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Epic Games’ motto continues to
be “Bigger, Better and More Badass” with the addition
of new weapons, maps, game types, features and characters.
To begin with, the maximum amount of players per team has
been increased to 5, so the sequel to Gears of War still maintains
the intimacy of the series while now allowing up to 10 players
to play this mode.
Finish Him!
The downed mechanic returns in Gears
of War 2, but this time, executions have been vastly improved
and expanded, with all action buttons on the Xbox 360 controller
now firing up a beautiful coup de grace.
As in Gears 1, pressing the X button
will perform a curb stomp, but now the rest of the buttons
offer even more sadistic ways to finish your enemies. The
B button will perform a weapon-specific execution and X360
Magazine witnessed how a sniper rifle turned into a deadly
golf club that smashes heads to smithereens.
More humiliating than a curb stomp
will be the punch-to-death finishing move that the Y button
fires up, which can be seen in this sequence from the recent
Assault demo:
Click
here to watch the new assault demo!
As in campaign mode, the A button will
give you the chance to grab your downed opponent and use it
as a meat shield (since the term human shield won’t
apply when grabbing a Locust). The hijacked body will tear
apart as it receives incoming hits. The player that has been
grabbed instantly goes back into the spawn queue, which leads
us to the new gameplay mechanics found in the different game
types.
New and Updated Game Types
Assassination (renamed Guardian) has
been altered so now everyone respawns until the teams’
leaders (whose positions will appear on the opponent team’s
HUD) are killed; once leaders are dead, the match will end
when the rest of the team is dead. A new game type shown to
X360 Magazine called “Wingman” will split players
into teams of two, with each couple featuring the same character
twice. A typical Wingman match will have people seeing double,
as there will be a team of two Marcus Fenixs fighting a team
of two Dominic Santiagos or Cold Trains. This visual technique
will make very easy to distinguish your teammate and opponent
team.
Meatflag
Perhaps the coolest new game type is
“meatflag,” a reimagined capture the flag in which,
as its name suggests, has the flag replaced by a meat shield.
The twist of “meatflag” is that the flag will
be an AI-controlled character found in the center of a map,
who will confront with whoever comes near. The goal of both
teams will be to take this living flag down and transform
it onto a meat shield to take it to the ring of light flashing
on the team’s camp. Another hilarious twist of this
game type is that the meat shield won’t decay with the
opponent’s attack as in campaign mode. Instead, this
will cause the meat shield to be at liberty again, thus becoming
an instant menace to the player who was carrying him around.
Furthermore, this meat shield character will have his own
place in the leaderboard.
New and Improved Weapons
As you would expect, there is new weaponry
in Gears of War 2, but even more important is the fact that
weapons’ gameplay mechanics have been improved. In versus
multiplayer, weapons now cycle, so the basic set will spawn
in the same place, while special weapons will spawn randomly.
This will dissuade those players that love to camp near a
longshot sniper rifle or the boomshot. Speaking of exploiters,
as Cliff already anticipated, there are many optimizations
that will finally put an end to those cheap techniques abused
in the first game. All weapons now have a stopping power that
will impede adversaries to run towards you, so the shotgun
trick will no longer be a practice. In addition to its stopping
power, now weapons will also destroy covers other than the
Mansion sofas.
Another indirect improvement to weapons
is the fact that they are no longer seen when staying behind
cover, as characters now stay farther from the corner edges,
keeping weapons hidden. This little but important tweak will
give a hard time to snipers.
Among the improved weapons stands out
the Hammerburst, which will fire as fast as you can fan the
right trigger, but the faster you tap it, the more recoil.
Grenades can now be stuck anywhere, from enemies as in the
first game, to floors, ceilings and walls. A look at the Unreal
Engine 3 demo from GDC 2008 gives you a good idea of the consequences
of attaching grenades to these surfaces. Smoke grenades are
back, but this time they produce a stun effect that ragdolls
everyone within its blast range.
Speaking of smoke grenades, there’s
a new variant that has poison gas, which produces a cloud
of smoke that kills any one that breathes it. When stuck onto
enemies, they will die slowly and if they get too close to
their team mates, they will also injure them.
The preview also revealed a new gun
called the Medusa, a big metal shield that can be used as
a portable cover and the Scorcher, a flamethrower that impressed
X360 Magazine with its realistic fire simulation.
Badass Characters
This article has also revealed new
characters. X360 Magazine was impressed by how Dizzy resembled
Chuck Norris and they also show for the first time how Tai
Kaliso looks like in the game. With his aboriginal tattoos,
this badass character reminds you the indigenous Polynesian
people of the Hawaiian Islands and would certainly dispute
the Coolest Guy in Sera title to Marcus Fenix.
The article also revealed new Locust
Drones with helmets that make the Haze and Halo 3 multiplayer
armors look outdated.
There are many more new features and
items revealed in this article, such as the ability to take
screenshots. If you live in the old continent, we encourage
you to grab this issue. North American Gearheads should wait
for EGM to feature a similar preview next month.
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