OXM gives Gears of War 2 9/10

[Impulsivity]

If it's like Gears of War 1 but slightly better in a few ways (Horde added, expanded campaign, a few new weapons) then a 9 is about right. Gears was a 9 for its time, it was good but not amazing; it had fun multiplayer but with severe limitations (4v4 just doesn't cut it compared to the new 16v16 or bigger multiplayer landscape). What really moved it from a 7 or 8 to a 9 was the coop which was done better then almost any other game I can think of as far as FPS games are concerned. Army of Two, which also had pretty decent coop, looks downright clumsy by comparison (ditto for Resistance, Halo and others). It was a slightly above average shooter when played alone, but a really fun shooter when played with someone else esp on higher dif levels. Some parts of that game really hit that nice spot between painfully hard and fair as far as rewarding skill (the final boss on the hardest dif level for instance).

Gears, and other FPS games for that matter (yes including Resistance 2) are sort of hurt by there being so damn many FPS games that the bar for perfection is pretty high (the 10/10 bar). I mean how many FPS games came out this past year? At least 20 titles of decent or better quality (7.5+) from my count. Gears does some things better then a lot of the crop, but the crop is so big and games like Call of Duty 4, Crysis and others are so good its pretty damn hard to make a "whoa I've never seen that before" game in the FPS or TPS genre.

I just hope Gears makes it to the PC soon, the original was way more fun on PC IMO (it looked a lot better for sure, and the extra levels made the overly short campaign MUCH better overall) ideally with the same kind of additions that the first had. The biggest most important addition though? Mouse and keyboard+free online play=win.


Gears 2 will almost certainly sell more then Fable 2, I mean look at the sales for FPS games like Call of Duty, Halo, the original gears ect. A pretty good (9) FPS will outsell a pretty good (8.5-9.0) RPG like Fable 2 every time. I mean Mass Effect was better then Fable 2 by a good margin (having played both now), quite possibly the best action RPG of all time, and it hit about 2 million to Call of Duty 4s 6.5 million. The RPG market may be more enthusiastic and/or vocal then the FPS market on boards like this, but its quite a bit smaller (and most action RPG fans like FPS games and will buy both, while most FPS fans don't necessarily like action RPGs and won't buy both).