, and by 'oomph' we mean team dynamics.
Whereas the first Gears centered mostly around variants of deathmatch game types, Gears of War 2 has plenty of modes that stress and, yes, require team cooperation. Honestly, we had trouble coming up with a personal favorite. We've all heard about "meatflag" which is actually called Submission, but it really must be played to be appreciated. Submission is simply the Gears variant of capture the flag with one glorious twist, the flag is a human being. Specifically, the flag is a mean, crotchety old man with a shotgun (in my game, his name was Chaps ... seriously). As you may have guessed, he doesn't want to be captured and he will kill you to prevent it. The meatflag must first be subdued, held hostage, and then dragged to the capture point.
One of the unique aspects of this game type is that it actually empowers the flag carrier, unlike most shooters. In a game like Halo, the flag carrier is essentially a sitting duck -- an unarmed sitting duck with slower movement speed. The meatflag will definitely slow you down in Gears 2 (a lot), but it also absorbs bullets, making the flag carrier much harder to kill so long as he keeps facing the enemy. The flag carrier can even take shots back at the enemy using any one handed weapon (including the new burst shot pistol, more on that later).
Of course, it's in the best interest of the team to protect the flag carrier. There is another twist though. If the flag carrier is killed or incapacitated, the hostage will spring back to life, shotgun in tow. Rather than simply warping back to the flag base, the old man will run back, shooting anyone in his way. More than once I found myself carrying the flag, only to be knocked over by a smoke grenade, thus losing my prisoner. The prisoner, naturally, takes the opportunity to blow me and my teammates away as we are blinded by smoke. Good stuff.
We also got to try out Wingman, which pits five teams of two against each other in a deathmatch. As you might expect, your survival depends on working closely with your teammate. This means covering him when he goes in for that chainsaw kill and being there to revive him if he's downed. With five competing teams, no one is safe. You may find yourself trying to pick off a team that's busy fending off another attack only to find that another team is now attacking you from behind. Wingman is definitely one of the most quickly paced games we played.
Next, we played Guardian. In Guardian, a leader is designated for each team. You have to keep him alive, much like the Assassination game type in the original Gears of War. The catch here is that killing a team's leader eliminates that team's ability to respawn. In other words, if you want to keep playing, you have to keep your leader alive. This simple change keeps the game from devolving into team deathmatch, which often happened in the original. The top scorer on each team becomes the leader in the following match.
Along with the new game types, we also got to see the new maps Avalanche and Day One, both of which featured some great set pieces. Day One features a giant Seeder that erupts from the center of the map, making the ground shake. Avalanche features -- what else -- an avalanche that occurs a few minutes into play. The match begins with both teams atop walls on either side of a courtyard. On top of a gazebo in the middle of the courtyard -- too high for players to reach -- is a Boomshot grenade launcher. Once the avalanche hits, the courtyard is completely filled with snow, putting the top of the gazebo -- and the Boomshot -- at ground level with the outer walls. The best part is that the avalanche causes a nearly complete white out of the screen, sending both teams blindly rushing for the Boomshot. Again, good stuff. Oh, you'd best be careful not to be inside the courtyard when the avalanche hits too. Not if you like living anyway. On a side note, the maps we saw did have a certain amount of destructible scenery though, as far as we could tell, it was completely cosmetic. No strategic destruction here.
Finally, we tried out the Horde multiplayer mode. Horde is a cooperative multiplayer mode that has COG soldiers fending off wave after wave of Locust soldiers. Horde is essentially an arcade style mode with scores awarded for killing enemies and multipliers awarded based on difficulty. We saw some particularly nasty Locusts in this mode. Called Butchers, these Locusts are huge and carry a very hefty blade that rests somewhere between a meat cleaver and a machete. Yeah, they don't go down easy. Also seen in this mode (and regular multiplayer) is a new mortar weapon. One of the more complicated weapons, it requires players to take aim with the left trigger, planting the mortar in place. Once planted, trajectory is adjusted by holding the right trigger. The longer its held, the more horizontal the trajectory. If it sounds like it's hard to aim, it's because it is. Once the shells hit though, the explosion is mighty impressive and devastating to anything caught in the blast. One last note on weapons, the burst fire machine pistol (we didn't catch its name) is very satisfying and a must for anyone using a hostage as a shield. One active reload and the machine pistol cuts through enemies like butter.
After considerable time with the game, it definitely looks like Gears fans are in for a treat when the game launches this November. Let's just hope that all of this gameplay holds up when it's being played over Xbox Live and not on a closed network at E3.
Update: Be sure to check out X3F's impressions of the game as well, including plenty of details we couldn't get to.
