Gears of War 2

Gears of War 2 is a third-person shooter developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios . It was released on November 7th, 2008 and is the direct successor to Gears of War and the predecessor of Gears of War 3 .

On the weekend of its release, Gears of War 2 sold over two million copies, and two months after its release date, it sold four million copies. It was the seventh best-selling game in 2009 and received multiple awards for it.

action

After the light mass bomb from Gears of War did not completely eradicate the Locust, the last humans gather on the planet Sera and launch a frontal attack. Sergeant Marcus Fenix as commander of the Delta Squad and his best friend and comrade Dominic Santiago get the newcomer Benjamin Carmine assigned at the beginning. This turns out to be a real greenhorn that cannot even reload its weapon properly.

After the squad was able to clean up the hospital in Jacinto with the help of Tai Kaliso, the people began a major attack on the Locust. The Delta team accompanies the storm drill Betsy to Landown, where they get into the world of Locust by grind lift. Arrived in the underground cave system of the Locust, they are separated from Carmine and go on a search. Everywhere from the ceiling more grind lifts with KOR soldiers push into the caves. After finding Carmine, they continue to fight their way through the caves until they are ambushed. At the last second, Augustus Cole, who was separated from his squad, comes to the rescue and saves the surrounded.

The four of them advance further into the caves, where they discover with horror that the Locust are now also taking prisoners and torturing them. By chance they discover Damon Baird in a cage and free him. After boarding an underground Locust transporter, they find the completely disturbed Tai Kaliso in a cell of the transporter. Marcus is happy to see his friend again and he thrusts a Gnasher shotgun into Tai's hand, but Tai uses it to shoot himself in the head instead of taking up the fight against the Locust. When he falls to the ground, another camera shot on his back shows that he was massively tortured and lost his mind as a result.

After further fighting in the tunnels, the troop discovers a huge worm that eats its way through the ground under human cities, causing them to sink. They come to a city submerged by the worm and receive an emergency call from a crashed King Raven helicopter, but find no survivors at the crash site. After being surrounded again, they can defend themselves until they are flown out by another helicopter. Suddenly the giant worm appears, the helicopter has to evade and Carmine falls from the helicopter directly into the worm's mouth. The helicopter itself is no longer able to avoid the worm and is devoured.

Dominic briefly dreams of a nice moment with his wife Maria when he is woken up by Marcus and he realizes that they are inside the worm. Carmine is found badly wounded and shortly thereafter succumbs to his injuries. Marcus devises the plan to destroy the worm from the inside out and the squad goes in search of the worm's heart. They finally reach the heart of the worm through the digestive tract, past the molars and poison glands, and Marcus cuts the main artery. Horrified, the four realize that they can still hear the worm's heartbeat. They continue to march through the worm until they reach the second heart and also cut all arteries. Still hearing a heartbeat, the Delta troop beats their way through to the third heart, and after they have severed all the arteries there too, the worm dies and they can cut their way outside.

Fenix's squad receives Colonel Hoffman to investigate a COG outpost, in which they discover a mutation between humans and Locust as well as information about a previously unknown route into the Locust fortress. After fighting their way free, they set off with a Centaur to climb Mount Kadar. Back in the caves they discover stranded people hiding there. Cole and Baird evacuate the stranded while Marcus and Dom continue to advance into the caves.

Dom is concerned that his wife Maria has been captured by the Locust, and so he wants to go in search of her. Marcus is reluctant to follow him. Finally they find Maria Santiago in a cage, completely starved and tortured. She doesn't recognize Dom, can't talk and looks emaciated. Dom releases them with a headshot.

Furious, the two set off to find and eliminate the Queen of Locust. Near the palace they watch a battle between the Locusts and emulsion mutated glowing Locusts. Arriving at the palace, they discover news from Adam Fenix, Marcus' father, about an alternative end to the war. Jacinto must be sunk to flood the caves with water and drown the Locust. When the Queen arrives, she reveals that she is pursuing the same plan to get rid of the humans and the glowing Locust. After talking to the queen, she escapes on a reaver. Marcus realizes that the humans must sink Jacinto before the Locust can escape. On a Reaver they escape from the caves and kill Skorge and his hydra.

A mass evacuation is taking place in Jacinto to sink the city. The people want to sink Jacinto with a light mass bomb and the Delta troop is instructed to penetrate the caves again and clear the way for the helicopter. To do this, Marcus and Dom hijack a Brumak and clean the way underground. When the helicopter arrives, the Brumak mutates because it is in emulsion and becomes gigantic in size and begins to glow. The mutated Brumak attacks the helicopter, which then loses the light mass bomb. Marcus recalls that mutant Locusts explode when killed. So he uses the hammer of dawn and makes the giant Brumak explode. Jacinto goes under and the caves are flooded.

Gameplay

The single player mode can also be played cooperatively again and is much more varied than part 1 thanks to numerous innovations such as new weapons and enemy types as well as more varied game sections. Since the core game elements have been retained, those familiar with the first part will find their way into the game immediately.

One of the most noticeable revisions was the game with regard to the fact that the player or the other players went to the ground. In contrast to the first part, the player is no longer condemned to wait lying on the ground and hope for rescue by a human teammate. He can now crawl away, for example to take cover and be rescued by NPCs. It is also now possible for the opponents to save each other. In addition, a variety of actions have been built in to kill crawling enemies, depending on the weapon carried and the action button used. In addition, the possibility was created to pick up opponents in this situation and use them as a living protective shield.

In GoW 2, grenades can be attached to enemies as well as walls or floors. This is called "tagging". In addition to the fragmentation and smoke grenades known from Part 1, another type of grenade was built into the game: the smoke grenade, which emits a poisonous mist that can be fatal after a long period of exposure. The new tactics of tagging and the new type of grenade are much more effective in multiplayer than in single player.

The use of the Lancer chainsaw bayonet can lead to chainsaw duels in this part if opponents meet head-on and the chainsaw is activated. The winner of the duel is determined by quickly and repeatedly pressing the melee button.

In addition to revising existing functions, a large number of new weapons have also been implemented in the game. The repertoire was expanded to include the semi-automatic Gorgon pistol, the scorcher flamethrower, the mulcher (a portable Gatling cannon) and a portable mortar. The Hammerburst rifle, which was already available in Part 1, can now, like the Boltok pistol, zoom at the push of a button. The stationary Gatling cannons, called Troika, now overheat after a certain amount of time. A sustained continuous fire as with GoW is no longer possible; however, similar to active reloading, cooling can be forced at the push of a button.

Multiplayer

A multiplayer game can have up to ten players. A wealth of variations of well-known modes such as war zone (corresponds to team deathmatch), execution (team deathmatch in which the opponent is only defeated by execution or explosion), suppression (corresponds to Capture The Flag with armed civilian as a flag, the first be brought to the ground and must be brought to the finish as a protective shield) and Annex or King of the Hill (King of the Hill, whereby the point to be stopped at Annex changes after a given time).

One of the most important innovations in the multiplayer mode is the so-called horde mode, in which up to five human players have to defend themselves on one of the multiplayer maps against waves of opponents that are getting stronger. There are no human opponents in this mode.

The wingman mode is also new, in which five teams of two members fight each other.

Last but not least, there is the Protector game mode, in which one player from each team is declared the leader. On the human side, the player has to play as Col. Hoffman, and as Locust he becomes Skorge. The aim of this mode is to wipe out the opposing team. As long as the leader is alive, all team members will be re-spawned. After each round, the leader changes to the player who eliminated the opposing leader for the winners and the player with the most points for the losing team.

There are currently four DLC card packages with a total of 19 new cards (including revisions from Part 1) which, however, due to the indexing of the title, were not available on the German Xbox Live marketplace for many years, as was a chapter that was missing in the main game. In the meantime, however, all additional content is also freely available on the German marketplace.

Others

Since the first part had not received an age rating from the USK , Microsoft decided not to examine the second part because the chances of approval were assessed as very low. Therefore, the game did not appear in Germany, because Microsoft's company policy is to only publish games with USK approval in Germany; however, a German-language version has been published in Austria and Switzerland. The game was indexed by the BPjM in Germany in the year of publication .

On December 9, 2016, the title appeared in the list of titles tested by the USK and was subsequently rated for ages 18+. An official release is now also possible in Germany.

Despite repeated rumors about a PC implementation, this was recently ruled out because, according to Epic Games, the number of black copies of the PC version was immensely higher than that of the Xbox 360 version in the first part .

Ratings

The game received an international average rating of 93%.

Book for the game

Gears of War: Jacinto's Heirs , by Karen Traviss , 2011, Panini Verlag, ISBN 978-3-8332-2243-6
Gears of War: Anvil Gate , by Karen Traviss, 2011, Panini Verlag, ISBN 978-3-8332-2244-3

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Announcement No. 9/2014 on carrier media dated September 22, 2014 ( BAnz AT 09/30/2014 B6 )

↑ Provisional order VA 2/08 of November 11, 2008, published in the Federal Gazette No. 175 of November 18, 2008

↑ http://www.schnittberichte.com/news.php?ID=11520

↑ Gears of War 2 sales . giga.de. Retrieved on April 22, 2011. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.giga.de
↑ http://www.gamersglobal.de/news/38211/gears-of-war-3-erscheint-in-deutschland-ungeschnitte-upd
↑ Microsoft only allows USK-approved games sueddeutsche.de from November 7, 2005; accessed on July 16, 2011. Quote: "Microsoft forbids publishers to bring Xbox 360 games to the German market that do not have a USK rating"
↑ http://pixelburg.tv/2016/12/28/gears-of-war-2-erhaelt-usk-freigabe-release-in-deutschland-moeglich/
↑ http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/gears-of-war-2

[1] Announcement No. 9/2014 on carrier media dated September 22, 2014 ( BAnz AT 09/30/2014 B6 )

[2] Provisional order VA 2/08 of November 11, 2008, published in the Federal Gazette No. 175 of November 18, 2008

[usk-3] ttp://www.schnittberichte.com/news.php?ID=11520