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If someone asked me to use one word to describe Gears of War 2 my answer would be "WHOA". It doesn't matter if you don't play XBOX 360, it doesn't matter if you didn't like the original Gears of War, it doesn't matter if you don't play video games at all, the fact of the matter is that Gears of War 2 is probably one of the best video gaming experiences to ever grace any console in video game history. Believe me friend I'm not trying to give Gears 2 more praise than it deserves, the game is really good.

Gears of War 2 is an overall great game. Like any new game, Gears 2 has it's share of bugs and glitches, but they're greatly overshadowed by all the things that make this game good. If you have an XBOX 360 and still havn't bought the game I suggest you go and do so right now, if you havn't you're missing out. I'm 100% sure that Gears 2 will be the one game responsible to lure people into getting an XBOX 360 just to play the game.

I give the game a 9 out of 10.

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PS3 tag: TipoDLuffy

"...quite possibly the greatest game ever made"

i played a bit of it, then went back to playing oblivion. ive never been impressed by gears, and i probly never will.

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Aujourdhui a commence avec toi.

Just to revive this thread, as I've been absolutely in love with Gears II (and all it's terrible voice acting moments) since I first picked it up. I stopped playing it for a brief time due to picking up Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3, but now I'm back in this game.

Actually, I'm looking for some people to play with, particularly for Horde mode. If anyone here at CoN is interested, feel free to send me a private message and we can set something up.

Cole is by far the best thing ever.

ALL ABOARD THE COLE TRAIN BABY.

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Okay, but there was a goat!

Quote (Dragon_Fire @ 6th January 2009 07:22)

Just to revive this thread, as I've been absolutely in love with Gears II (and all it's terrible voice acting moments) since I first picked it up. I stopped playing it for a brief time due to picking up Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3.

From what I've played, the vo isn't that bad...

btw, how'd u like Fallout 3?

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Praise Be To Helix!

Quote (BlitzSage @ 7th January 2009 18:57)

Quote (Dragon_Fire @ 6th January 2009 07:22)

Just to revive this thread, as I've been absolutely in love with Gears II (and all it's terrible voice acting moments) since I first picked it up. I stopped playing it for a brief time due to picking up Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3.

From what I've played, the vo isn't that bad...

btw, how'd u like Fallout 3?

Uh, the voice acting is pretty terrible. At least I thought it was, anyways. Epic has never been very good at that particular aspect, as anyone who is familiar with Unreal Tournament will tell you. That whole "Mariaaaaaaaaa" moment was hilariously bad. Arguably the only good performance was the Locust Queen's.

As for Fallout 3, well, that's a bit off topic, hmm?

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Okay, but there was a goat!

i actually kinda liked John Dimaggio's performance of Marcus was good. i mean, it's bender for cryin out loud!

once i get my xbl working, jav, me and you can kill locust together!

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moé in the streets, senpai in the sheets

Quote (Dragon_Fire @ 8th January 2009 01:33)

Uh, the voice acting is pretty terrible. At least I thought it was, anyways. Epic has never been very good at that particular aspect, as anyone who is familiar with Unreal Tournament will tell you. That whole "Mariaaaaaaaaa" moment was hilariously bad. Arguably the only good performance was the Locust Queen's.

That's good news. I remember back in the old game, at the fusion(?) underground reactor, there's a part where a locust leans out from behind a pillar and screams at you. Well, my friend and I endeavored to shoot a torque shot (or was it a grenade?) at the part where he is, so he'd explode as he leans out. Very funny. We had to retry it a few times, and only after hearing the same piece of VA over and over could I appreciate how odd their voices are.

I've not had a chance to play 2 yet, but Horde mode and another campaign on Insane is really appealing. There's only two people I know with an Xbox so hopefully one of them will get around to buying it. Or, shock, maybe I could.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

anything with john dimaggio's a thumbs up from me. And the game is awesome . if only the hammer of dawn was real

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Dear Sephiroth, you say its just an illusion... i say your mums on the game ~

It took me such a long time to appreciate GoW 1, but once I did it was brilliant. I did the same thing I did with FFXII, just completely ignore what's bad and only focus on the good parts. In the first game, I started to really enjoy Marcus' every word. He had a really slow, calm, determined voice even when the others were scared or shouting at him. The other aspect which made me enjoy Gears 1 was the levels. There's practically no story, but it pulled a bit of a Left 4 Dead on us by going through the University and Parliament and all kinds of other places which does all the talking rather than a dialogue. Because of my own narrow-mindedness, and probably because I was more concerned about finding and killing things, I completely missed how amazingly well the game was designed.

Anyway, the reason I'm going into this is because GoW 2 totally ruined these two factors at the beginning and I was sure it would be a failure. Marcus sounded rash and reckless for some reason and the levels were a lot less interesting. After the first few chapters it got a lot better, so I don't hold it against the game much, but did anyone else notice how he changed from a stupid shouty soldier to a clever warrior poet throughout the game, or was it just me? And why is Dom really camp all of a sudden?

So, yeah, the transition between games was pretty smooth, after the beginning, and everything I liked about GoW is there and what I didn't like, no story or explanation for anything, was fixed. What's written in the above posts is pretty much the same as what I think of the game, apart from the Maria and Tai bits which I thought were... unprecedented to say the least. Seriously, those two events were about as emotionally affecting as you could ever want from a game. Although, again, the beginning was dire, and I cringed a bit when Dom starting attacking the car.

There are just two other observations I'd like to make on the game, not including the relentlessly good gameplay because if I start I don't think I would stop.

Firstly, the game was basically Lord of the Rings: The Future Years with Chainsaws. Be careful reading some of these, however, or you'll be reading The Lord of the Rings: The Gears 2 Spoiler Years.

• You can say that Dom and Marcus are straightforward future versions of Sam and Frodo;
• Cole and Baird are basically Pippin and Merry, with a little imagination;
• Marcus and Dom both lose the will to continue occasionally, necessitating the other one to come over and pat him on the back a bit and say some encouraging words to get going again, this is basically the entirety of the dialogue between Frodo and Sam;
• Marcus and Dom split from Cole and Baird for a bit but finally reunite to take down the last few levels, a lot like Pippin and Merry reuniting with Frodo and Sam before the Scourging of the Shire, which is basically Jacinto;
• The intro could actually be mistaken for the LotR film with the right music, especially seeing the basic drone guys marching beside big ogre-looking Brumaks, and hearing what appears to be Galadriel talking about war past and present;
• Actually, now I think about it, half the music sounds the same as LotR anyway;
• The Locust central hive is basically Mordor, the heroes have to venture into it while the Cogs launch an attack much like Gondor and Rohan;
• The Lambent fighting the Locust is like the two sides of Orcs in that fortress place where Sam and Frodo have to get through;
• The giant worm is Shelob;
• The heroes have to ride giant flying beasts to escape from Mordor or the Locust place respectively;
• The Maulers and the Butchers look shockingly similar to those big guys in the last LotR film that attack Minas Tirith;
• Boromir joins the fellowship for a bit and dies after a while, he's got a brother who's also a soldier. Maybe a bit of barrel-scraping, but that sounds pretty close to Carmine.

There are loads more that I shouted out while my friends and I were playing it through. By the end I had everyone convinced, but if you disagree then I'm all ears for a naysay.

And 'secondly', if you remember my original futile attempt for some structure to this post, forgetting LotR for a few minutes, I fell in love with the style of the game. I want to go further with that 'warrior poet' idea I said before. Dom and Marcus, by the end, are like gladiators in Valhalla, bound to fight in a kind of hellish pit for all eternity. I mean, when I saw Dom and Marcus lifting a large metal gate with two wheels, and seeing them both in heavy armour with two massive Mauler shields in each hand, it was completely settled. It's like it's some sort of futuristic/fantasy hybrid comic about two chosen warriors who have a dark history, one is a freed prisoner and the other... well those of us who've played it all know what I would say here. It has a similar aesthetic to Hellboy (what I've read anyway) or something along those lines. I don't think I can explain the style I interpreted any further than that.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

I wish games like GoW2 and Killzone2 had longer single player campaigns. Great games, could be so much greater with 40hr campaigns.

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Sabin: Kefka! Wait!
Kefka: Wait he says! Do I look like a waiter?