Killing Locust

Title:Gears of War 2
Designer: Epic Games
Company: Microsoft
Number of players: 1-2 (co op) 1-10(multiplayer)
Platform: Xbox 360
ERSB Rating: M+17
Genre: Action/Adventure
Gears of War 2 Review
Premise: You play as Marcus Fenix the leader of a rag tag group of soldiers, whose sole purpose is to save humanity from the locust horde.
Story: The games story takes place a year after the first game giving players new incite into the war, along with new characters that help to make the overall conflict seem more emotional. Throughout the game you play as Marcus Fenix with the option to play as Dom if you play in (co op). Each mission has meaning as it gives you objectives ranging from saving a tortured soldier or riding a Brumak into the Locust hive. Throughout the game you are mostly pushing the assault on the Locust as you and an army of COGS move underground in order to stop the Locust assault. As the campaign unravels you see the real loses of the war, such as the scenes where the main characters have to pay the ultimate price in order to push the fight forward. In each level of the campaign your given little back story of what happened in the year in-between the first and second game. The game even gives you a side story for Dom which implies that his wife is captured by the Locust, which begins to unravel more and more as the game goes on.
Challenge: The games challenge is handled through the pacing, which has you holding off an impending army or killing a Locust general. Each level is harder than the last mostly due to the increase in enemies and of how each level gives you a new creature to fight. Throughout the campaign the difficulty is also increased by set pieces and environments because of the games cover system which allows the player and AI hide behind cover in order to avoid fire from their enemies. Each map gives you different options of where to hold off and how to get to each objective which range from destroying an enemy camp or even saving a captured comrade.
The Transformation of Time: The games campaign is engaging giving you different stories to each characters back, along with giving you a better over view of the overall conflict found in the game. The inclusion of (co op) makes each level feel like a completely different experience which makes the campaign much longer and easy to spend hours on. The new multiplayer mode called horde is highly addictive, as it puts five players up against wave upon wave of enemies. The competitive multiplayer is even more addictive as each mode goes up to ten players allowing them to duke it out, while using many of the elements found in the games campaign which allows for different strategies and makes time fly by.
Engagement: The games story and characters are more engaging than the last game mostly due to a better back stories for each character along with different incites to each of motives for fighting. Each level has a sense of lose as you fight through ruined cities and abandoned warehouses making each part of the campaign feel emotional and more fascinating as you see how the world ended.
Characters/Player: Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago return from the first game, including their fellow Delta Squad COG soldiers, Augustus Cole and Damon Baird. These four characters are the characters that you will see throughotu the game, but for the most part you are accompinied by Dom. Each character has their own unique story and motives for fighting in the war. The game also gives a wide variety of Locust enemies which gives the game another side of the war making the enemy encounters feel more meaningful and unique.
Information Structure/Clear Goals and Feedback: The information structure is handled through the HUD as it gives you different objectives and weapon ammunition. The game gives you clear goals as it marks on the screen where you have to go making each objective seem easy and clear to get to.
Authors Note: I found the game to be a lot of fun when playing with a lot of friends. I found the campaign to be a lot of fun and really satisfying compared to the predecessor. Each character have their own unique personality and look which helped make each encounter meaningful and help make you care more about what happens to them as the story unravels. I would give the game a 9/10 mostly due the engaging campaign, but the games multiplayer was unbalanced compared to the last game.