Gears of War 2
- Thread starter RenegadeRocks
- Start date
Nope, When it comes to vg media like screenshots & footage , "offscreen" is the exact opposite of "direct-feed" .
This is the case for pretty much every major gaming site and forum i know.
So that you are forced to buy XBL to enjoy it. I bet MS interfered on this one because it was once soloable according to some previews. It isn't like as if it is impossible to programme friendly AI for it.
Could be due to performance - horde throws a ton of enemies at you in later levels, and it really takes a framerate hit. Add 4 other AI players and it would be a slideshow before level 30.
This is how you do a campaign folks. This is the video game equivalent of a major summer blockbuster. The ride you're taken through is just incredible. All sorts of locations, emotion highs and lows, humor, sense of accomplishment, ridiculous amounts of tension and on the edge battles and so on. Before this, I held the Halo3 campaign in high regard in terms of thrilling and satisfying. Gears2 blows that away. The enemy AI on hardcore was quite impressive. I had to strategize my battles much greater than Gears 1. Hardcore is a perfect difficulty for those good with shooters. Not only is enemy AI good, but so is friendly AI! Dom seemed to have cured the downs he had in the first game and is very useful now! Except Act5, where they seem to put the game in your hands. Dom is noticeably dumb down in Act5 but he's awesome all before that, along with any other Delta squad members you meet up with.
Even on very critical sites such as neogaf, it's cool to see this game widely praised, especially the campaign. Epic have truly put themselves in the elite category and MS should be doing back flips finally having company for Master Chief. With Horde mode and MP, Gears 2 will be around for a long time. Now time for some co-op campaign on Insane and then finish up the rest of Horde mode.
Even on very critical sites such as neogaf, it's cool to see this game widely praised, especially the campaign. Epic have truly put themselves in the elite category and MS should be doing back flips finally having company for Master Chief. With Horde mode and MP, Gears 2 will be around for a long time. Now time for some co-op campaign on Insane and then finish up the rest of Horde mode.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I started the single player on hardcore and just came to the first split path after the dark tunnel. I keep dying alot and imo the checkpoints could be little more frequent, now I feel like it constantly throws me back too far. I also expected the graphics to be a little better, and looks wise I think Far Cry 2 and Dead Space so far edges this, but I'll have to play more to make any final conclusions. I probably should have started this on normal...
I watched the first ten minutes of the solo campaign on gamersyde, it looks real good.
But I think that smoke and fire don't look that great.
More precisely I find the fire close to ugly, and the smoke.dust not dense and persistent enough.
This is an area where the engine should benefit from the huge bandwidth available on the EDRA, no? (especially as few as no Full screen AA is applied they should have bandwidth left in spare).
Is GeoWII/UE III use the same tricks we find in others games in this regard (Lost planet, kzII to name few of them)?
What are the usual bottleneck in this area (particles)?
But I think that smoke and fire don't look that great.
More precisely I find the fire close to ugly, and the smoke.dust not dense and persistent enough.
This is an area where the engine should benefit from the huge bandwidth available on the EDRA, no? (especially as few as no Full screen AA is applied they should have bandwidth left in spare).
Is GeoWII/UE III use the same tricks we find in others games in this regard (Lost planet, kzII to name few of them)?
What are the usual bottleneck in this area (particles)?
So far I find the single player campaign inferior to part one.
The reasons being, there are too many set pieces/scripted event/convoluted environmental hazards, and these arent particularly fun. Everything from riding the Derrick in Act 2 to avoiding razor hail. It's like constantly throwing something at you for the sake of trying to be a thrill ride rather than just letting you play the durn game.
Another thing is difficulty, playing on hardcore I quickly got stuck on an annoying part that felt unfair to me (where the nemacysts bombard your vehicle) , and also forced you to wait through 30 seconds of essentially non-interactive scripted crap (It bothers me that you can shoot all you want at the nemacysts crashing around you, but you cannot hit them until the pre-ordained scripted moment says that you can) upon each retry (which is simply a consequence of the excessive scripting in the first place). Very annoying very quickly. In the first game no part felt "unfair" to me and it's probably the first game ever I actually bothered to tackle on higher difficulties, not only that but enjoyed it. In this iteration it rapidly felt vexing to die on that early part in hardcore, so I reset to normal, again something that just wouldn't happen on the first game. So yeah, the balancing on difficulty is inferior here.
Also, anybody notice how the game directly rips off the Halo series a coupe notable times? Fighting inside the worm/guts is just like the Halo 3 level (which I hated in Halo 3 as well), and the sires are direct knockoffs of the flood. Very uncreative.
Even the base gunplay, the part I love about Gears and why all the vehicle/environmental etc portions are annoying (because theyre not as good) doesn't feel as satisfying to me.
Despite these criticisms, my final opinion on the game is in flux, and it's still an audiovisual feast and a fun game.
The reasons being, there are too many set pieces/scripted event/convoluted environmental hazards, and these arent particularly fun. Everything from riding the Derrick in Act 2 to avoiding razor hail. It's like constantly throwing something at you for the sake of trying to be a thrill ride rather than just letting you play the durn game.
Another thing is difficulty, playing on hardcore I quickly got stuck on an annoying part that felt unfair to me (where the nemacysts bombard your vehicle) , and also forced you to wait through 30 seconds of essentially non-interactive scripted crap (It bothers me that you can shoot all you want at the nemacysts crashing around you, but you cannot hit them until the pre-ordained scripted moment says that you can) upon each retry (which is simply a consequence of the excessive scripting in the first place). Very annoying very quickly. In the first game no part felt "unfair" to me and it's probably the first game ever I actually bothered to tackle on higher difficulties, not only that but enjoyed it. In this iteration it rapidly felt vexing to die on that early part in hardcore, so I reset to normal, again something that just wouldn't happen on the first game. So yeah, the balancing on difficulty is inferior here.
Also, anybody notice how the game directly rips off the Halo series a coupe notable times? Fighting inside the worm/guts is just like the Halo 3 level (which I hated in Halo 3 as well), and the sires are direct knockoffs of the flood. Very uncreative.
Even the base gunplay, the part I love about Gears and why all the vehicle/environmental etc portions are annoying (because theyre not as good) doesn't feel as satisfying to me.
And even the part where you go into that asylum or whatever, they introduce an ominous visage (the director od security or whatever) on the computer screens that would have made an excellent boss of some type, yet nothing ever comes of it at all. Bleh.
Despite these criticisms, my final opinion on the game is in flux, and it's still an audiovisual feast and a fun game.
lol just wait until you get to later parts of the game. If you recall a bunch of stuff from Halo 2... well.... lol.
Sadly, the more you advance into the game, the more on rails and scripted everything is. It almost makes COD 4 seem like a free roaming game sometimes.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I've made some good progress after my first post and I'm still playing it on hardcorem, which now feels like the right difficulty level. There have been few places, which I have had to replay one too many times. I feel like the beginning of the game was harder, maybe I was just bit rusty...
Played the first and loved it, but I gotta say that GOW2 was a lot more satisfying.
I understand some of the criticism here, in particular the vehicle sections most notably the 1st one. Visually, I think it's a vast improvement, although I'm not technical enough to tell you how. Even my wifes untrained "wow" that looks really nice is anecdotal evidence to that.
From the more open but still somewhat linear section (the first was corridor centric. To the added variety of new weapons and enemy types, hell even the added sappy emotional moments sucked me in much more than the first.
BTW, I'm taking a lot of ribbing for finishing the campaign on normal. Now I have to get my gamer cred back and finish it in hardcore.
I understand some of the criticism here, in particular the vehicle sections most notably the 1st one. Visually, I think it's a vast improvement, although I'm not technical enough to tell you how. Even my wifes untrained "wow" that looks really nice is anecdotal evidence to that.
From the more open but still somewhat linear section (the first was corridor centric. To the added variety of new weapons and enemy types, hell even the added sappy emotional moments sucked me in much more than the first.
BTW, I'm taking a lot of ribbing for finishing the campaign on normal. Now I have to get my gamer cred back and finish it in hardcore.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I'm in deep trouble now...
I'm driving the tank in a cave and after a fall power goes out and then three Corpsers appear, after I get the power back there is like literally 1 second before I die every time... What the hell are you supposed to do...!!!
DuckThor Evil
Legend
Took us a few times to "get it". You just shoot the corpser on the right who has its arms open first and so on.
Thanks although I got past even before I saw that... Took me awhile to notice the "right order"... awhile being about 15 tries... hehe
