This is without a doubt, one of the games that I have been waiting eagerly for. Trust me, the people that game here in Sac are sick of me talking about it in the same way that I am sick of hearing about the impending WoW expansion.
The bottom line here is that we are all gamers and this is my WoW. The reviews are in and they are confirming what I suspected about the game... a must have and a non-stop thrill ride from start to finish.
For those you not familiar with original Gears of War the story is pretty basic. The world is at the mercy of ground-dwelling Locust warriors, and you have to stop them. So they come out of the ground, and you kill them, which gets you closer to your objective which is to go below the surface and detonate a bomb where they live to wipe them out once and for all. If you want more details then head over here for more: Gears of War 1 review
As you can guess, since we are talking about Gears of War 2, not everything went according to plan from the first game. While I am not going to list any spoilers ( Partially because I don’t have the game yet and partially because I don’t want to spoil anything for myself as well), the basic story in the sequel is best put in the diction used by IGN: The events of the first ended with Marcus and Dom delivering the Lightmass Bomb into The Hollow after killing General Raam. Sadly the bomb had about the same effect as sticking a bull in the ass with an ice pick. The Locust only doubled their efforts and have been sinking cities on Sera ever since. Now only one remains: the city of Jacinto whose foundation is thick enough to keep the Locust at bay. But not for long. The Locust are poised to crush Jacinto just as they have every other city. Soon humanity's struggle will be over, all hope extinguished.
But not yet.
A rich story in single player, full co-op both offline and on and a truly addictive multiplayer mode make this game a must buy for me. If you are on the fence, rent it and try it out!
Before I close, I have to describe one of the multiplayer modes that will actually have me playing this game on live... Horde. What is Horde you ask? At it’s heart, it is a cross between the old arcade classic Smash TV and Geometry Wars which translates into you and 4 of your buddies ( That’s 5 people co-op for those of you slow with math) fight together against wave after wave of locast horde. Yup, that’s it.. simple but amazingly addictive from what I have read so far. You and your buddies work together to defeat each wave and each wave gets harder and harder. There are 50 waves total and there are the same difficulty setting that are in the normal campaign: casual, hardcore and insane. For what it’s worth, the designers of the game haven’t been able to get out of the 30’s on insane... consider yourself warned.
