Gears of War 2 Notes

Start the campaign and choose Hardcore, they won't let you play insane first, makes sure that you will play through twice.

Cut scene tells us in voice over that the humans on Sera have been naughty and fighting amongst themselves for years until the locust emerged and gave them someone new to shoot at. The Locust survived the weapon of mass destruction from the first game and are fighting back. Jacinto, which I presume is a city is the last bastion of humanity and a new story element which I presume we will be defending.
The locust queen seems pretty sure that we have brought all this on ourselves and are heading for extinction.
We see Anya Marcus and Dom chatting about how close the locust are getting. Then a rookie turns up and we can choose training or to skip it.
I choose to do the training.
which is a little trip down some alleys with Dom and Marcus instructing the rook as he is called on cover, shooting, grenades and runnning etc.
There is a new thing where you use your chainsaw on barricades to get through.
There are also ladders which i can't remember in the last game, might be wrong.
We head to the hospital and suddenly a load of raven helicopters fly overhead suggesting that something is happening.
Marcus orders the rook back to barracks and he and Dom go to the hospital.
Anya tells Dom there might be a lead on his wife.
We meet Tai and he tells us there is a locust raid.
We are introduced to Rustlung, which is described as imulsion sickness. Rustlung has been on a sharp increase since the lightmass bomb which was detonated at the end of the first game.
We fight some locust in a courtyard. The set up is to show us the exploding barrels. There are a load in the middle of the courtyard and the locust pile into the room and mill about near them. We set of the barrels and no more locust.
We encounter more locust and have the familar gears gameplay. Cover system used to the full in a fairly intuitive fashion.
We fight them inside the hospital and then out into a courtyard. IN the courtyard Dom and Tai pin them down and I flank them which seems the obvious thing to do and they are easily wiped out. A Reaver flies in and lands, which they never did in the last game. It seems fairly easily dealt with and flies away wounded.
Inside the hospital again and more shootouts, variants of the square rooms with cover, ambushed in an circular desk structure with locust pouring in from various doors.
We meet up with Carmine who it seems has been hiding from the fighting, wonder how long he will last now he has met up with us again.
We get out into the streets, Reavers are flying around and landing at intervals taking shots at us, raven helicopters are taking shots at the reavers. We are fighting with many more enemies than in Gears 1 there are more allied soldiers around as well. The battle runs up the street, with us ducking into a shopfront to come out and flank the locust. Much more is made of the ability to revive on the enemies side than in the previous game. Maybe time has dimmed my memory but I can't really remember them reviving each other.
At the end of the street the locust retreat which is unusual for them.
We see Dom being given bad news about Maria, previously Anya might have located her, but she was released from hospital days ago and the trail is cold again. Dom is very angry about this.
Mission 2
We see a long cut scene of the machine of war mobilising, interspresed with a speech from the COG leader rallying us to attack. It seems that Jacinto is built on rock which the locust can't dig up through. This will change soon as they have a new weapon on the horizon. The only course of action open is all out attack. The landown assault is a huge operation to attack the heart of the locust and their breeding grounds.
We meet a character called Dizzy who is the commander of a large moving weapons platform.
The weapons platforms are drills which can deliver the cogs underground. We need to escort them to the landdown site.
The locust have other ideas of course, as we crest a ridge the convoy is attacked by mortars. There is widespread destruction and we must use our guns to intercept the mortar fire before it hits the rig. Then Reavers come flying alongside and start shooting up the rig and ramming it. Three hits and the rig flies of the road exploding.
This bit sucks. I have been trying to kill the fucking reaver for about ten respawns.
had to look at help on the internet for this bit. Found out you can cool the overheating gun down by pressing right bumper. This is not stated in the game anywhere.
Anyway done it. Back on track.
Our rig is damaged and we have to protect Dizzy as he makes repairs. Locust come from emergence holes and reavers fly around. Other rigs use their guns to help us while we fight. With the rig repaired its on again until we come to some shaky ground. Large amounts of locusts and Brumak emerge and we make a run for it. The locust soliders are using grapples to climb the sides of the rigs. One of the other rigs is taken over by locust and they use it to get close you yours and try and grapple across. After shooting up enough locust you can shoot the driver of the rig and cripple it. Then it's brumak and Corpsers running rampage, you can shoot the guns off the brumak and kill them. The corpsers are only there for show and it's scary but fun to see them jumping at the other rigs like something out of the movie eight legged freaks.
We see tai's rig getting attacked by tickers, which are annoying bugs that scuttle around and explode. Tai joins Delta sqaud again.
We have to go through the town of Landdown taking out tickers so that the rigs can progress unimpeeded.
We then encounter Nemacyst which are floating tank like airbags which shoot globs of organic explosives at us.
There are two troika guns pinning us down and Cole comes in on another rig and helps us defeat one that is almost imposible to shoot the gunner on.
WE then take the rig down a long dark tunnel which is filled with tickers. A reaver is waiting at the other end of the tunnel.
As we come out of the tunnel there is mortar fire. We now have our first branching path choice to take. Over the rooftops or through the hotel.
Day 2
Through the hotel to flank the mortar teams and then a Brumak comes out of the tunnel and tries to attack the rig.
We drive on trough the town to a graveyard where the locust attack again. We man the rig gun and shoot them up until the rig gun is blown by mortat fire. Then use the mortar to take out boomers and grubs. Two reavers then show up. After they are downed we get a cut scene showing the geara getting into the drill pods which will take them down into the underground. Dom makes Marcus promise to look for Maria if anything happens to him.
A new grub turns up, fast and agile sporting a staff cutting weapon that can cut through a tank like butter. He jumps onto the rig as Marcus and Dom are about to drop. Dizzy and Tai take him on but it looks like he is too strong for them. Marcus and Dom try to get out of their capsule but the program won't stop for them and they are sent down into the Earth with a bumpy ride to the locust tunnels.
In the tunnels they lose contact with the surface, although Carmine the rook is in contact, his pod went off course and the gears set out to find him.
We run around the caverns on our own admiring the scenery looking for Carmine, we see other pods dropping soliders into adjoining areas. We meet up with carmine, who is under fire. Saving his ass we run into a wall. There is grindlift on it's side which can be rigged to drill through the wall for us. As Jack is doing that more locust turn up. We have to defend Jack and the grindlift while he fixes it. There are two emergence holes with locust and tickers attacking for a period of time. Then it's through the wall.
where we have a squad pinned down that we must assist.
Once the locust and boomers are down Anya talks to us through Jack and tells us that there is something happening under a city and we are to investigate. She also adds in that A lot of civilians have been taking shelter underground and maybe Maria might be one of them.
As we progress through the tunnels we meet what looks like a rock centipede, it potters around by itself and does not harm either side. What it does do is provide moving cover points. The centipedes eat glowing fruits which are dotted around. If one is lying around it will move to it and eat it then stay still. Which means basically you have mobile cover and all the associated strategy that entails.
We take out a small locust machine gun emplacement.
Seismic activity is picking up, I think i see the problem, no one has noticed it yet but the huge side of the cavern we are in looks awfully like one of the rockworms, only huge, Dune huge.
nice scene where we get a rockworm crawling along a ledge with a locust machine gun nest opposite, we scuttle along with the rockworm and take shots at the locust as we travel, at the far end we see locust explosives, which when shot blow up the entire nest.
We reach an encampment of grubs, there is a huge door in the background. We fight the grubs and a reaver appears, killing it opens the door and two boomers and a load of wretches run out. I find a scroll on the floor which suggests that the locust are talking to the worms.
We help out another squad who drop in and are immediately under fire from locust, flanking the mortar position we take a troika to the grubs and assist the squad.
The rock wall of the cavern moves and the theory is proved right, there is a really huge worm down here.
Moving on there is speculation about wether or not the locust have always lived underground or wether they came here as alien invaders and their natural habitat is underground.
Are the worms the true underground dwellers.
We come to a huge castle type structure set into the wall of a cavern. Kantus grubs appear.
Killing them gives us a new pistol and gets us inside the locust castle.
We split up and attack a strongly defended locust position. The Kantus grubs can bring the downed locust back to life from a distance as if by magic.
When we fight our way through we encounter the General guy again with the big stick. He is on a reaver of some description and seems to be directing the worm to the foundations of the city. We watch as the whole city is sunk under the ground and destroyed by the worm.
We find ourselves now walking into the ruins of the sunken city.
A king raven is downed nearby and we go to investigate for survivors, we are also told to look out for civilian survivors.
Blood mounts are introduced. Locust grubs riding on locust beasties.
Civilians are running around also.
WE fight through the wrecked city until we are getting close to the downed chopper. Cole comes over the radio saying that it's an ambush, and we can hear heavy gunfire. We decide to carry on to the chopper and try and save Cole also.
Entering a building we are pinned down by Locust. after shooting at them for a minute or so with little luck a cut scene kicks in. We see Cole coming to our rescue in grand style, cutting the locust apart with stickybombs and chainsaw bayonet.
There is a brief reunion and we are told that Cole's squad are all dead apart from Baird and Sigma squad who he has lost contact with. We tell Anya that we are off to look for them.
Day 3
Up a hill in what looks like a graveyard and a reaver appears. Followed by grubs and a Kantus.
We come across a huge tunnel dug by the giant worm and follow it into locust occupied territory. There are coffin like capsules, some have dead cog soldier bodies lying around them. We find Baird inside one of the coffins and free him. He says the locust took him prisoner and were going to process him, whatever that means.
We come to a staging area and a beast barge arrives, like a scorpion or cockroachtype beast with a cabin on it's back like a ship.
We enter the barge and fight of some grubs and a grinder. Switching some switches on the barge gets it moving and reavers start attacking flying around us. There is a troika on the stern and you shoot at reavers until we come alongside another barge which we are to board.
On this barge after we kill the grubs we find Tai in one of the cells. He has been cut up pretty badly. He take a gun that Marcus gives him and blows out his own brains. Marcus looks really pissed off.
We have to find a location to contact Anya and tell her about what the locust are doing.
Once that is done we are told to move to an extraction point as Anya has a new objective for us.
Of course there are locust in the way of us getting to the extraction point.
Kantus and reavers spoil our fun.
We head to the roof of a broken up building which might be a church and wait for our raven chopper to extract us.
We have to survive on the roof as locust ambush us until the chopper arrives. Once it does we see a cut scene where the rook is last to the chopper and over eager. We just know he is going to die. He manages to make it into the chopper despite being wounded. The worm turns up and tries to eat the chopper whole. Carmine falls out into it's mouth, so no luck after all. Just as we are expecting the gang to get away in the nick of time the worm rears up and swallows them whole.
We see Dom dreaming of Maria and Marcus gives him a rude awakening to tell him that yes they really are inside the belly of the giant worm.
Marcus sees this as a chance to kill the worm and sets out to find it's heart.
There are huge teeth inside the worm that we have to avoid.
They remind me of tomb raider traps, hope there aren't too many of them, nice to see, but i don't really enjoy hours and hours of this kind of gameplay anymore. Reminds me too much of old platform games.
A hole opens and beasties pour out and attack. New creatures that look a little like scorpions.
We go a little further and find carmine being eaten alive by the beasties. We shoot them and see his last words telling us to tell his mother that he loves her. He then dies. Cole gets pissed off and shoots randomly into the creatures innards and pisses it off. suddenly a wave of peristalsis starts that looks like it's going to crush us all. We have to crash through the guts opening sphincters with gunfire and slashing open walls with the lancer. The little scorpions chasing our heels the whole way. Eventually we reach safety. Now there are acid nozzles in the stomach which must be shot to get past. Shooting them stops them only for a few seconds.
Now we are into the intestine which has no oxygen so we must run through it in the half light through many blind tunnels. Someone should tell the designers that almost all biological entities only have one way systems in the gut and no dead ends.
Marcus cuts through the gut wall and into the sternum and we find and sever the arteries of the first heart. Yes the first heart. drowning in the blood that comes from the severed arteries is not fun. Two hearts down and the amount of arteries you need to sever for each one increases. The third has four to cut then a cut scene shows the worm dying and the gang cutting their way out.
Now the general turns up on the viewscreen and tells them that they are to go to an abandoned cog base which is nearby. He is vague on what we are to actually do there, but mutters something about intelligence on the Locust queen, which seems to news to Marcus that such a thing exists. The president seems to know more about what is going on at the facility than the general and it looks like dirty government secrets are about to be discovered. Anya is cut off from us and we can only contact Hoffman. We come to a door which is secured and wants propper identification. We try and get jack to open it but he can't. Baird is asked to get some charges to blow it open. We now have to try and restore power to the warehouse while we wait for Baird.
We find switches that restore power and a quick trip around the innard of the warehouse reveals a flamethhrower and some wretches to fry.
We go back out to our vehicle which is called a centaur and get the explosives. Dom and marcus have to carry the heavy box between them, which makes moving and shooting a slow affair.
We carry the box through wretch attacks to the door and blow it open.
We meet Niles, who seems to be the facility computer or a.i.
Command seem to know nothing of Niles or are keeping quiet on what we are letting ourselves in for. We begin to search the facility, out the window is what looks like a work camp.
There is a room where we turn on computer controlled guns which blow wretches into tiny pieces in seconds.
Further down the corridor we find more active guns.
The guns are bullet proof but their switches are nearby to turn them off. If you avoid their torch beams they won't shoot. There are three sets of traps and then we get outside. Only too go back inside straight away, loads of wretches as we open the doors and more security guns.
There is a section where you have to split up and operate a laser trap which leads to another huge door. This one opens easily enough.
Niles is now officially sounding displeased that we are in his personal space. There are what look like deformed locust in tanks in the first room inside the doors.
We travel through the faciltiy to a control room, Marcus has Jack try and hack the systems for information. There is a big red lever which almost screams do not pull, guess what we have to pull it to proceed. Looks like something is let out of the stasis tubes.
Jack manages to bring up a video. It seems that the facility was abandoned and moved to Mount Kedar. The Niles we are speaking with is an a.i. based on the personality of the director of the facility.
Seems our next stop will be Mount Kedar, once we escape whatever we have let loose.
We have let loose sires, which sound kind of like something used for breeding, only you wouldn't want these anywhere near, they are akin to the flood from Halo. All tentacles and flappy bits, but basically humanoid with extra lumps and tentacles. Shooting them is useless as they get back up about three times before finally dropping dead and staying dead. The best way is to use the chainsaw bayonet and cut them in two.
When you clear about two large rooms full of the Sires you get into a computer room which seems to be the actual hardware that the Niles a.i. is running on and shut it down.
Baird is complaining outside about a razorhail storm coming in. Marcus is less than charitable about his predicament compared to his own.
The locust arrive in force, bolters, boomers, grubs all attack in the corridor mixed up with still active security guns. We enter a large room with a circular glass roof, the roof caves in as the razoe hail storm starts, chopping up the grubs taking cover under the area which it falls. We go outside and the roof structures hold the hail, but stepping out into the rain is almost instant death.
we have to weave our way forward under shelter.
There are wheels to turn to lift garage doors so that we have more shelter and of course grubs, grinders and boomers to shoot at.
There are also two times where you get in train carriages and let the brakes off to roll them to better spots.
You climb up a ladder into a long walkway.
Mauler boomers turn up, they are big things with horns, they have a shield and a mace. hard to kill when they use their shield.
We get back to baird and cole and the vehicle. It has been damaged by the razorhail and Baird is trying to fix it. Reavers show up. We must defend Baird while he fixes the centaur.
Two reavers down and we are off.
we are now driving up to the Kadar mountain.
Whooo we get to drive the centaur, hope it doesn't suck as much as the driving part from the last game.
Wow it's actually ok if pilfering heavily from Halo, Move vehicle with left stick and direct turret fire with right. Pressing A gives you some turbo.
You basically have a little bit of road and then a locust outpost to attack. Lots of boomers, reavers and grubs you come across and blow to bits, good fun.
We come to an icy lake, and as Dom suggests driving a tank over it does not seem a good idea. Here we go then. To make it more fun the locust's mortar us while we are on the lake which blows great holes out of the ice making it more of an obstacle course.
What do you know another lake now reavers and mortar fire to contend with.
We find the old logging bridge that was mentioned by Anya as a pointer that we are on the right road. Only the bridge is down and it's too far to jump across, we will have to find another way.
There is a ledge to the right of the bridge hidden by tree, bashing a path through the small trees we find a makeshift ramp and jump the chasm, then back onto the road that the bridge should have taken us to.
More reavers up the increasingly narrow road.
Then we reach a heavily fortified locust outpost guarded by loads of locust.
You clear the outer defences and then as you approach the tower starrts shooting at you with rockets and troikas. A couple of shots into the bell tower and it collapses and takes down the walls so you can pass through the fortification.
We enter the caves under the mountain and are almost immediately attacked by a corpser.
There is a brumak wandering around in the caves as well but they don't seem bothered that we are here. We drive through the claustrophobic darkness, only our weak little headlight illuminating the vast caverns and sheer cliff. We jump over a drop and the centaur gives up the ghost leaving us in darkness with dodgy ignition sounds as Baird tries to get it started. There is also the small matter of the roaring sounds we can hear.
Like scooby doo, eyes appear in the dark and then roaring mouths, there are three corpsers surrounding us when the lights come back on.
Shooting the three of them in turn when they raise their claws to attack kills them quickly. You drive on a bit and three brumaks turn up and must be killed.
There is a quick cut scene where a tower of rock is knocked over and the centaur is jumped across it. Baird is getting sick of fixing the centaur and orders that there be no more jumps.
We encounter a camp of civilians. They tell us that the locust have something called the nexus down here, which is where the locust come from???
He also tells us that the locust have been capturing people instead of killing them and setting them to work in work camps or taking them to the nexus. Marcus sends Baird and Cole on a mission to evacuate the civilians to safety, while he and Dom go looking for the nexus. Dom asks the civilian leader if he has seen Maria, he thinks he has, but she was in a group that got captured by the locust, looks like it's not going to be a happy ending for Dom and Maria.
We go down into the cavern over a long thin bridge and come to some very old looking ruins.
Theron guards are about, and those damn torque bows are annoying.
The locust have boats?? on the huge underwater lake a gunboat starts shooting at us.
We make out way to a little rowboat, which looks dubious, as we need to cross the lake. The locust make it hard for us and when we do actaully reach the pier and the boat it's almost sinking and looks like it would collapse if Marcus stood in it with all his armour.
The point is moot as a huge locust boat arrives driving right over the rowboat and detaching the whole pier from the wall. We find ourselves on a floating platform, which is as good as a boat. The problem is that the locust gunboats are ramming us and trying to shoot us at the same time. The locust boats are a nice design, instead of engines there are what look like two sea serpent locust tethered to each side. Once you shoot the locust on the boat another comes and you repeat. The jetty is now floating off down river. The locust are conspicuous by their abscence and The guys are uneasy about what they are afraid off. It's a very big sea serpent!
A gunboat pulls alongside us and we jump off our derrick onto it, just in time as it is smashed to bits.
There are more gunboat attacks, fended off with the troika on the prow of the boat. The boat rushes headlong down river, getting faster and faster until we plunge off a huge waterfall. Becalmed in the middle of the lake at the bottom of the waterfall we are attacked by a huge underwater creature.
It grabs the boat with tentacles and tries to sink it. You can run up and chainsaw the tentacles off the boat.
Then after three tentacles are down you have to shoot it in the eye as it bites the end of the boat. When you shoot it's eyes, both of them it opens wide, you then run inside it's mouth and have to shoot at blue tipped tongues that try and lick you to death. When you have shot the tongues enough a mouth opening tries to get you, and this opens up a way down into the belly of the beast, you have to chuck grenades inside.
You have to get three grenades inside the mouth to finally kill it.
Dom and marcus have a lovers tiff about going after Maria rather than setting off their beacon in the heart of the enemy hive. Dom reminds Marcus about what he did for his father??? Marcus decides to help Dom.
inside the rather beautifully textured hive we find that there are indeed work camps where the Locust are getting humans too do work for them. The nature of the work is not apparent but it looks like they are digging for something.
Through some lifts and a little section with floodgates that the locust try to drown us with and then into a larger area with loads of wretches and a mauler.
Then an area with a troika and Theron guards.
We find a working locust terminal which suggest they have computers. Marcus and Dom don't seem impressed by this, i suppose if they have guns and rockets they are sufficiently advanced to have a computer and a network. Jack hacks the network and runs a search through records for maria and amazingly enough finds her. A symbol fills the screen, Dom thinks it signifies where they are keeping her, i think it will probably mean something a lot less good for her health.
We take a wander through around fifty of the human coffins we found Baird inside earlier. Annother terminal comes up with a different symbol, we move on. A locust patrol appears in the distance and stangely enough marcus tells Dom to take cover and let them pass on by.
We follow the locust patrol on their rounds and press the terminals as we come to them, each one shows the wrong symbol.
We finally get the right symbol and ask jack to start searching the caskets for Maria. The locust see us and all hell breaks loose.
This is the hardest fight so far. Being attacked on two sides, means that you are constantly getting flanked. Beast riders attack, along with wretches, boomers, grubs and theron guards, pretty much all at the same time. A huge difficulty spike.
Day 4
When you manage to defeat them a cut scene starts.
jack finds the casket with Maria inside and cuts it open. The door opens to reveal Maria straight from Dom's dream, she is slim and pretty and comes forward and gives him a hug. This all looks too good to be true, and it is. Maria starts to stagger and slump in Dom's arms. His dream clouded vision fades away to reveal that Maria is a skeleton concentration camp victim, eyes clouded and unseeing, scars cover her body. She slumps to the ground with Dom and he can see that although she is alive there is no hope for her, she is too malnourished, to shut down to ever come back from this place. Marcus wisely says nothing, touches Dom on the shoulder and walks away. Dom tells her that he loves her, we can see she doesn't even know he is there. Dom puts his pistol to her head and pulls the trigger. Marcus a little way in the distance stops and his face tells a thousand words about hate and vengence, sadness and loss.
The two come back together, Marcus is planning to wear Theron armour to sneak inside the Locust nexus. Dom tells him not to bother, they are going to kill every last one of them. Marcus drops the armour in agreement and follows Dom.
That was actually emotional. I felt a lump in my throat. Never thought I would have said that while playing Gears of War.
WE go through some more of the city and get our first glimpse of the Nexus. It is a huge tower like citadel. Dom wonders if we should activate the beacon and bring in the cavalry. Marcus thinks that too many of the grindlifts would end up in the huge lake of imulsion around the nexus if he activated it here. They have to get closer.
We have a fight around a spire with a circular staircase. There is a switch in the tower which opens a door to progress.
The queen seems to be adressing us directly and asks us if we have the will to win?
There is the introduction of sliding panels which act as cover, switches lift them and raise them. At times the locust try and lower them on you so that you have no cover. The queen intejects with encouraging slogans to the locust as we fight. Suggesting that the locust are the dominant species and will rule the planet.
We find what seems to be an abbotoir, filled with chopped up worms. Huge grinding machines.
There is a large open area, well open until you bring up the collapsible cover walls. A big shoot out and two reavers later Jack set off the beacon and the cavalry start to grindlift down into the Nexus. The locust start using mortars. which are a pain in the ass.
There is another large area with three sets of locust seperated by walls which drop only when you have killed a set of locust. Boomers and grubs mostly. Though the mortar fire is very dangerous as you have to break cover to survive it and usually into a hail of bullets as you do so.
Baird and Cole have arrived in Grindlifts.
We come to a cable car which will take us up to the palace of the queen. The ride in the cable car is of course packed with reaver action. Our cable car is damaged and hangs motionless. Another car comes down with grubs, we kill them and take over their car and carry on. More reavers attack, but we reach the other side of the cable car ride and are now in the nexus/palace.
Through a grating we see shots being fired and grub soldiers retreating as if they are being defeated. Baird thinks it's our soldiers they are fighting and is overjoyed. Marcus thinks that it is too far from the beacon for it to be gears.
It looks as if the locust are actually attacking each other???
The queen is muttering something about the lambent being inferior and that they must be stopped. Looks like some kind of locust civil war.
Some pretty intense fightingg here, nice design of the locust palace. We come to an area where a split choice is made. There is a lift with a troika on it. I choose to go on it and the others have to pull switches to make the lift go while we cover them with the troika.
We come to a large hall where the locust are fighting each other, as we arrive they fight us instead. Once wwe kill all in the hall we go down and a cut scene starts. The locust who are attacking the others are glowing as if they have been soaked in emulsion. Reminds me of the wretches in the first game that exploded on contact.
some grinders pop out of a door and then another door opens leading down some stairs.
we come to a lift and have to kill all the locust that come up on it. As we get on the lift ourselves a bunch of the glowing locust arrive, one of them jumps at the departing lift and dies making the jump. As he dies what looks like imulsion comes out of his body and runs like mercury along the lift and up the wall of the shaft to the horde of locust at the top. It looks like it dissipates back into the rest of them???
We start getting into rather grander looking place as we get to the bottom of the lift shaft.
The queen is talking about washing the enemies away in the great flood. Sounds like trouble.
the palace is huge and exquisite. However it's a trap as the gang get into the worst spot imaginable the doors slam down and locust appear all around above us at windows.
Having survived the ambush we now have to find an alternative way into the palace.
Round the side of the palace we find a lift.
We now seem to be inside the bloodmount stables. They appear to be feeding them locusts?
Another choice section where we have to protect the others from a higher vantage point.
Queen is going on about water and fire meeting and doom. Sounds like they are going to ignite the imulsion to get rid of the lambent.
We go down a long spiral staircase guarded by loads of the queens elite armoured grubs. Then in a large control room lined with computers. The braodcasting system that the locust queen is using seems to be here and cole goes on a rant about killing all the locusts until baird rips wires out and breaks the system. I am actually warming to Baird as I found him the most annoying out of all of them, in this game he is starting to come across as the brains of the gang. Although Marcus is being given much more depth this time around also. Dom and Cole are just as stupid as the last game.
Jack plugs into the computers looking for intel and we find a file which has the voice of Adam Phoenix, Marcus's dad talking about sinking Jacinto to flood the hollow with sea water and really rain on the Locust parade, however, it's also destroying the last real fortress of humanity.
The other are appalled, marcus seems to be accepting of the plan, he calls it plan B if they can't get to the queen and kill her.
Another choice of left or right.
We progress along balconies above a huge hall. Lots of guards and maulers. At the end we reach a lift and finally the bottom floor. We must be getting near the queen now.
Twice now I have had to look up how to use the weapons, the cooldown on the troika and the range on the mortar, no points for intuitiveness there then.
As we get to the end of the huge hall the floor is a lift trap which sends us down into an ambush, a square with little cover and locust flooding in from four doors at each side of the square.
After we kill the ambush party we have to hoist the trap lift back up and continue on our way.
In the throne room we meet the queen. she is almost human, she looks like a human with an elaborate back decoration, though I suspect that the spines and ridges and the tails that come from it are a part of her. She is half human, half locust and gorgeous. She tells us that we are the first and last humans to ever desecrate her palace. Marcus informs her that they know about the plan to sink Jacinto and kill the lambent. She tells him that she is also aware of our plans to sink it early with both halves of the locust civil war still in residence. She tells us that our plan will fail and she has already sent an army to jacinto to prevent us from doing so before her locust faction have evacuated. She tells Skorge to kill us. He is the super fast locust that we met earlier controlling the worm and on the rigs before coming underground.
The boss battle with Skorge is hard and fast, there are tickers coming at all angles blowing up and leaving the green killer smog behind. Skorge is fast and accurate and he chucks all manner of things at you including columns, light fittings and chandeliers.
I hate exploding things that run at you in games, no more of them please.
The battle is hard, however you soon realise that trying to shoot at skorge is a waste of time. He is too fast for you to get in more than a couple off accurate hits. You basically have to survive his poison gas grenade attacks, tickers, bullets and stalactite and column attacks for a set length of time, then hit B as fast as possible in a chainsaw duel with him about three times to win. He retreats on a hydra and you follow. The queen has escaped on a reaver and we run accross a bridge under bombardment until we get to the reaver stables and nick two.
With Dom and Marcus on one and cole and Baird on another we fly as gunner while Dom drives.
We fly around caverns shooting at emplaced guns and brumaks. Reminicent of games like Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon. We support some cog soliders and then are chased by Skorge on his Hydra. Flying as fast as possible down tight tunnels the hydra tries to eat us and shoot us. Then out into the countryside for some fights with other reavers manned by grubs. The Hydra turns back up again and we have to shoot lumps off it until we bring it down. Yet more variety in an already varied game. Also the novelty game mechanics know not to overstay their welcome.
Getting to Jacinto we find it under attack. The president and General Hoffman decide to go with Marcus's plan to evacuate and sink Jacinto onto both sides of the locust civil war. the problem is that the locust army has turned up to prevent us from doing so until one side can be evacuated thus completing the queens plans of destroying the human settlement and her enemies in one fell swoop.
Anya is trying to implement the sinking of the city while we join the fight to defend it from the locust.
Out in the city things are crazy, with locust everywhere and cogs and raven helicopters flying all over the place. We join in some fights to keep landing platforms clear, and then join battles in the street.
You have to defend a comm array from attack by reavers.
Then you have to defend the main gates from an attack. No air support is available as they are all evacuating citizens or preparing for the bomb drop.
The courtyard is easily defended with a mortar until brumak's turn up.
Though with a few well placed mortar shells they are quickly despatched.
Back at control the brighter science types have worked out that a well placed lightmass bomb will sink the city, the only fly in the ointment is that the perfect spot is in locust territory. looks like we are on for the final mission of the game.
More like the old game now. Big coutyard infested with locust. We move inside the building and Dom takes the other entrance we try to flank the enemy.
Taking out the locust inside we go out the rear door into another courtyard with a troika, maulers and bloodmounts. Now we are through the archives building and into cooper street.
We are given a choice again, go into the parking garage and cover the other person as they advance along the street. I choose the garage and can provide flanking support for Dom as he pins down the locust. At the end of the street two locust grapple up from the street below and then a grinder pops up.
We are given the hammer of dawn to use for the first time and have fun taking out the locust and reach the end of the street.
We are greeted by the sight of A huge crater filled with rubble that used to be city. There are cranes which we can use to get across to the other side.
You get into a crane and take Dom across then he makes one of them fall over and you can run across the gap using it.
Maulers, reavers and grubs attack on the roof off the building we reach.
More grubs grapple up the side of the building to get us, but the hammer of dawn is ready to meet them.
The roof of the building collapses in and we find ourselves about five stories lower, so closer to our goal which is an advantage!
A few grub fights later we come to a building with a comms tower type thing on it. We need to get to the roof of the next building, Marcus suggests cutting cables holding up the comm tower, we use out lancers and it falls over onto the next building. On the way across the whole thing collapser and we fall. Only to land unharmed closer to our goal. That was lucky.
We take out a kantus and his grubs and move into a large wooden building.
A brumak appears out in the street below and begins firing on the building. The whole thing collapses on it's side with us inside. The whole building is now on fire and coming down around out ears. We move through it and into a lift, which is miraculously still working and through a few floors before it grinds to a halt. We shoot the brumak pilot and then get on it.
We now take the brumak down into the locust tunnels and have a party. Reavers, boomers about twenty grubs at a time all fall to our salvo's of missiles and twin chainguns.
We shoot up one of the prison barges from earlier.
We take the brumak into a cavern filled with imulsion, the beast is wading in it. We have to take down three pillars which open the cavern to the sky and allow the ravens to come in with the Lightmass bomb. One of the ravens is hit by the brumak as it tries to take us off it's back and goes down in the imulsion.
Shame it was the one with the bomb on it. Baird and Cole pick us up and we wonder what to do next when the Brumak starts freaking out.
It seems to be ingesting the imulsion. Or the imulsion is invading it.
It begins to mutate before our eyes, growing in size and sprouting tentacles like something out of the movie "The Thing".
Marcus suggests that it is going lambent.
Thoughts turn to the fact that the lambent explode. If we blow up this lambent brumak then the explosion might be enough to sink Jacinto.
We use the hammer of Dawn on the lambent Brumak and it starts to blow. The ravens make a run for it and escape.
We see the huge explosion cause Jacinto to sink, the water from the ocean starts to run over the rim of the crater and floods the ruins and down into the locust tunnels. We see them running only to be caught in the Tsunami.
The human evacuation is seen from the air, boats fill the sea, ravens fill the sky.
Marcus is trying to contact Anya, for a moment it seems like she has been lost in the city collapse, but she is there with Cole on another raven. Seems like Marcus has a soft spot for her.
We hear the locust queen narrating this, suggesting that she is far from dead.
After the credits we hear Adam Phenix. Asking is anyone still out there, and what have we done?
Game over, credits roll. Wow that was excellent. This time the story and the gameplay were the stars, the graphics are excellent, and yes not really that much better then the first game. That doesn't matter though, because what shone in this game was the imagination. A huge amount of diversity, most of it seen elsewhere but all brought together in a neat and well written and paced package. Best game on the Xbox 360, probably best game on any system. Game of the year 2008.
I have still to play Resistance 2, comes out here in two weeks time. We will see. It has a hard hill to climb to beat Gears of war 2.
flaws, some clipping issues, sometime you could see locust going into the walls. Not a lot of the time but enough to be noticable. Probably because it does stand out so much with the high standards.

First Playthrough on Hardcore, 365 achievement points.