Eat my testosterone

Gears of War 2 is the follow-up to the gorgeous, yet thinly plotted, spectacularly linear Gears of War and thus far, is exactly the same as the first, but up-sized. More enemies thrown at you, larger vehicles on larger rail sequences. And more Brumak, way more Brumak.

People often wonder why the Gears and Unreal games running the Unreal 3 engine all look better coming from Epic than virtually anyone else using the engine (a lawsuit is pending about this very issue). The answer is pretty simple a)they designed the damn thing b)they cheat.

By cheat, I mean in the traditional film jargon sense, as in "cheating" the camera over a few inches, or using forced-perspective. The idea is to cheat the eye into seeing something that really isn't there and Epic have always excelled at this.

By creating vistas that you can never actually explore and funneling gameplay down narrow path surround by the appearance of beauty, Epic games seem like they look better. They are simply better optimized for the gameplay, whereas a game like Mass Effect uses the engine to show vistas that you can actually walk up to. That makes the engine work harder and it doesn't have the sheen Gears does. It's smart design, if limiting, which seems to be Epic's trademark.

From the intial Unreal, Epic has thrilled with visual tricks and story ideas that never live up to the potential. Epic has become the new ID, with their games standing more as entertaining tech demos than immersive experiences. The story sessions seem to have been frat-boy keggers where Cliffy B continually asks "what's cooler than..", ie. "Hey what's cooler than a shitload. (beat) Ten shitloads."

That there is some fine writing Cliff.

What does appear to be true is that the games are not purchased for the single player experience, which is simply the gravy to the online experience of curbstomping your pals.

Thus far I am underwhelmed by the story, but the game mechanics are as compelling as ever