Re: Gears Of War 3 Xbox 360 Torrents
Ingelore Clason
You play a Terra Novan squad leader given the task of following the trail of terrorist and terran activity that leads away from the bombing, tracking down the culprits, making sure that Earth ceases its anti-Terra-Novan activity and generally kicking enemy arse. In order to do this, you're provided with a 'gear', one of the aformentioned fighting robots, which you pilot round a variety of missions blowing things up with a variety of weapons. These gears are not only smaller than those featured in Mechwarrior 2, but also more maneuverable, and able to use their fists and hand-held blades in additition to the standard array of ranged weaponry. On top of this, you can crawl and bend down on one knee, jump, strafe from left to right and generally do all sorts of things you can't do in the Mechwarrior games. In fact, whereas the robots in Mechwarrior are effectively tanks on legs, the gears are more like people in robot suits. But while the gears are fast, they're also less well endowed in the weapons and armour department than Mechwarrior 's mechs. The gears can only fire two weapons at a time at most, and also can't take as much of a battering as mechs. But fortunately, since this game is set firmly in the Heavy Gear universe and not the Mechwarrior universe, you'll mainly be running into other gears, each with similar advantages and disadvantages--a piece of good luck, that.
Combat itself is a heated affair, as you'd expect. At least it is when your enemies see you. As in the Mechwarrior games, you can twist your torso to keep your weapons aimed at baddies, as well as look up and down, jump and, if you're equipped with jump jets, you can zoom into the air and blast at your opponent from above, though you don't really have enough control to come crashing down on his head. Your gear is equipped with a fair amount of armour, which protects you from major damage--but it's depleted whenever you get hit. Also, if you take enough damage in one go, you'll recieve a critical hit, which could mean losing part of your gear, or at the very least, some of its functionality. It's not uncommon to see enemy gears dragging their legs after you hit them hard, or to find that after a hit, you suddenly move rather slowly. The weapons you employ in both single and multiplayer mode are entirely down to you; before each mission you arm your gear (in single player mode you can't change gear after your choice at the start of the campaign but you can reconfigure it), adding bits and bats such as extra armour and extra weaponry, until you reach the threat limit set for that mission. The threat total is similar in some respects to Mechwarrior's tonnage system; each item adds a certain amount to your threat potential, and once you reach the mission allowance you can't go any further. The 'threat' system works well in multiplayer mode but is a bit strange in single player mode--why shouldn't you carry all the weapons you can? Unless of course the leaders of each side rung each other up before hand and agreed on a certain threat... all in the name of honour, don't you know...
You're not entirely alone in single player mode as you roam around the various battle areas, killing gears, defending bases, taking out enemy targets, taking over space-ships. Yep, there's even a few missions set in zero gravity. In some missions, you can pick squadmates, arm them up, and then command them to aid you in your endeavours. They're reasonably intelligent too, and will mostly obey your orders while also reacting to any enemies they bump into, who themselves are no thickies. But for real intelligence, there's nothing like real human players. Well, mostly, anyway--there are one or two exceptions. So it's handy that Heavy Gear 2 features a Gamespy style game search facility, so you can track down games on the Internet. There are several types of games you can play, including capture the flag, duel, and all out deathmatch. When I tried logging on, I found a couple of players on the UK server (this was about 7:00 in the evening), and so was able to get a decent game going. I tried the highly populated US server but that was so lagged the gears popped about like the cast of Chorlton and the Wheelies. Multiplayer Heavy Gear 2 is surprisingly entertaining. Given the fact that the gears are less durable than Mechwarrior's mechs, multiplayer combat is generally swift, though not compared to Quake 2 ; conflicts are often over in a couple of minutes or so. And watching your enemy smoking, trying to get up from the floor while you blast him with your machine gun is disturbingly satisfying.
Overall, Heavy Gear 2 is highly playable and rather entertaining. It's an interesting game to play, albeit one that may not be to everyone's tastes. If you're a Mechwarrior fan you may find the smaller size of the gears a bit off-putting at first. However, if you perservere, or if you're just a general arcade fan then you'll find that Heavy Gear 2 has a fair bit to offer--especially in multiplayer mode. Heavy Gear 2 is a fun and strangely addictive game that just goes to prove that small can be beautiful - in a blowing someone's mechanical face off with a rocket kind of way.