Gears 2

I'm sure this is the only blog about this game, so that makes reading it even more important!!  (haha, yeah)

I was off yesterday (thats a blog unto itself as to why) and hit up Gamestop right at 10am to pick up the 2 copies of GoW2 I had pre-paid.  I had considered the midnight launch but they weren't handing out numbers for place in line til 10pm for some reason, and I just wasn't up for the insanity.  So 1 copy for me, 1 for my son.  To my shock and awe they actually had the pre-order codes for the Gears theme and the gold Locust gun (forget what its called) so I got 2 sets of both of those.

Came home and fired up the online tutorial mode.  I made a post about this on the Gears board but I want to repeat how much I appreciate this mode.  I have not been online (or even played) Gears since New Years Day of 07.  Yes, almost 2 years.  And yes, I need to finish the first one.  But my online knowledge of this game has come from watching my son play and not from really playing much myself.  So to have a mode where a noob like me can go in and learn the objectives and get a feel for the control without getting yelled at by one or more douchebags is wonderful.  Not that it made me any better, but at least I knew what I was supposed to be doing.

Eventually I fired up the solo campaign mode, and all I can say is wow.  Thats some high quality shit there, Maynard.  I also like the fact that this time, all the achievements are obtainable for me.  I am the type of person who almost immediately upon firing up a game for the first time will go to the dashboard and look up the achievements.  I bet a lot of you guys do the same thing.  So I was quite happy to see that all 1000 points are obtainable, which means I may put more time into this than I thought at first.

So back to the game...I got into the second act, I think I'm almost to the end.  At the risk of spoiling stuff, lets just say I'm at the part where they realize how cities are being sunk.  At that point it was time to go pick up the boy at a new halfway point his mom and I are trying out.  So I pick him up, we get home, take care of a few things around the apartment, and then he fires up the game himself. 

He's a big Gears fan.  I think like most boys his age he enjoys most online shooters.  So he went right to multiplayer and hooked up with a group of his friends from school and they went on to tackle Horde mode.  The results were comical (for me anyway heh) because they were all learning the maps and getting their asses handed to them pretty regularly.  The important part was that my kid was having a good laugh and I could hear the laughter coming out of the headset too, so a good time was being had by all regardless of the results.

Anyway, I might actually be up for some Gears co-op come Sunday night.  If Buzz can control his man-love for me I might be looking to finish up Saints Row 2 as well.  But I digress....it looks like Gears 2 can cater to its hardcore following, but also draw in some noobs like myself with solid, accessible gameplay modes.