New Gears of War 2 videos bring the gameplay

by Richard Mitchell { Jul 7th 2008 at 1:30PM }

The Gears of War 2 footage is flowing again, only this time, it's all Epic approved (and direct feed). We've got a Gears of War 2 gameplay mashup, an interview with lead designer Cliff Bleszinski, and also a high quality version of the video included on the Unreal Tournament III disc. In Cliff's interview, he notes that he wants Gears 2 to be very memorable, stating, "We really want players to feel like they're playing a Hollywood blockbuster experience start to finish." In addition, he says that the environments in the game will be more varied than the first, ranging from underground tunnels (old!) to snow covered mountains (new!). Also mentioned in the interview, over 400 "tweaks" have been made to improve the cover system. Finally, the chainsaw can be used to cut through obstructions and reach new areas.

But enough reading. Start watching! Find the other two videos after the break.

Tags: epic, epic-games, gears-of-war, gears-of-war-2, gow2, mgs, microsoft-game-studios

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Matt @ Jul 7th 2008 1:52PM

Wow. Gears looks pretty awesome! Thanks, X3F!

MattmanBegins @ Jul 7th 2008 1:55PM

My previous comment seems to have disappeared! Ack! Either way, GoW2 looks awesome and X3F rules! w00t!

JohnnyRook82 @ Jul 7th 2008 1:58PM

Holy Shit.

Baligouxji @ Jul 7th 2008 2:15PM

Looks amazing. Question though: Cliff mentions something about a war journal, maybe he explained it before, but what's that?

Vcize @ Jul 7th 2008 2:55PM

I believe that War Journals are replacing Cog Tags as the item you collect during the campaign.

Conor @ Jul 7th 2008 2:08PM

I really want to see more of the single player,I think everyone gets the gist of multiplayer by now.

I wonder will we all notice those 400+ tweaks with the cover system?The first Gears seemed to have it nailed.

Also I don't want every 2nd match I join in Gears 2 to have some 12 year old glitching.Everyone found that really annoying in the first game and even after multiple patches,there were new glitches being found.

jtedesco33 @ Jul 7th 2008 2:20PM

I have a feeling that nade tagging a wall will become the most over used tactic.

Vcize @ Jul 7th 2008 2:54PM

Yeah, it does sound pretty lame.

Or even better, since you spawn with a smoke grenade and they now stun the guy for a long time. Smoke-tag + rollback + lancer = insta-down.

OMEGA PHX @ Jul 7th 2008 2:37PM

That was awesome cant wait until november

ZenGaijin @ Jul 7th 2008 2:52PM

I cannot wait, though Unreal will ease the pain tomorrow.

Anticrawl @ Jul 7th 2008 3:38PM

There will always be people exploiting games and their various bugs. If you can't handle that then you should probably quit gaming online forever.

Jato Jay @ Jul 7th 2008 4:11PM

No offense Cliff, but Gears 1 multiplayer was a mistake with the exception of coop. I would also like to see more Gears 2 campaign details, because I do not consider Gears a multiplayer game in the slightest and I'm not touching it when Gears 2 ships.

Benjamin09 @ Jul 7th 2008 4:34PM

So what was Gears of War's mistake in multiplayer? You leave your hate but no reason for it....

Jato Jay @ Jul 7th 2008 4:38PM

In the game, the exciting thing was long and engrossing battles facilitated by the cover system.

Online battles lasted about... 10 seconds per round? Maybe less? I just would have appreciated a more tactical and engrossing multiplayer experience instead of the Quake-like frag-fest that it ended up being.

Vcize @ Jul 7th 2008 4:46PM

Then you didn't play it right.

I had many several minute long duels with some very, very good players.

The problem many people had is that they were too stuck in the mindset of most shooters, which is that all you have to worry about is aiming. As a result, they often left themselves way too vulnerable and easy to kill.

Gears is not about aiming. It's about body control, positioning, and knowing when too retreat and "reset" the engagement, which oftentimes is before the 1st shot even hits you.

Benjamin09 @ Jul 7th 2008 9:27PM

10 seconds? i know your stretching it there but I also understand your frustration.

Many times when I go to play I get yelled at for using the Lancer. "Put your lancer away and only use the shotty!" Well guys thats not how the game was designed, and it was designed to allow the use to choose which gun they were going to use.

But I do love the multiplayer on this game, I just wish it had Halo's matchmaking style for online games. I'm sick of people dropping games when they can't get their friends in... blah blah now I'm just ranting.

Anyways...No need to hate, just too many people with the mind set of CHARGE n FIRE.

Jato Jay @ Jul 8th 2008 12:53AM

I concur. The gameplay style does need to be different online. But I guess it's kind of disappointing they did not figure in a way to help balance this better.

The matchmaking would be great. But other than putting in permanent physical barriers in all of the maps to prevent zerg-rushing, I'm not sure I can stomach these matches which as you said all degenerate into shotty fights. These new modes just seem to me like more ways to alienate anyone who plays Gears single from ever having an enjoyable online experience, because the gameplay simply isn't alike at all.

Benjamin09, I wouldn't have so much to say about it if I didn't love and care about this (these) game(s). Your input is appreciated.

Vcize @ Jul 7th 2008 5:00PM

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!!!".