Posts Tagged ‘gears of war 2’
Free Gears of War 2 multiplayer this weekend
This weekend, Xbox Live Silver members were given the option of trying out some Gears of War 2 multiplayer for free. The event started Friday and will be ending August 3 at 11:59am EST, so you still have time to get into the action.
If you already have Gears of War 2 (like you should), be sure to check out our Dark Corners DLC review.
Gears of War 2: Dark Corners review — decent DLC
The latest Gears of War 2 DLC not only brings seven new multiplayer maps, but also something that’s a first for Gears of War; single player DLC. Since Gears of War 2 is a widely popular game, there’s no need to explain everything, we’ll just dive straight to the single player DLC:
The single player part of the DLC, called “Road to Ruin”, is a part of the single player campaign for the retail version of that game that was eventually cut out. Luckily, you’ll get a chance to play it now. It’s basically a part of a standalone single player content that sees Marcus and Dom navigate through Locust territory. However, they can chose from going the usual way: run and gun, destroying all enemies in the process, clearing room after room. Or they can chose the second option: stealth. This is the first time you can actually use stealth and sneak in the game, however, one can easily see what this portion of the retail game was cut out: there’s nothing much to the stealth action. Basically, you grab a pair of Locust suits and walk through the entire part — some 15 minutes of walking — and that’s it. There’s no challenge, as the Locust will simply ignore you the whole way. You don’t have to hide, don’t have to pull any tricks of any kind. Just walk. Which is kinda boring, even in the rather interesting Gears universe. The alternative route, the one most will prefer, is the action filled good-ol-Gears-of-War-combat. Which works as you expect it. It’s clear that the single player part wasn’t meant as a selling point of the game, which brings us to the real stuff, the multiplayer maps…
The seven new maps include War Machine, a remake of the Gears 1 map; Allfathers Garden, a heavy-weapons battle at a COG landmark; Highway, a fight deep in the Locust Hollow; Memorial, a battle at the Tomb of the Unknowns; Nowhere, a firefight in an old motel; Way Station, an unpredictable battlefield with parallel paths; and Sanctuary, a reimagined favorite from Gears for PC. The last map is particularly interested, especially if you played Gears 1 for the PC. The other maps are up to standard when it comes to the game; they’re all polished, balanced and can tolerate hours and hours of play without getting boring. Essentially, the maps will satisfy any Gears addict and will offer hours of new gameplay.
Technically, there isn’t much to say; it’s good ‘ol Gears of War 2; with stunning graphics, environments and combat. 
The DLC pretty much continues all of that. In all, if you’re thinking of getting the new DLC solely for the single player part, you’ll be disappointed. The single player part is just something Epic threw in as an extra, the multiplayer maps are the real reason to get this pack.
Gears of War 2: Dark Corners is priced at 1200 MS points, or $15. However, you can get a better deal if you buy the recently released “All Fronts” DLC, which includes Dark Corners and all the previous content released for Gears of War 2. It’s a great deal if you haven’t checked out any Gears 2 DLC yet.
The Good:
7 great multiplayer maps
Up to the Gears of War standard
Includes single player content
The Bad:
Single player could be better
A bit too expensive ($15) for what it is.
Overall score: 7/10
New Gears of War 2: Dark Corners screens
With only a week away from release, Epic is teasing fans with a handful of new screenshots for the Gears of War 2 expansion, Dark Corners.
Seven new multiplayer maps will be added with the expansion, along with a new single-player campaign chapter known as “Road to Ruin”.
Both single player and multiplayer content is showcased in these beautiful screens. Dark Corner is scheduled to launch in the Xbox Live marketplace on July 28th for 1200 MS Points.
Gears of War 2 gets price cut to $39.99
Just in time for its Double XP weekend Gears of War 2 has been discounted from it’s normal $59.99 retail price to a much more palatable $39.99. Best of all, if you order on Amazon, that price (further discounted to $36.99) includes shipping.
There’s no telling if retailers will decide to hike the price back up so if you’re planning on purchasing Gears of War 2 at this discounted price, do it fast.
Gears of War 2 Double XP weekend for July 4th
Epic has recently announced that they will be holding a Gears of War 2 Double XP weekend to celebrate July 4th. The actual event will take place on July 3rd and run through July 6th.
Not only will players recieve double XP for any ranked game they play this weekend but the winning team will be giving an extra 500 XP.
This is sure to appeal to some but I’m not too sure if it’s how I would like to spend my July 4th. I mean common, fireworks, beer, barbeque, what more could you ask for?
Gears of War: Jacinto’s Remnant continues Gears 2 story
The upcoming Gears of War book, Gears of War: Jacinto’s Remnant, written by Karen Traviss, A New York Times bestselling author (and hack), continues the story where Gears of War 2 left off. We won’t go into details and spoil it for you if you haven’t played the game, but the book is out on July 28th.
Aussies getting sweet Gears of War Xbox 360 bundle
Apparently Australians have yet to embrace Gears of War like the rest of the world, which is why Microsoft is releasing a special Xbox 360 Gears of War bundle, which includes both Gears of War and Gears of War 2, packaged in a sweet box. However, the console itself is of the plain ol’ white Pro variety. It’ll be available on June 4 for $450 AUD, equivalent of $350 USD. Not a bad deal.
Gears 2 content pack All Front en route July 28th
Gears of War 2 is one of the Xbox 360’s biggest moneymakers so the onslaught of map packs and the like are no surprise. In fact, hype surrounding the game was so big that it recently managed to surpass a 5 million copies sold milestone.
In leui of this announcement, Epic has announced that they will be releasing a retail only content pack entitled All Fronts which includes all Gears 2 map packs released thus far. However, All Fronts will also include the all new Dark Corners map pack complete with 7 multiplayer maps and the deleted campaign chapter Road to Ruin.
All Front is set to hit retailers on July 28th. If you have a fear of leaving your house or just purchased all of the map packs already, you can buy just Dark Corners off of Xbox Live for 1600 Microsoft Points.
You can hit the read link for a description of the 7 multiplayer maps, courtesy of Joystiq, included in Dark Corners. More »
Microsoft reseting gamerscore for more cheaters
It was recently reported on Major Nelson’s blog that Microsoft has found and delt with a new batch of cheaters. Their offense? Using an exploit within Gears of War 2 to artificially boost their Gamerscores. Their sentence? A Gamerscore of 0.
This isn’t the first time Microsoft has had to step in to thwart cheaters in their attempt at a high Gamerscore. If you’ve been with us since March of last year, you’ll recognize a similar case.
Major Nelson also assures us that if you use ethical methods of obtaining your achievements, as in no cheating or glitching, you have nothing to worry about; your Gamerscore will not get reset accidentally.
Fracture Game Review–And The Stupid Idea Trophy Goes To….
And so, the flood of first person shooter video games that attempt to differentiate themselves in the dumbest possible fashion continues with recent release Fracture, now available for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. First, the plot rundown:
In the fairly distant future of 2161, turns out Al Gore was right and a lot sooner than anyone expected—global warming has taken hold and flooded out a lot of the planet, including major chunks of the Midwest for some reason and the coasts. In order to prevent the total destruction of the coastal states, new technologies emerge that can reshape the landscape with the press of a button, forming valleys where there were cliffs and cliffs where there were valleys, allowing threatened areas to easily build bulwarks of land against the oncoming floodwaters.
The United States has been split in two at about the Mississippi River, with the United States operating out of Washington D.C. and the new offshoot, the Republic of Pacifica, functioning out of its new capitol of San Francisco, which probably should’ve been flooded right along with most of California if the Pacific goes up as much as expected. Anyway, Pacifica’s embraced genetic modification as a way of life—those crazy Californians!—and they’re now at odds with what’s left of the United States, who thinks that genetic modification on a grand scale is so immoral that they’ve declared it illegal, choosing instead to focus on the technological prowess of man. And thus, the two republics find themselves at war in the future.
When I said that it was going to try and differentiate itself using some pretty weak methods, I meant it. First, it’s not a hundred percent accurate to call Fracture a first person shooter, because you are not merely behind the gun—you are behind the entire CHARACTER. As far as I’m concerned this is a toe-MAY-toe / toe-MAH-toe sort of difference, but that’s just me, and really does little overall to separate this from the slew of first person shooters already out on the market.
Second, there’s been a lot of fuss about the “entrencher” gun, quite possibly the single unique feature about this game. With it, you can raise and lower portions of ground, probably based on the same technology that I described in the plot synopsis above. It’s nice to be able to make cover wherever you go, but would I play an entire game because it exists? No, not a chance. It’s a nifty feature, a sweet addition to the list of bells and whistles, but frankly, I wouldn’t ever play this game again.
Why? Because it’s almost EXACTLY the same game as Too Human and Gears of War and Gears of War 2 and all those other games that we’ve been playing over and over and over again with virtually no distinguishing features except those in character and story and bells and whistles.
And while I’m at it, whose brain-damaged idea was it to name the game’s lead character “Jet Brody”? I mean, come on—did you have a CONTEST and bring in some fourth graders, get them loaded on Pixy Stix and Red Bull and tell them to come up with the coolest action hero name EVER? Did you pass on “Max Power” just because The Simpsons already did it? Even Matt Hazard made a little more sense and that was a DELIBERATE parody. Please stop insulting my intelligence by coming up with this crap. Seriously.
Basically, there’s no real reason to play this game unless you’re absolutely desperate to start reshaping landscapes in video games to suit your own desires because you’ve already played this game about a dozen times over. Fracture is yet another in a long string of miserable retreads that aren’t even worth a rental unless you can’t get enough first person shooter action.
Gears of War getting single player DLC
Rumor has it that Epic will announce new Gears of War single player content at GDC later this week. The new add-on, supposedly called “The Dark Corners”, is due sometime next month, as revealed on a new advertisement poster.
[Update] Translation of the poster indicates that this is another (multiplayer) map-pack for Gears 2, and not a singleplayer add-on. We’ll have to wait and see what Epic says.
Tags: gears of war 2
Gears of War 2 DLC Priced, Halo 3 DLC Dated
In today’s first bit of downloadable content news, details of the Snowblind Map Pack DLC for Gears of War 2 have been revealed. The pack, due March 31, will cost 800 Microsoft points ($10), bringing four new winter-themed maps to the game, including a frosted remake of popular GoW map “Fuel Depot”.
Similarly, Halo 3′s Mythic Map pack has been scheduled for a April 9 release. Also costing 800 points, the pack will contain three maps previously released with the Halo Wars Limited Edition.
Gears of War 2 Map Pack, Patch Incoming
The official website for Gears of War 2 carries word that more multiplayer maps and another patch for the game are due out before the end of the month.
The “Snowblind map pack”, due out March 31, will offer four winter-themed multiplayer maps: Grind Yard, Under Hill, Courtyard and a remake of Fuel Depot from the original. While no pricing was given, the last pack sold for 800 points ($10).
Meanwhile, the patch will bring a new experience-based ranking system and a variety of fixes on March 24. Hit the jump for full patch notes.
Gears Of War 2 Video Game Review: A Broken COG
Let me preface today’s review by saying, with a note of smug certainty, that I am NOT one of those gamers that thinks Cliffy B. is some kind of genius because he came up with Gears of War. In fact, after playing Gears of War 2, today’s game of note, I’m left feeling about the same way as I did before about the franchise.
This time around, it’s time to take the fight to the Locust, who were NOT in fact destroyed by the Lightmass Bomb (just a good chunk of them). Actually, the Lightmass Bomb did about as much damage to humanity as it did to the Locust, causing a fatal respiratory disease called rustlung after people breathed in vaporized liquid Imulsion. And better yet, the remaining Locust have figured out that emergence holes aren’t just for moving troops any more, and figured out a way to make holes the size of cities, pretty much sealing humanity’s fate. The last human stronghold, Jacinto, is under siege by the Locust hordes, and thus, humanity’s got to go blast up some Locust in order to keep the ground under their feet intact. Meanwhile, Dom’s still looking for his wife Maria, and the Locusts have a whole host of new and horrible devices to rain death and misery on humanity.
You see that? That’s a PLOT. In fact, if the inevitable movie version–last I heard slated for 2010–is anywhere near as deep and as rich as that plot description I just put up was, then the movie’s going to be a downright WONDER. There’s plenty of character development, good voice acting, and everything that’d make a good movie out of this game.
The only problem, however, is that it’s really not much of a game. Seriously–you spend most of Gears of War 2 roadie running from one patch of cover to the next while occasionally blasting at Locust. This is then broken up by some of that sweet, sweet plot. How this thing won Best Xbox 360 Game at the Spike Video Game Awards AND at the Diehard GameFAN Awards when there were perfectly good copies of Fallout 3 hanging around is utterly, utterly beyond me.
Oh, sure…the gameplay is a whole different horse on multiplayer mode, with plenty of interesting modes to play including the new Horde Mode, in which you take on steadily expanding waves of Locust in a battle so big that “epic” sounds weak beside it. And of course there’s all the standards like Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, modes that are downright SOP (standing operating procedure, in case you don’t habla) for first person shooters these days.
There’s even plenty of downloadable content, with fresh maps and dashboard themes and for some reason a gold-plated Hammerburst rifle for use in multiplayer modes (and Oblivion took flack for horse armor? Where’s the justice?). A glitch-busting patch has also been released.
While I love the plot of Gears of War 2, I can’t help but feel let down by my involvement in it. I mean, sure…my steady succession of run, duck, shoot, repeat is saving humanity from bloodthirsty monsters, but man, is it ever DULL. I’m half tempted just to let the Locust have Sera and tell whoever’s left on the planet to just pack up for Earth already and nuke the site from orbit.
It’s the only way to be sure.
Amazon handing out 3-month Xbox Live with Gears of War 2
If you still haven’t purchased Gears of War 2, where have you been living, under a rock? No seriously though, if you haven’t now’s a perfect opportunity thanks to Amazon’s latest promotion; if you purchase Gears of War 2 from them you will recieve 3 months of Xbox Live for free.
And, everyone who’s anyone knows the best feature of the Xbox 360 is it’s robust online community options, but you better act fast! This offer is only valid until January 17th!
Read (Amazon)