Player’s Club: Gears of War 2 reviewed
November 11, 2008 at 5:23 pm by Garrett Martin in A&E
Gears of War 2
Released Nov. 7
Xbox 360
Developed by Epic Games
Published by Microsoft Game Studios
Con Air is one of the best movies ever made. It’s also one of the most misunderstood. It’s a pitch-perfect parody of big dumb action movies, hitting every idiotic note with outsized aplomb, and with a roster of fully committed actors who play their cartoonish stereotypes with conviction. Those idiots that make Epic Movie and Date Movie never need to do an Action Movie, because Con Air got there first more than a decade ago, and did it with far more subtlety than those guys could ever hope for.
Gears of War 2 just might be the Con Air of video games. The third-person shooter, a sequel to a highly acclaimed 2006 game that I’ve yet to play, is just as gleefully over-the-top in its action bromides as Con Air — it’s got more testosterone than a GNC warehouse. The main character, Sgt. Marcus Fenix, is an impossibly broad, muscled, and world-weary super soldier. He has a bandana and a soul-patch and spouts curt tough-guy platitudes in a dry rasp that sounds like Clint Eastwood mated with a vacuum cleaner. The members of his squadron represent various other action clichés, like the concerned family man, the sarcastic techie, and the amped-up black guy who raps and treats war like a football game.
Games and movies are different beasts, of course, and the tools used in one medium don’t necessarily translate to the other. Con Air was free to be as ridiculously over-the-top as it wanted, as long as the actors and filmmakers fully committed to the same spirit. Gears of War 2 can’t just get by on self-mocking brio, though. There needs to be a fully functional and entertaining game at its core, and not just the self-congratulatory recognition of how absurd genre stereotypes can be. Thankfully GOW2 is one mad hell of a white-knuckle shooter. It’s also a highly proficient and accomplished production, full of good design decisions. The solo campaign increasingly escalates the tension, moving promptly from one shoot-out session and major set piece to the next. It’s a hard game to put down once started, even though the basic cover and shooting mechanics become extremely repetitive well before the end. There are no respites from the action or the urgency, and that keeps the player focused and moving forward.
With its alien-invasion storyline and thoroughly jacked-up soldier dudes, the Gears of War series is the cultural heir to the old Nintendo game Contra, a game any man of a certain age probably spent countless hours running and gunning through with a friend. Like Contra, Gears of War 2 is less about story than about blasting the holy eff out of some asshole aliens with a buddy. GOW2 is exemplary on that front, with a multitude of exhilarating and nerve-wracking online multiplayer modes. Sure, there are the same problematic social interactions that face every popular online Xbox game, namely tactless bigots and 12-year-olds whose language would make Redd Foxx blush, but with a group of friends (or with the headset turned off) it’s a hard to beat insanely violent party game.
Gears of War 2 might suffer from a dearth of imagination, but it makes up for it with a wry knowingness, a masterful control of flow and pacing, and a comprehensive suite of online options that give Halo and Call for Duty a run for their money. It’s not a classic, but it’s one of the best straight-forward action games released this year.
November 11th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
[...] Gears of War 2 just might be the Con Air of video games. The third-person shooter, a sequel to a highly acclaimed 2006 game that I’ve yet to play, is just as gleefully over-the-top in its action bromides as Con Air — it’s got more … More [...]