My roommate and I both bought it, and we've playing through the story in Co-Op for the past week or so. Probably about eight hours into, with a few more hours to go.
Here were my initial impressions:
http://thephatbunny.net/index.php?view=read&nid=00262 wrote:Ok, so today was official "Tyler and Tim Sit Down and Play Copious Amounts of Gears of War 2 Co-op Campaign" evening.
Three-and-a-half hours and two chapters later, this game is ridiculously great. Solid graphics and sound, truly epic scale (they were selling the game based on the size and scope of its firefights, and they weren't overhyping), great gunplay, and entertaining character development and plot. Basically, they took everything that made Gears of War amazing and upped the ante.
A couple of standout points so far:
Variety in the Gameplay
The game does a really good job of mixing up the objectives and checkpoints with different styles of gameplay. You'll go from Defend objectives to Find objectives Escape objectives to boss fights in rapid progression. Each segment tends to last five or ten minutes at the most, and then you're rewarded with a minor cutscene and move on to the next chunk and the next checkpoint.
I really love when the gameplay gets smoothly segmented like this. The dialogue in the cutscenes is great, so it's a good motivator to finish a firefight or get to the endpoint of the segment so I can see the characters interact some more and get some more story progression and character advancement. Speaking of which...
Consistent but Unpredictable Character Advancement
In a lot of games, it's pretty easy to guess how things are going advance with the various characters. The ones with personality are going to live, and the generic guys are going to die at some point. It just makes sense.
In Gears 2, even though I'm only through two of the five acts, this tendency has already been bucked. Someone has died that I didn't expect to, and other unexpected developments have also taken place. It's really refreshing (and really jarring) when that kind of thing happens. It builds a lot of investment in both the characters and the story, because you can't be sure of what's going to happen to them. (And when I say it's really jarring, I mean that in a positive way, because the jarring event--which I don't want to spoil--gives you a sense of despair and uncertainty that resonates with the world the game is taking place in. It's a tremendous effect--that is, so long as you're the kind of player who gets invested enough into a game's story to feel it.
TL;DR Version
This game is a must-buy, and I'm only three hours into it. I haven't even touched the multiplayer options, but Tyler has been having fun with it, despite having some difficultes with the match-making system. There's replayability in the single-player campaign, with achievements and various collectibles, but as with the original, I'm sure the multiplayer will constitute the primary staying power of the game in the long term.
Since then, I've put more time into it. The action and gameplay continue to impress, though there have been some narrative inconsistencies (particularly with the "Dom searching for his wife" storyline--seriously, what the crap!?). The writing isn't amazing, but it does its job, which is to push forward the combat and the locales.
Also, Horde Mode is freaking awesome. With two people each on two 360s, we had four people going for three hours last Friday night and got to Wave 30. The basic premise is that Locust flood the map while you fight to survive. Kill off the wave, and you get scored and have ten seconds to gather ammo before the next wave hits. It's a lot of fun. I haven't done it online much, but my roommate has been, and while it isn't as much fun as having four people yelling at each other in the same room, it's still pretty great.
So, anyone else have any thoughts?
Just that it was fun.
