Now Playing Gears of War 2

This edition of Now Playing was going to be on Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, but unfortunately it’s pish. I’m a massive Transformers fan and have been since I was a young boy, loving Christmas’s and birthdays coming round hoping for some new Transformers toy. The G1 Transformers movie is still one of favourite films of all time but I struggle to find something good to say about the Revenge of the Fallen game. Bugger.

Now this is not going to be a rant against the new movie because unlike the hordes of others on the internet I quite liked it. Sure, it wasn’t really proper transformers and it feels as though Bay was only doing it for the money, but forgiving these factors it was an enjoyable yarn. I had the benefit of taking my cousins ten year old boy to see it along with my wife and they both thoroughly enjoyed the movie to the point where it would happily be watched again. I could go on here about why there was no real reason for Devastator to be in the movie other than looking very nifty or why the writers felt that they had to try and cram in as much transformeryness into the movie as possible to attempt to please the fans (and fail in some cases) but I’d be kind of missing the point. 44up is games oriented and I haven’t created a movie site yet. So, on with the game.

To be perfectly honest I could not bring myself to play past the first few chapters and only played up to the point where you pick up Mikaela for the first time. After dropping her off at the required checkpoint and starting the next section of the mission I found myself reaching for the off button. What I found annoying with Revenge of the Fallen is its repetition. A typical mission would go as follows – start mission with storyline, destroy set number of enemies, do storyline fed part of mission, kill set number of enemies, continue mission, kill enemies, complete mission. Not even the fact that it is Transformers can save it from annoying gameplay.

One of the things in gaming that I personally do not like complaining about are control schemes and I would much rather put it down to learning the game and becoming adept at the controls than being a bit useless. Games like the Ninja Gaiden series and Bionic Commando are good examples of this as when you get used the controls they become infinitely more enjoyable to play. My complaint with Transformers: Revenge of the fallen is with the right trigger which is the primary control for transformation and moving when in vehicle mode. This doesn’t sound so bad until you try it for yourself. In Revenge of the Fallen when you transform you are given two speeds in vehicle mode – fast and too damn fast, and the minute you let go of the right trigger you are back to robot mode. Oooh the choices – faaaaaast or robot. A mixture of this control annoyance and the repetitive nature of the game led to it being removed from my Xbox and placed back in its case. In its place I put Gears of War 2. Yay!

This is not going to be a review of Gears of War 2 as I’m only a handful of missions in but by Christ its good fun. It is truly a perfect example of how to do action games. Exciting shooting sections spliced up with storyline and alternate action sequences. Just when you think you have had enough of shooting you are suddenly on a giant truck shooting down missile spores and taking out huge enemies by shooting them in the face – awesome. I like Gears of War 2 and cannot wait to get back to it in all of its curb-stomping glory.

Verdict – buy Gears of War 2 if you haven’t already and don’t buy Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – even if you are a Transformers fan. Unless you are a sadist or need some kind of twisted punishment...

With that sick thought in mind I’ll leave you – night folks.
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