Gears 2 My first Hour
Wed Nov 05, 2008 at 05:28:35 PM EST
[Repost of my Comments in Zoso's Diary]
So I had a chance to jump into Gears 2 this morning and the following are some of my initial thoughts on it... On a side note... Anything you had that resembled a social life is gone... The locust have taken it and while Marcus and crew are hell bent on chainsawdamizing every damn locust on the planet... they are not going to give your social life back when they find it...
I got to play some this morning and have to say +100000 to everything Zoso said. Outside of that, a couple of items I noted:
Weapon Feel... The weapons feel a bit different at first, I realized that it is due to the fact that they aim much more smoothly. It through me off at first as I am used to the aim being just a bit more jerky. Once you are used to it, accuracy is crazy! It is very easy to hit the exposed bits of players in cover or through the little gaps in the environment.
This is also helped by the fact that the spread on the lancer and hammer burst are so much tighter than before! Between the tighter spread, and the tracer trails that the bullets leave behind, BLIND FIRE IS BACK as a valid tactic! You can be crazy accurate from blind fire especially with the lancer and hammer burst.
The Hammer Burst is amazing... not just in damage, but in the steadiness and now the extra level of zoom added to it. It is more powerful than the lancer on a per bullet basis and more accurate especially with the zoom. So long distance the hammer is my choice over the Lancer...
The SHOTGUN IS KING! The shotty is not what it always should have been, I have not had one moment of WTF with it so far. It is CONSISTENT! And very tight at close range, you can now better gauge your chances of hitting distant oponents with it much better due to the afore mentioned tracers.
Stopping Power... Stopping power is amazing, I decided to rush a group of Locust who were in cover, and just their blind fire slowed me to the point where I knew I would never make it to them. This will SO CHANGE THE GAME! I had to make sure I was using cover effectively and not count on the fact I could shake off a few shots. Because a few shots slows you enough to where you will take many more shots if you don't find cover quick!
Weapon Damage... It may just be me, but I swear you can take A LOT more damage/shots now from most weapons and keep goin. I think this had to be done to stop people from being juiced to a pulp whenever stopping power kicked in.
So be prepared, just hitting someone with a clip from the lancer may not be enough to take them down unless you are dead on center with it and have an active reload. But that could be just my impression based on playing against bots.
Bots... Bot AI is good, not perfect, but they will try to take the high ground and flank you as well, they also revive each other and provide cover for the flankers. Feels much more like a live match!
I will have more soon. I have finished the first chapter of campaign and played some bot matches on Day One so far.... more to come later....