Gears 2's multiplayer preview, 12 maps on disc

by Dustin Burg { Jul 7th 2008 at 3:00PM }

The lucky (some say spoiled) crew over at IGN recently got a hands on preview of Gears of War 2's multiplayer, including time with a few of the game's already announced multiplayer modes Guardian, Wingman, Warzone and Submission. Submission? Yup, that's the new name for the mode previously called Meat Flag, because we're sure that wasn't a "socially acceptable" name. Meh.

Their preview is a pretty good read, talking about the mayhem, carnage, fluidness and excitement that Gears of War 2 dishes out, as well as briefly discussing the new party system, confirming that the Longshot will not instant down an opponent and that the "active reload section of the scrolling bar has also been moved around in order to balance things a bit better." Hmm ... interesting.

Other new news coming from the preview is confirmation that Gears 2 will ship with twelve multiplayer maps including the already revealed Gridlock 2.0, River and Security. Joy and oh how we can't wait to give the Gears a test drive at E3.

[Thanks, therza2169]

Tags: epic, epic-games, gears-of-war-2, gow2

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Arnon @ Jul 7th 2008 3:17PM

Sweet, cant wait to hear more.

Rick @ Jul 7th 2008 3:24PM

I wish it was more than 12. Sigh.

Baligouxji @ Jul 7th 2008 3:31PM

12 maps is pretty good if all game modes can be played on each map

edward camp @ Jul 7th 2008 3:38PM

12 is plenty
but who cares,it could come with 2 maps and it would still sell like hot cakes....

SadisticHam @ Jul 7th 2008 3:40PM

How many did the original ship with..i don't remember.

12 is plenty though.

OMEGA PHX @ Jul 7th 2008 3:43PM

Keep it coming this is going to be good.

Rick @ Jul 7th 2008 4:04PM

Yeah, I'm not complaining about 12. Just wish it was more. It would be nice if they'd release a couple maps every other month after the initial release.

joey @ Jul 7th 2008 4:43PM

Yeah, Meat Flag would've been banned from Xbox Live.

Vcize @ Jul 7th 2008 5:01PM

What a horrible, horrible "hands-on preview".

All it did was repeat the million things we've heard twenty times over already. Hey guys, guess what, now you can stick grenades to walls and there's a new flamethrower gun! You don't say...

About the *only* thing useful that he mentions is that the responsiveness in hitting a button and seeing your character react is faster, but that could have easily been because he was playing on a LAN rather than online. He mentions the scorcher is cool, how about letting us know how balanced the damage is? In the leaked videos I've seen it looks like it takes longer to down someone with direct fire than the lancer/hammerburst does, in which case wtf is the point? He mentions that an active sniper shot isn't an insta-down, so what DOES an active reload with a sniper get you? Tell us.

How did the core gameplay change? Did the bullet stopping power and proximity frags change the pace to the point where it's just midrange machine-gun battles a la every other shooter out there (which is what Gears previously differentiated itself from)?

I realize this was written for the casual player and not the hardcore Gears guy, but I could have written the exact same article without having ever played the game. Give us SOMETHING, or let someone that actually played Gears for more than 5 minutes and understands its nuances do the preview rather than some schmuck that's going to tell us "hay guyz they have meatshields now!!!".