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Gears of War 2 Wishlist

by XboxFocus Staff March 11th 2008 8:05 PM CDT2 Comments

While we are currently psyching ourselves up for Grand Theft Auto IV, we here at XboxFocus are already looking past it. Gears of War 2 is the next mega-titled ahead for the Xbox 360 and we're drooling over the little screenshots and trailers that have been shown. While we all loved the original Gears title (except Matt, who hated it), it still doesn't mean we can't wish for certain things to be in the next installment. So we have decided to make a little list of the features we want to see the most in the Gears of War 2 and tell us if you agree.

5. More Backstory Revealed
If one were to read some the pamphlets released inside of the original Gears of War's box, you'd learn alot about the world of Sera. The tale of how a once Romanesque civilization fell to an army of blood hungry locusts is very interesting, but even those little pamphlets didn't reveal much. Still, they offered 100x more information than anything told in the actual game, which was bare-bones at best.

For some reason, it seemed that the developers expected you to know everything about the world of Sera and the locust horde going into the game. I'm sorry, but I didn't understand just exactly what had gone down in the game until the very end, and even then I was a bit confused. Now that the characters have been established, we want to see more flashbacks, more tales of the world you're playing in, and we basically want to see just how the hell a bunch of ugly ass mutant insects took over an advanced civilization. Oh, and also who ever styled Baird's hairdo, cause that guy needs to get shot.

4. Less "A" Button
Gears' cover system worked great for the most part, but it was alot stickier than it needed to be. Constantly, gamers would be sticking to cover spots they didn't want to push themselves against, and that was mainly due to the fact that the A button nearly did everything. From jumping to sprinting and nearly every single cover combo, the A button made precise sticking and wall bouncing harder than it had to be.

Maybe we can use the LS stick, or perhaps some other ways to control the cover system can fine-tuned and developed. While we don't want the physical side of the cover system changed (the camera angles were perfect), we would like to see some of the buttons mixed around and more cover combinations added.

3. No More Host Power
Anyone who was adept with Gears of War online knows about "host power" and its dreaded abilities. Due to the connection difference, the host of any lobby had an enormous advantage over the rest of the players in thew game, usually results in a higher defense and a more powerful array of weapons. This was most evident with the shotgun, that seemed like big-ass snipers at points.

The quick fix to this would be dedicated servers, and it will be interesting to see if Microsoft goes all out with GOW 2. While Halo 3's dedicated servers were nearly lag free, we're not sure how well of a transition GOW would make. Still, anything that expells host power would be great, as it really changed the whole feel of the multiplayer into an uneven lag fest.

2. More Boss Fights (And Yes, Brumaks)
In the original Gears, there was only two legit boss fights. These came from the Corsper, the heavily advertised spider monster, and General RAAM, the locusts' most feared bad ass. While both were pretty hard and fun to fight against, two isn't enough to be satisfied from a major title.

We want to see more locust monsters appear as we are sure there are more. Clearly some Brumaks is a key, but some new creations would be nice as well. We also would like to see more races of locusts come out, as besides Theron Guards and regular grunts, there wasn't many variations.

1. Four Player Online Co-Op
The Gears of War Co-Op was great, but it still could of been better. When it comes down to it, you were always given two computer characters to fight along side with, and these easily could have been substituted with actual players. I mean, how sick would it be to have each one of your buddies represent one of the games' iconic characters. We're nearly positive this is coming, and I'm sure as hell I can't wait to be the Cole Train. Step away from the Train Baby!


Oh yeah, four player co-op with these guys would be bad ass.