Gears of War 2

[xX Boezy Xx]

This game didn't dissapoint in the least. Like Wolfy, I loved campaign. I also just got done with all 50 waves of Horde with a friend of mine. And then there's the multiplayer, which I'll proabaly be playing for a long time to come. This game definently has some great replayability, and I loves it.

 

[F8AL]

So, 50 is the last wave of the Horde mode?

 

[Cashed]

Do Brumaks or the like ever show up in Horde?

 

[-Wolfy-]

I've been through 27 on insane, and no brumaks yet. There totally should be.

 

[xX Boezy Xx]

Unfortunately, there are no Brumaks. But I must say, the Bloodmounts and Grinders are the worst to deal with on any difficulty.

Also, I have a gripe about how overpowered the chainsaw is. It should be like in the last game where one shot lowered it and it had low range. I heard some rumor going around that EPIC was patching it up soon but I don't know if this is 100% true.

 

[-Wolfy-]

yeh, it's easy to lower someone's chainsaw, it's just it has a questionable range and the whole one hit kill deal. It's really annoying when you get chainsaw'd in Horde. I'd take bloodmounts and grinders over a flamethrower any day. That, and the ones with the shield and mace. Pardon my ignorance of the names lol

I'm going to work on my insane run!
They are frickin' crazy. You're apt to take a lot of damage when you aren't in cover in the lower settings, but unless your blind shooting, you take heavy, heavy damage for poking out.

 

[xX Boezy Xx]

Heh...good luck with that insane run. Horde is so much fun because half the fun is coming up with good tactics to keep your team alive. I remember how my friends and I barricaded ourselves in one of the Hammerburst towers (the towers by the spawns, not the one in the middle) and had two shield guys barricade and protect the entrances (I was lucky ebough to have this job). While me and my friend barricaded the two staircases, the other three guys used Lancers, snipers, and even Torque Bows to take out other enemies that were farther away.

T'was epic.

EDIT: The map was Gridlock.

 

[cheap_josh]

I rented it yesterday, it's fun stuff. I haven't played much of the campaign (I got to the part where the cowboy-hat guy repairs their big vehicle thing), it's all about the multiplayer.
This game is sick and I'm probably going to get it. I just remembered preordered it (thanks to an old post), but I'm broke right now.

And whoever said the chainsaw is overpowered, I agree. Of the two standard guns,I usually use the non chainsaw one, where you have to bludgeon the enemy with the gun. The chainsaw is like a cheap one hit kill.

 

[-Wolfy-]

Ha my 5 man team on blood drive or what ever its called we hang up the stair cases, torquesniper with a lancer shotty and a lancer that picks up bruteshot and other power weapons to bring up to the torquesniper. Then therea a lancershotty down low with a lancer that is just there to revive the other guy and pick up kills off of the other guys downs so he doesn't waste his lancer ammo.

Also, later we move the two lowers to the base of the stairs, and move a lancer halfway down with either gorgon/boltok to take out grinders.

Seriously, shield camping is intensely broken im horde.

That got us to 34 so far

 

[Mr.GAW]

Nothing better than Day One Horde on the rafters. Me and my friend set up next to sniper/torque spawn, where's that little L of cover that you can jump into. Our other three teammates were over at Hammer and Mortar. At the end of the end of the round when there's just one enemy left we run down to get ammo and boomshields. We had four boomshields at our base and there was 3 over w/ them- you just have to remember to pick them up at the start of the round so they don't dissapear.

Planning to get some campaign done today with my friend since we have school off.

I'm truly a fan of every single gametype in gears, even submission and annex.

 

[F8AL]

Why am I starting to like this game more than the original? :D

 

[Cashed]

Me and my buddies have been playing Horde on Avalanche. We set up camp where the Mortar/Mulcher spawns, and like GAW said, when there's 1 or 2 enemies left, we run around and pick up ammo. Well, everyone else does, I just ***** the Mortar/Mulcher whenever it spawns. The Mortar is too fun.

 

[-Wolfy-]

I had a 2 for one kill w/ torquebow at blooddrive. I was standing pressed against a wall andfired a fully charged shot that carried through a grenadier elites head andstuck into a drone advancing behind him for the kill. So slick lol

 

[xX Boezy Xx]

Anyone know how the ranking works in Gears? I got to 3 pointed bars with one straight bar underneath it, but I have no idea how I got it. I also have never seen a rank higher than this. Anyone know what the deal is with this system?

 

[-Wolfy-]

No idea, haven't figured out how it works in terms of leveling up. Seems pretty inconsistent. Wish it was exp based like halo. or at least openly so.

 

[F8AL]

It sucks how they removed public unranked/social games. I don't like all the competitiveness in ranked games.

 

[Skler]

I didn't know there was a thread for this.

Such an awesome game. I do wish there was a public unranked game for me to take guests though, it's tough to find a group of people who will deal with guests in private games and bots suck.

 

[F8AL]

Wait, so when you have a guest playing with you in Gears of War 2, you can only play in private games?

The remove of this awesome feature is a big disappointment IMO.

 

[xX Boezy Xx]

Yeah..the switch to public servers has somewhat limited the options for multiplayer (as far as just playing for fun and playing with guests gos) that Gears 1 had. Now everything is competitive unless you get a bunch of friends together...

 

[Mr.GAW]

The multiplayer is a little glitchy for me. When I'm hosting my friend will get disconnected from me 25% of the time as I find a match, so I have to quit. Thankfully, there's no penatly for quitting yet- but that's also a bad thing. Kids can just quit if they're about to lose, maybe that's just for now as they work on matchmaking though.

Also, me and my friend were about to start a wingman match, but I had accidently invited my other friend as well, and he joins right as I'm starting the match, and we end up with a 3 person team in wingman.

I dunno, I'm still loving the game, but there's definetly things they need to fix. I've been having lag-spikes as well.

 

[-Wolfy-]

I've had one noticeably laggy match so far, and it was awful. It glitches horribly when it lags, in my experience. Namely, my ink grenades/smokes were exploding right as I threw/planted them.

But as far as quitting goes, I've had more issue with people from my own team quitting, and 4 on 5 is more of a disadvantage in Gears 2, I believe, than a 1 man deficit in Halo 3. Game types like Annex and the others reallllly suck when you are down.

Any one playing on gamebattles? I never did for Halo 3, but I think I'm going to get a team going for the Winter Season just to see if actively pursuing the spring season is worth it.

 

[Skler]

The multiplayer games aren't run on servers, the host advantage is still there and really noticeable. Host hammerburst is just crazy. That's probably my biggest problem with the multiplayer. I've had some strange glitches, one of them involving me getting knocked down by a smoke grenade and never being able to stand up but still being able to aim and shoot (my character was partially stuck under a car in gridlock), but never anything crazy like a 6 person team like I've hard has happened.

Some people just have a hard time connecting to certain hosts, I've been unable to join some rooms because of their connection and those same people haven't been able to join mine. Anyone having trouble connecting with a friend usually has that problem, you just need a third person to start the room and you'll be fine.

Leavers suck, host advantage sucks (or rules depending on how you look at it), blindfire shotgun/anything sucks and everything else is great.

Anyone else think the boomshot really shouldn't have gotten an extra shot? It takes out 3/5ths of a team now, although it's harder to get those shots on people due to stopping power and the general power of the mid range weapons. I also feel like the torque bow got a huge upgrade, like the hitbox for the shots got bigger.

Minor things aside, great game.

 

[F8AL]

Why is the multiplayer matchmaking so slow? It takes like 20 minutes to find an opposing team if you have 4 friends playing with you and even longer if you play alone.

And it really sucks how guests can only play with you in private games with your friends...guess I'll have to play Gears 1 with my friend when he comes over to play.

 

[Mr.GAW]

If you play with 1,2, or 4 other people matchmaking is fine.

 

[-Wolfy-]

Ha. So the sweetest thing happened last night. I'll try and replicate it and get a vid up.

My friends and I were playing annex on Canals and we were 10 from losing so we had to get someone in to contest it so we were approaching, and I'm in the adjacent hallway to the middle bridge, which was wear it was, and the opposing team threw a smoke grenade that landed right next to, if not under me, and I started to climb over the wall I was on, and the concussive force interrupted the climbing animation, and it launched me through the hallway, and I think I only stopped because I hit another character. It was so freakin' goofy. But effective. I think we still lost, but I did momentarily stop the timer.

 

[Cashed]

Finished Horde last night on Hardcore. I would've liked to have seen some of the higher waves be things like Brumaks, would've been nice to change it up a little wave to wave instead of just cycling through the same enemies every ten waves.

 

[-Wolfy-]

Agreed on that note, Cashed.

I think some dedicated levels for Horde would have made it more feasible.
Even the bloodriders are awkward but that's because the levels are designed for humanoid characters.

 

[Cashed]

The Bloodmounts are just terrible. If you don't have shields set up to keep enemies away from where you are, you're pretty much dead. The first time my friends and I tried one of the later waves last night it threw five Bloodmounts at us at the very beginning. We were slaughtered.

 

[-Wolfy-]

I agree on that. Boomshields are a godsend in Horde.

 

[Skler]

I wish they had programmed the boomers, grinders and maulers so they could knock down shields/mantle cover. It's almost sad to watch a mauler running into a shield as it gets slaughtered.

 

[xX Boezy Xx]

But it sure is funny.

 

[smashman90]

Dang, haven't had much luck on Horde lately. None of my friends are usually on GoW2, so I usually get stuck with random people. I think the highest I got I was 16. <.<;

Anywho, I really like this game (but I like Halo 3 better XD) and I am glad I got it. Campaign is fun (even the bosses are ridiculously easy) and it takes me a while to get a match going (which sucks terribly). It's alot easier to get a game going on in Halo 3 than GoW2.

 

[F8AL]

I can't even get to lvl 10 in horde mode, im currently stuck at lvl 9 because i play by myself because my friends are always busy playing other games.

and i recently beat the campaign on normal mode a few days ago, man the final boss is a joke.
i am kind of disappointed with the campaign mode, it felt too easy and too short.

 

[Skler]

You played it on normal, if you play it on insane it's rather difficult. Bultock/the magnum/whatever you want to call it is a two hit kill on you, and the first shot deals enough damage to make one hammerburst round kill you. You also don't get downed if you're doing coop, you get killed.

Hardcore is decent for the campaign and insane is actually, well, insane. The first Gears was too easy on hardcore and a good difficulty at insane, this game is a good difficulty at hardcore (at least for playing with a friend) and insane is hard.

Finding games without a party does take a while, but that's why I have tons of Gears friends. It also helps me not get stuck on a team where everyone just uses the lancer and holds down B. There are far too many people who think the lancer (and when I say lancer I mean chainsaw, as they rarely shoot) is a great weapon.

I feel like the host advantage is more important in this game. Whenever you try to two piece the host he just shoots you in the face or two pieces you out of it. Host also gets to start pressing B in chainsaw battles earlier, not that those happen very often. I guess the brokenness of the weapon slide evens out host advantage a bit seeing as you can weapon slide and dive as soon as you pick up the weapon. This means that as soon as you touch the weapon you can get back to your side and have a teammate pick you up if they manage to down you before you get behind cover. Yeah.

So how 'bout them Gears?

 

[-Wolfy-]

I'm about halfway done on my solo-insane run. I'm starting Act 3 right now, and it's just not fun.
I jumped around and finished Tenuous Footing and Aftermath though.

Gathering Storm up until Ascension is gay. Sires are difficult to take on alone and it's essentially get hit an die, even from the swarming Wretches. But basically if Insane campaign has done anything for me, it's been to perfect my blind firing. I've been practicing blind firing the sniper and I'm not headshot confident, but I can at least tag someone with a body-shot with blindfiring. That and bouncing grenades.

F8AL, if you are having trouble in horde, you aren't exploring the "super gay camping" avenue. Blooddrive is easy to camp with boom shields/mulchers in the little hallways at the top of the stairs (the one that spawns boltok/gorgon pistols not the one without a deadend. That's what I'm doing alone and I'm up to 34. My party of 5 made is to 44 on Security, I think that's a great level to hoard the horde on.

 

[Skler]

I find that solo shooter campaigns suck all the time. Without someone to talk to you realize that it's pretty monotonous. You also end up listening to way too much corny dialogue, it just isn't good for you.

 

[F8AL]

Every game should have an option to skip the cut-scenes because whenever you replay the game, you really don't need to re-watch the same cut-scenes over and over and over again. (i.e. COD3, you are forced to re-watch everything...) At least they fixed that in COD4, well I mean, after the level is done loading in the cutscene you can skip it.

 

[smashman90]

w00t. Just beat wave 50 on Horde, man am I tired. Thank god for boomshields or else we would've been screwed because of those blasted bloodmounts.

 

[Cashed]

w00t. Just beat wave 50 on Horde, man am I tired. Thank god for boomshields or else we would've been screwed because of those blasted bloodmounts.

Word! What level did you play on? Day One is really TOO easy when you get a shield. Me and my buddies had four shields when we got to wave 50. Three at the bottom of the rafters leading up to the Mortar/Hammer of Dawn, and one at the top, just incase they got through the bottom ones. Which they never did.

 

[smashman90]

It was Day One, we had three people and one them got killed leaving only two of us against almost all of the locust. We had to camp up in the Mortar/Hammer area. My teammate fired the mortar while I protected him from the Bloodmounts. A Mauler came by and I managed to kill it. We were protected for the most part by just one shield. And the last locust creature we had to face was...A Wretch.