Gears of War 2: Chainsaw of Guilt

With all the praise and acclaim being flung at Gears of War 2, one can't help but feel obliged to like the game. It is as if Cliffy B. and Epic Games had somehow created the messiah of video gaming, and any perceived fault with the game was either excusable or the result of the player and not the game itself. It was under this pretense that I purchased Gears 2, despite my lack of enthusiasm for its predecessor. I was convinced that I had simply not given Gears 1 enough of a chance to win me over. Even after playing the game exclusively for a full week, I still felt some guilt as I listed it for sale on Playswitch.com, as if my dissatisfaction were caused by a lack of skill or refusal to allow the game to win me over. Admittedly, I find the ongoing matchmaking problems plaguing Gears' multiplayer a source of shameful satisfaction, as providing a form of justification for my tastes.

To their merit, Epic Games created one of the most polished games in Xbox 360 history and one of the most satisfying and consistently entertaining single-player experiences I've encountered in a shooter. However, one does not purchase Gears of War 2 for the single-player experience, and it was the multiplayer's inability to capture me that sealed the fate of the game. To be fair, I am partly to blame for this. I'm a relatively anti-social gamer, only willing to play co-op with individuals I actually know and like. While Gears offers some solid, and perhaps even epic, cooperative gameplay, the appeal I find in multiplayer is the idea of the online gladiatorial arena, where I can spill the blood of pre-teens too young to legally play these games.

To this end, I find Gears lacking. Its multiplayer maps, for the most part, are claustrophobic, forcing both teams to engage each other in medium to short range. This causes the fairly impressive amount of variance between each map to dwindle, as the battle is often reduced to a series of duels between line-backer sized space marines firing off shotguns. This in itself doesn't break the game. In fact, this is laudable, as the game's high health bars and close spaces break the traditional mold of shooter gameplay by transforming each encounter into a Herculean clash worthy of Homer. What defeats this attempt is Epic's failure to provide players with controls responsive enough to handle such close-quarter combat, forcing players instead to rely on the game's spastic dodging mechanic for reliable close-range maneuvering. With most mid-range battles resulting in a stalemate until one combatant decides to close into chainsaw or shotgun range, most battles result in an odd and nonsensical dance of rolls and shotgun blasts that I just didn't find appealing.

Even as I bring this entry to a close, I feel a swell of guilt at my condemnation of Gears 2, as if my opinions were the result of not investing enough time to "understand" the game. But really, if I can't understand the game after playing it exclusively for a week, is it really my fault for not liking the game? I really wanted to like Gears 2, but the most enjoyment I've had with it was selling it off to purchase Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company.

--Mike