Actual thread in the reply to keep the spoilers from showing up in the tool-tip thing.

Okay. Non spoiler first thoughts.

Multiplayer : Horde is awesome.
But it is very, very different. I can't say that it's worse, but I'm not certain it's better. There are certainly parts that are better, but I played the original so much that anything DIFFERENT is still WRONG for me.
There's no more ranked/player match. Instead we have public and private matches. Ranking seems to be calculated in both, as far as I can tell. Public matches have dedicated servers, and are always full (Unless someone quits halfway through, and then they don't fill back up - as with Ranked in Gears1.) Private matches have a host, and don't need full teams (Public matches use matchmaking to fill up your teams), but they are also just that : Private. The only way to get in is through an invite, or by following a friend into them.

You go down much, much faster. All the guns seem more powerful, except the longshot which is no longer a one-shot active down.

The ability to crawl away when down changes things considerably.

The chainsaw duels are pointless, really. Any player with half a brain is going to shoot you instead, make you flinch, and then chainsaw you with impunity.

The flamethrower is cheap. Expect it to be nerfed in a patch.

Now, single player stuff.
The platformer elements in ActII seem as out of place here as the Kryll did in the first game. And the rail-shooter vehicle segments in ActI are as boring, yet frustrating, as the junker sequence in the first game.
You still have to listen to dialouge every single time you play through with no way to skip it, while your guy walks super slow. And it still makes you watch Locust take cover positions while you're stuck standing in the open, instead of letting you shoot them from the get go.


A simple tip : Shoot the giant *******s with shields in the feet.

I assume you have to play the first one before the second?

Only if you want to understand what the **** is going on.

Game is in bag waiting to be played when I get home. I shall read your post later my good man.

Another thing : Multiplayer still doesn't feel like the same game.

Halo2 felt like Halo. Halo3 felt like Halo2.

Gears2 does not feel like Gears. :/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gears_of_war#Plot

The first one has basically no plot, so... no.

Evil monsters come up from underground. Kill the evil monsters.

And as I recall the single player campaign in gears 1 wasn't that long, how about the campaign in 2?

Mine's sitting here in a bag waiting for the work-day to end...

Mine too - I've been at the ****ing office 12 hours now. I'm about to leave in a short while though...

My buddy's picking it up right now...leaving work in an hour, working out, and then playing it the rest of the night with him.

Seems like great fun!

I go sleeps now though.

So, should I get it, or what? Is my favorite weapon, the torque bow, still badass?

Yes. But. You sucked with the bow. ???

The campaign took me almost 9 hours from start to finish, playing co-op, on casual. It took six hours to get through the first two acts on hardcore by myself.

How long was the first one?

I don't have Gears 2 yet, but I will soon. I can't wait

Somehow, JM was never able to join games I was in, so I always had to join ****ty Annex games he was hosting. Somehow, I always ended up getting sniped by him. Odd.

More plotless but great tactical FPS hopefully UNREAL powered action? I wish I had a better computer

(or a haxed 360 but I don't want to spoil my warranty)

However... please tell me that 80% of the SP campaign is set in a city or some other environment rather than BLOODY ROCKS AFTER MORE BLOODY ROCKS WITH FREAKING LAVA ROCKS ON THEM? If not... well, crap.

This game is ****ING AWESOME.

wedit: this HAS to be the best fps you can play while intoxicated.

Uh. I wasn't the host. I only ever hosted assassination, really.

And it doesn't matter who the host is if you STAND STILL while someone is looking at you with a longshot.

I <3 this game. Especially now I've driven a tank.

FGR - In the videos I've seen, it looks like the levels are a lot more varied and a lot more massive.

For the SP campaign you will fight in...

-Jancito, basically the city environments from #1.
-In the mountains.
-In an old town.
-Underground with 'freaking rocks'.
-Inside a giant worm.
-An abandoned labratory.
-A locust city.

I got to the last part of act three by myself on hardcore in about 7 hours. Hopefully I can beat it before the end of the weekend.

I started on normal so I could see all the game had to offer without the frustration of playing on hardcore. I'll replay it on hardcore straight after I'm done though and keep a keen eye on the pickups I've missed.

Well. Once you unlock insane, there's no reason to play on hardcore. This time around, insane lives up to it's name. I got raped by the drones in the hospital. They get you down damn near instantly with their hammerburst.

Also, on hardcore and insane, if you go down you lose. On casual, the AI can get you up. You also bleed out in the campaign now, if you're playing coop. I don't know if the AI will get you up on normal.

The AI does revive you on normal. In some places ( especially just before you cross the lake ) it's also VERY obvious that when I replay it there will be TONS more drones, because it seemed so sparse.

WTF? Is that supposed to be funny?

I haven't seen anything yet to indicate that there are more enemies on harder difficulties. I think it's like the first one, where they are just harder to kill. But insane is about four times as hard as hardcore this time around. Jesus ****ing christ.

Matchmaking takes way too long.

Is the game given a proper ending or is it left open for a GoW3? No need for spoilers just a yes or no :/

I hear that you get a conclusion to one or two threads of story, but most of it's left open for 3

WTF at the crappy final boss fight?

There is only one GoW, and it's God of War!!!!

Fact.

Agreed

Suffers from Halo syndrome.

Set pieces are now so epic that your character is irrelevant, contains long boring drawn-out time padding sequences, eliminates the charm and appeal of the original, radical departure from the writing and directing styles of the original, introduces new characters only so they can die and be replaced by your original team for no reason, places so much emphasis on the storyline above and beyond the first game that the transition between the two is awkward, all of the new enemies are irritating but otherwise pointless, the core game mechanics don't work as well due to lack of testing and poor map design, the game feels too generic: the original felt like its own game but the sequel feels like half of the team was trying to make Resident Evil while the other half was trying to make Resistance, they rebalanced the weapons by removing the fun factor from them, and apparently someone who worked on the game thinks that defending yourself from exploding enemies in the dark is fun and that driving a vehicle at high speeds over a collapsing floor is just the most amazing thing ever.

halo syndrome.

Unlike the first Gears, this one isn't coming to the PC. If I recall, the first one didn't sell well with the PC crowd, and Cliff Bleszinski blamed piracy for the reason why PC users didn't buy up a console port. So us PC using heathens won't be touching this game. It does use Unreal 3, and the first one came with an editor. I'm not sure how long Unreal 3 games will be coming to the computers, especially after the somewhat disappointing sales of Unreal Tournament 3.

Also, Cliffy B., time to time, is a phenomenal, well,...

I'm more certain that they didn't sell well because they already had the Xbox version, or for the plain fact that the PC one sucked.