The original story-based two-player co-op returns in Gears of War 2, but this time around Epic's done an even better job at occasionally splitting up players into complimentary roles. And the storyline, which reads like a male combat drama written and performed by professional wrestlers, is absolutely (if not necessarily intentionally) hilarious. It would have been a great co-op game if that's all there was to it.
But there's much more, as we've recently discovered. We'd all been avoiding Gears of War preview content in order to preserve any surprises the game might hold, and so we really didn't know what we were getting into when three of us first ventured into the multiplayer lobby last weekend. "Is there anything where we can all play against the Horde?" was the first question that came up as we perused the game options.
There was. Not surprisingly, it was called "Horde," a new mode that pits a team of human players against wave after increasingly difficult wave of enemies. Perfect. We spent the rest of the evening in Horde mode, laughing as we slowly advanced to the inevitable wave that we could not defeat.
We decided to poke around and see if there was anything else that looked interesting. That's when we noticed the bots.
I'm sure anyone who followed Gears of War 2 news, or who actually read the instruction manual before popping the disc into the drive, knew ahead of time that the game would feature multiplayer AI bot options. But we didn't. This was big news. These weren't just any bots. They were Epic bots, some of the best AI bots in the gaming business, and we could adjust how smartly they'd play. Once we discovered that we could face off against teams of intelligent, aggressive bots, the game's long-term potential became immediately apparent. Not only could we play co-op, but we could play co-op in any of the game's eight multiplayer modes, in any scenario we pleased.
For a bunch of gamers driven more by the desire to chill out and socialize than curb-stomp each other's heads, it was a pretty big discovery, one that has since led to a joint realization that Gears of War 2 will probably be the game we gather together to play for months on end. We'll likely test our skills with the story's highest difficulty levels, and I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually turn to achievement whoring as an excuse to get together night after night once the initial novelty wears off.
Epic's made sure we can fight in the company of friends through every aspect of Gears of War 2, and we applaud them for it.
Adam LaMosca is a writer and researcher in Portland, Oregon, where the current weeks-long rainy season drapes the scenery in muted, washed-out hues. Much like the scenery in Gears of War 2, in fact.
