Gears Of War 2 - Spring Showcase '08 Preview

When it looked like Sony was getting ready to launch a pincer movement around Xbox 360 this year with the launch of Resistance 2 and Killzone 2 (the latter now delayed until 2009), Microsoft's answer was to unveil the one title that we knew had to be coming: Gears of War 2. Launched on stage at GDC thanks to Cliffy B and a Lancer prop, Gears 2 was promised to be "bigger, better, and more badass" than its 2006 predecessor with a refinement of the game mechanics, mass armies of Locusts, and a darker storyline as humanity teeters on the brink of extinction on the planet of Sera.

Three months after the announcement the Gears of War 2 bandwagon rolled back to San Francisco, this time at Microsoft's Xbox 360 Spring Showcase 2008. TVG was there to see the first minutes of gameplay to come from Epic's North Carolina studio, as Cliffy B shares "the love" and "the magic" surrounding this November's Emergence Day...

Bigger, Better, And More Badass.

Set six months after the Light Mass Bomb exploded at the end of the first game, winter is coming to Sera. The presentation focused on the second level of Gears 2, the mission teased at during last week's short trailer. Taken out of the war-torn urban streets, the level focused on a wide and epic vista with snow-capped mountains in the distance - no doubt an attempt by Epic to shift opinions that Gears was little more than fighting behind grey pillars. In the months after the Light Mass Bomb detonation and the death of General RAAM, the Locust have re-focused their strategy and launched a new weapon that can literally sink entire cities. Thankfully, the last bastion of human civilisation on Sera, Jacinto, stands on top of bedrock impervious to the Locust's emergence holes. The bad news, however, is that they're sinking cities surrounding Jacinto, weakening the terrain beneath the plateau in the hope that it too will sink to its destruction. With humanity's back to the walls, who ya gonna call...?

The return of Marcus Fenix and Delta squad is bolstered with new characters including conscripted allies such as 'Dizzy', who drives one of the Assault Derricks used to take the Gears squads deep into the fight against the Locust. The COG strategy is something of a last gasp attempt to save mankind - use the Derricks to position the Gears over Locust nests, and send them down into the depths of hell using 'Grindlifts', two-man elevators that shoot Gears soldiers below the surface of Sera to take the Locust head-on. The presentation focused on several of the Derricks moving towards their target position, with Marcus and Dom on one, Cole and Baird on another. Discussing the latest mission plans, the Gears ready themselves for a Locust counter-attack, brought to a head with Cole reaffirming, "I've got your back, Delta" - we can only hope the line suggests an improvement in Cole-train's AI, because he was pretty useless the last time around...

It doesn't take long for the action to kick in, with a mortar attack from Nemacysts introducing gamers to some wild shotgun action from Fenix. Cue entire minutes of battles between Locust and Gears, followed by an intense battle as Marcus and Dom defend Dizzy as he tries to repair a damaged Derrick (nicknamed 'Betty'). If intensity is what people enjoy about the brand, then it certainly looks like gamers will not be disappointed in November.

Bigger, Better, And More Badass.

GDC allowed Epic to unveil the latest updates to Unreal Engine 3, and Showcase served as the backdrop for CliffyB to show off some of these improvements in-game. Continuing the trek through the Sera bush on a patched up Betty, it doesn't take long before the main Locust attack emerges through the soil and bedrock below. With a warning of strange seismic activity the Horde creates a large emergence hole and launch a ferocious wave of units numbered in their dozens. A formidable force that would send even the hardest soldiers running to their 'mommies', seeing such an en masse attack by the Locust is quite frankly astounding, and is surely just a titbit of how massive some of these Gears 2 battles will turn out. It begs the question how many will the Gears actually face once they Grindlift down into the nests below Sera? It's a thought that will no doubt bring many sweet dreams to the Gears fanboys out there, even if Epic is keeping these subterranean battles close to their chest.

Having missed out on the opportunity to bring down a Brumack in the Xbox 360 edition of Gears 1, players will feel redeemed come November as the second level provided multiple Brumacks and Corpsers to fight against. Some of the fiercest units available to the Horde, watching one spider-like Corpser climb up on a ridge not far from the chugging Derrick was an awesome sight, especially with the alpine vista behind it. Almost transfixed by the sight, it's perhaps inevitable that it was the point when the two Brumacks opened fire with missiles, leading to a battle cry from Fenix to order the rest of Delta squad to target its guns. The tension is further ramped up by Locust attempts to hijack Assault Derricks with grappling hooks - naturally, this is achieved on the Derrick next to the one Fenix finds himself on, prompting a fire fight across the bows of the two vehicles in a manner that wouldn't look out of place on a 19th Century sea battle. Nelson would feel very much at home during the sequence.

Not even Marcus' Derrick is safe however, with some individual Locust making their grappling hooks stick. A slight inconvenience for the Gears soldier, it provided a massive opportunity for Cliffy B to show off two of Gears of War 2's new mechanics. The first, chainsaw duelling, was teased at during the stylised GDC trailer, but seeing it in action will surely allay fears formed by the multiplayer frustrations of its predecessor where the potluck of head-to-head chainsaw battles triggered many verbal abuses.

In a brief Q&A session after the presentation, the Epic Design Director confirmed to TVG that the duels will be automatically triggered if the two characters were using the Lancer assault rifle, prompting some button-mashing of the B button - hey, at least that'll make a change from wearing out the often abused A button. There are of course questions over whether the frequency of the duels will reduce the mechanic to a monotonous novelty, but let's face it, chain-sawing your opponent is just as much fun the 100th time. Attacking a Locust from behind with the Lancer will also add some variety to the dynamic, as Fenix upends the Lancer, and cuts his toothy enemy in half from the groin up...ouch.

Coupling that with new abilities to take a Locust hostage as a 'human shield' not to mention contextual executions, and its easy to see why Epic is already billing Gears 2 as more than just a cheap follow-up. The game is shaping up to become a true evolution of the brand, without meddling too heavily with the core gameplay of its predecessor.

Bigger, Better, And More Badass.

One of the strongest elements of its predecessor was the multiplayer, which lasted for seven months on the top of the Most Played Xbox Live list and only succumbed when the Master Chief landed back on Earth in September 2007. Like so much of Gears 2, Epic is keeping its cards close when it comes to multiplayer, although Cliffy B did confirm some additional integration between achievements available in the single-player and multiplayer modes. Tracking stats will be available to view during the course of the game, with one achievement given for a certain number of headshots. It is confirmed however, that unlocking achievements will be bottlenecked, meaning that multiple headshots in a single multiplayer battle won't edge players to the magic number. Whilst some will no doubt frown upon this, it will at least mean that the days of "Can I shoot you 10 times to get 'X' achievement" could be over...

Describing Gears of War 2 as - no, not 'bigger, better, and more badass' - at least, not this time - 'deeper and darker' than its predecessor, the follow up very much sounds like (at the expense of proving my near-geek status) the Gears of Wars' Empire Strikes Back to the original's Star Wars. Let's hope that's the case, because the other alterative is The Matrix Reloaded to the original The Matrix!