With Halo 3 being out on shelves for a couple of months now, its only natural for 360 gamers to look towards Microsoft's other giant IP and get excited. Although Gears of War 2 hasn't been officially confirmed, saying there will not be a sequel to the game that sold over 5 million units worldwide is like saying the sun will no rise tomorrow. Although the first game was amazing, there are some additions that we hope make it into the sequel:
- An improved matchmaking system. Something that hopefully will resemble something like Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3. The Gears of War multiplayer was a great experience, but it was let down by the matchmaking system that made it difficult to get into games at times and allowed for teams to be stacked (leading to some horribly one sided games). A good party system would allow for play with your friends without it being so unfair in a game like Gears of War.
- Curb quitting in multiplayer matches. Although it has always been an issue, if anyone has played an online match recently then you will know it is a full blown problem. Quitting ruins the experience for everyone and makes the game you've waited so long to get into worthless. I think a strong matchmaking system would do wonders to suppress this problem, but I also think harsher penalties need to be imposed on quitters (losing an experience point in halo 3 is a pretty good punishment).
- Implement media recording and sharing. Recording videos and screenshots of our in-game accomplishments is the future of gaming. I know Halo 3 brought this to the table (and there is some crazy stuff you can do), but I think that the visceral giblet splattering action of Gears of War suits a video sharing utility perfectly. I wish I could record some of the long-distance boomshot kills or some of the head pops I got in that game.
- Allow for user created content. Epic is currently trying to pave the way for user created content on the 360 with Unreal Tournament III. It will be interesting to see how much success they have against Microsoft's stringent certification process. This user created content could spawn millions of new map designs and dramatically increase the online replayability of the online component.
- Four player co-op over Xbox Live. Gears of War had two player co-op, I think Gears of War 2 can squeeze another two players into the mix. I think the more the better rings true here and the campaign could be a lot more fun with four players over two.
- New multiplayer game modes. Although I loved Warzone and Annex, Gears of War did not have the game mode variety that we expected with a game from Epic. Four total game modes will not cut it for Gears of War 2. They can keep the current game modes (although Assassination was the weakest of them) but additions such as capture the flag or some variations on attack and defend would be nice (with respawns). It would be very interesting if some of these games modes allowed for more than eight people. I think that some bigger maps could handle ten or sixteen players if the right game mode was used.
- A longer single player campaign. The short campaign was one of the few complaints that reviewers had about the first game. I am actually a big fan of short and sweet single player components, but I certainly wouldn't complain if I could spend a few more hours with Marcus Fenix by myself (or with three friends). This is one of those things where I would rather take the shorter campaign over dragging the story and gameplay out to long and ultimately hurting the game. I don't think Epic has to worry to much about this seen as they managed to break up the Gears of War campaign into fun and easily consumed pockets of action.
- Fix the glitches. Some people like glitches in their multiplayer content (I even have a feeling that glitches were purposely put into the game, fixed, and then added again as a variations to that glitch) but I certainly do not. It cheapens the experience for everyone and a game loses some of its legitimacy when there are glitches that deeply affect the gameplay. From the sliding weapon pick-ups to the chainsaw glitch, I was annoyed throughout my multiplayer experience by cheaters. Even when patches were released to fix these glitches, gamers would find new ways to do the glitch or find new ones. I know every game has a few glitches, but Gears of War seemed to have an excessive amount. Epic just needs to tighten up the code a little for a stronger multiplayer experience in the sequel.
To be honest, I don't want that much to change from the first game. The pacing was brilliant, the controls were great (although it took them awhile to amend the roadie run), and the game was incredibly satisfying (not to mention the tinkle inducing graphics). I thought four vs. four was great for the game modes included and no respawns (except in Annex) gave a real weight to dying. I believe that Cliffy B. did a lot of confrontational things on purpose because he wanted to pay homage to the games he grew up with and liked. Most of those decision worked very well if not flawlessly, but just a few could have been tweaked to make a better game. I also think that certain aspects of GOW were rushed and that alterations of these few mistakes could make Gears of War 2 a further improvement on a stellar game.
