Gears of War 2

[Dazzyman]

I'm glad you said this. I think I'm up to the start of Act 2 (is it? The part where the town is falling into the sink-hole and there's fire everywhere) and it's been a little bit up to now.

Great but still

When you finish it m8 you will look back and be thankfull of first and second act that their abit slow and dont show how great the rest of it is as it sets the game up lovely.

[Matt]

Also ive just noticed that whole floating off the floor thing somebody mentioned earlier and i dismissed

Don't worry, I'm used to people here dismissing my technical discussions

[prinnysquad]

GGGRRRRRR getting skanked. I played through to the beginning of Act 5 on co-op then realised I didn't have the 'Longitude and Attitude' achievement. Totally random; I'd played through it and finished it. So I just started a single player game and selected Act 3 Chapter 3, endured all that

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razorhail

and ****, only to reach the end and.... no achievement!!!

Any ideas?

EDIT: More GGGRRRRR - now on the save select screen I can't load anything up. I select an option, and the game pauses for a second before doing **** all, just sitting there.

[Largo]

Don't worry, I'm used to people here dismissing my technical discussions

Hehe i ment no disrespect, youre my main man chain

[Matt]

Hehe i ment no disrespect, youre my main man chain

Finally, the respect I deserve

[Dogg Thang]

&#204; went back to GoW1 last night and it really brought it home just how much I like what they've done with Gow2. Some things seemed small but had quite a large impact.

For example, while I love the art design and lighting in 1 (if I were just looking at a picture, I'd say I prefer it), I had forgotten just how much trouble I had telling enemy from friend in the first game. Everybody seems dark and they're all about the same shape so I found myself pumping bullets into Dom and Carmine on many occasions. I never once had this happen in the sequel.

And the friendly AI is rather pox in the original. While you could argue that Dom does too much in the sequel, I'd far prefer that to the endless red circles indicating that your teammates have yet again commited suicide.

On simply a visual level, the difference from 1 to 2 is far greater than I gave it credit for. I love the art design in 1. But things like the details, the faces in particular, have taken a massive jump for the better in the sequel. But what's more important is the difference in performance. Going back to 1, I was shocked at how stuttery it is. GoW2 seems to pull off stuff that is more impressive and yet with far better performance.

I did find myself wondering, while playing 2, why I didn't make as much use of the sniper rifle in 1. In 2, I totally relied on sniper rifle/lancer combo for almost every battle. Maybe you just get the sniper rifle late in 1 but, even if it came early on, I can see why I couldn't have used the same tactics. The enemies seem much quicker to advance than they do in 2. By the time I had got a couple of headshots, I imagine I would have two Locusts standing right next to me in 1. Perhaps it's like that in the later difficulties in 2 but they seemed to really pull back on the agression in Normal mode. I must admit, I like the more aggressive enemies in 1.

But, overall, it all just reaffirmed why I like GoW2 and think it really delivered as a sequel. Still, I'm going to play through 1 now all the way and then through 2 again.

[Red Hogg]

I am, as predicted, enjoying this a lot more now I've progressed onto Act 3 or 4 (I've no idea which one. It begins with

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the Centaur driving

business).

I was a little bit during the whole

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"Get swallowed by a massive worm. Fight your way through it's guts and destroy it's heart!" bit. I didn't like the exact same concept in Devil May Cry 3 and wasn't too hot on it here either.

Everything in the following section though was brilliant. The atmosphere, the action, the relentlessness of it. Game upgraded from to

I really like the voice acting and dialogue.

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Baird and Cole

are as funny as ever.

[Taka]

I've experienced a pretty bad bug for the last 2 nights whilst trying to beat

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the big fish with tenticles whilst on the boat

. I'm playing through on hardcore solo and the bug pretty much randomly occurs and I'm stuck in the spot I'm on and nothing I do will make Marcus move. Has anybody else experienced this? Pretty much game destroying for me!

[MJ]

I've experienced a pretty bad bug for the last 2 nights whilst trying to beat

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the big fish with tenticles whilst on the boat

. I'm playing through on hardcore solo and the bug pretty much randomly occurs and I'm stuck in the spot I'm on and nothing I do will make Marcus move. Has anybody else experienced this? Pretty much game destroying for me!

My friend had this problem in co-op as Dom but I never did as Marcus.

[Dogg Thang]

I had a couple of bugs there too but mine involved me suddenly teleporting several metres into the air before getting stuck. Had to restart from last checkpoint and it seemed to be okay after a couple of goes. Both times, I was very close to the thing in question when it attacked. Not sure if that had anything to do with it.

[Largo]

Just found another kind of extra if you press the back button while in a dialogue scene with control or one of your squad marcus will go "shut it!" or "thats enough!" etc and they stop yapping

[Matt]

I've experienced a pretty bad bug for the last 2 nights whilst trying to beat

->Open Spoiler<-

the big fish with tenticles whilst on the boat

. I'm playing through on hardcore solo and the bug pretty much randomly occurs and I'm stuck in the spot I'm on and nothing I do will make Marcus move. Has anybody else experienced this? Pretty much game destroying for me!

Yep. I'm on the same bit. It's not bad enough that it feels like a cheap "boss" (I don't like bosses in these kind of games anyway), but that makes it almost impossible. ****ing annoying. Get stuck before you can run up to it and chainsaw, game over.

This sequence actually shows both the games strong points and some of it's low points. It feels, and looks, unfinished. These clipping issues shouldn't be here. If you

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boat gets dragged under

the water is actually "empty", nothing more than a distorted surface plane, and you get a beige "emptiness" beneath it. Really, really poor. The boss doesn't feel right, the

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tentacles inside

don't clip right when hitting you.

On the other hand, it looks ****ing stunning! It's an awesome sight, the shader effects on the face, the texture work, it's incredible. Despite the "empty" water, the top surface effect is nice enough, and much better than the flat water UE3 used to do.

Right now I can't be arsed to try this bit yet again, the collision / clipping bug is a killer. I think it's because the area you're playing on is tilting, causing some problem with the cover positions not liking the angles.

[NekoFever]

So I just finished Act 3...

As someone with a fear of

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open ocean

, let me say... **** that

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Leviathan

. Not a bad fight and it wasn't as nasty for me as the similar one in Resi 4, but I can't do that too often. Looked very slick, though.

One thing that I've noticed so far about this game is that when it mixes things up by having, say, vehicle sections, those gimmicky parts are a lot better done than their equivalents in the original. The vehicle sequence in that act, while not exactly on par with the regular gameplay, was a massive improvement on that absolutely dire driving section in the first one. Even the

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worm

section didn't outstay its welcome and didn't take itself seriously.

It's a pretty accurate summation of the game to say that it's a moderate to large improvement on the first game in pretty much every single area - a few rough edges smoothed off and general refinements everywhere, all in a significantly prettier engine. It keeps outdoing itself in that respect.

One story thing that I could do with some help with, though: during Act 2 (?) when I was in the

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lab with the Sires I wasn't paying full attention and during part of the computer's speech I got the Achievement for finding the location of the Locust Queen. What was it that he said to unlock that one?

[MikeF]

Finsished this on Insane mode last night. Some parts are easier with a coop buddy and some parts are easier on your own.

Wierd thing is though if you join a coop game you get the credit for doing the chapter even if you join right at the end of it.

Got a few levels to do in coop to get the coop achieve and then it's 100&#37; MP

Easily beats GoW1 for me.

[capcom_suicide]

OK, end of Chapter 3 and I'm loving it now. Really good.

I'd also say that the part when you are on the

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path looking down at the lake

, represents some of the best visuals I've yet seen. I honestly got vertigo looking down!

Awesome, and the challenge is getting up to a good level now.

Happy!!