Epic Games' Epic Fail - Gears of War 2

In November 2006, Epic Games released their masterpiece Gears of War to critical acclaim and, more importantly, huge sales. Almost exactly two years later, Gears of War 2 is ready. The game is, once again, critically acclaimed, garnering an impressive 9 from us here at Hookedgamers, and selling 2 million copies on its first day of release. The considerably online following the original had gathered lapped it up, and set about tearing apart the noobs of the world in their new maps and modes. But, one month on, should we just step back for a second and start to look carefully at one thing; namely, the broken online multiplayer?

Now, I'm sure you've read the numerous articles and blog posts on how long the matchmaking system takes to find a game, or how there are numerous glitches already being found and exploited, but there's one aspect I haven't really seen come under much fire; the gameplay itself.

Gears of War had a gun with a chainsaw on it. That same chainsaw is Gears' equivalent of Star Wars' lightsaber, and everybody seems to love it. Ridiculous attachments are fine when you're ripping Locust up from arse to face in the campaign, but take the saw online and it's a different beast entirely. The original Gears neatly negated the chainsaw's power by making it incredibly easy to stop somebody who was brandishing one in your general direction- hit them once, with any weapon, and they would stumble backwards a step or two, lethal melee weapon withdrawn, and they needed to wait for a second to get it going on. Gears 2 spits in this mechanic's face, instead opting for a mildly ridiculous alternative; the chainsaw is quite often unstoppable.

I realise that I am now likely to face the flurries of. 'noob!' and the, 'you suck!'s, but no, I do not. I'm just one of the 2 million victims of the ridiculous chainsaw that threatens to ruin Gears of War 2 online for me. To give a few examples, there have been times where there has been a guy in the cover opposite me, In Gears 1, we could have had a respectable shootout, maybe getting support from our teammates, but overall attempting to out-think, or at least out-shoot, each other. Gears 2 is having none of that. Epic know that the casual gamer that they so desperately want to ensnare wants ACTION! with a capital A, and so this scenario in Gears 2 plays out accordingly.

So, instead of the shootout I wanted, he will suddenly pop out of cover. 'Great,' I'll think, getting my active and aiming at him with my shottie. I'll hit him once or twice, but he'll get round to my side of the cover, still revving his chainsaw. 'Oh, it'll be fine,' I think ignorantly. 'I'll just get him once from here with my shotgun, and he'll either die, or at least lower his chainsaw.' I happily empty a round or two into the guy, but he strides on towards me and proceeds to tear me a new arsehole. 'Oh well, that was obviously just down to lag, he can't just have walked through my shots like that and kept his chainsaw revved.' Well, I'm wrong again. The amount of times I've done this to people, or had it done to me, is insane, and needs to be rectified.



But I don't think Epic can really fix this. The chainsaw is so integral to the online that any patch they put out could potentially worsen the problem, and to be honest any worse than this is just comical. So, fine, we're stuck with a broken chainsaw, at least everything else is retained from the original, and is consequently going to be fine.

But no, wrong again. I've never had a problem with spawn camping before; I found the satisfaction you get from breaking free of the enemies' trap to be a worthy reward for the annoyance you suffer during the camping. But Gears 2 takes this one step further. Now, I have only experienced this on one map (Pavillion) and in one game mode (Submission), but I see no reason why it would fail on other maps. The enemy team will eventually work their way into our unchanging spawn point, and they'll just stand their with their chainsaws revved. Now, to all those who are about to tell me how badly I suck, listen up. I spawned and immediately entered into the all too familiar 'getting chainsawed' animation. I was killed so quickly that my HUD did not even appear. I tried to get around this by tapping A to roll away the instant I spawned, but there's not much you can do if you are literally spawning onto a revved chainsaw. However, this is probably patchable, so I can at least hope for redemption here.

Another point of contention I have is the ability to 'plant' grenades as if they were mines, one of the many additions to the sequel. I will preface this with the fact that it is my fault, but still; the grenades are often invisible, and they only give you the warning noise for about half a second before exploding off one of your limbs. I understand giving a visual indicator or longer escape time would negate the point of using this feature, but I feel entitled to complain when I've been blown up by a grenade stuck to my spawn with about a half second to react.

I could go on about Gears 2 and how I will happily return to the original once I've had my share of achievements and matches, but I think I'll have got my point across, and given people enough material to insult my skill for, so I will sign off with a quote from one of my friends who had just gone on a chainsaw killing spree; 'You know something's wrong with the game when you feel guilty for killing somebody a certain way…'