Coming Soon: Gears of War 2, New & Improved!

March 27th, 2008

Gears Of War 2 is schedule to be released in November of this year and after seeing some teasers (I’ll post them soon for you to watch!), I couldn’t be any more excited. I never had the chance to play the first Gears Of War since I didn’t have an Xbox 360 then, but since I do have one now, this is a game I will definitely be picking up!

At the Game Developers’ Conference back in February, Epic Games announced that Gears Of War 2 will be using their updated Unreal Engine 3 and did a tech demo of how Gears of War 2 would look if was released in February. For gamers of all kinds, this is huge! The update to the Unreal Engine will bring more realism to a game that’s already great. In the tech demo, the CEO of Epic Games walks through some of the updates. There’s no doubt in my mind that when the game gets released in November it will be one of the best games to be released on the Xbox 360 platform.

The updates to the Unreal Engine will bring great visual aspects to the game. It will not only make the gaming experience better but will make it look and feel more realistic then ever! The tech demo video outlines what some of the updates that they added to the Unreal Engine.

Here’s my take on the updates. A destructible environment is great – it makes the game fun and realistic at the same time. Usually when I’m playing a shooter game and I get stuck or bored I like to shoot random things but the majority of times all I’ll see is a black mark where I shot at. But with this update you’ll be able to shoot anything and cause realistic damage to it! You know that’s going to be fun!

They’ve also updated the way shadows are rendered. In the video they show a before and after shot comparing the two engines and there is a huge difference in the way the character looks. This will for sure make the game look crisp and smooth, not to mention realistic!

Another update that adds to the realism of the game is the detail to water and how the character reacts to it. If you’re like me, you want the game to be as real as it can be and with this update it sure is real! In the demo video they show how the water ripples according to where your character is walking.

Finally, an update that I’ve seen other games already incorporate that adds to the experience of the game is the ability to render crowds of characters. I’ve seen it in Assassin’s Creed and it was a far different experience walking through crowds and crowds of people, so it’ll add another dimension and difficulty to Gears of War2.

So there are my thoughts on the updates to the Unreal Engine, stay tuned for a few teasers later today and let me know what you think of the updates to the Unreal Engine and to Gears Of War 2!

Posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 3:20 pm by Alberto and is filed under Headlines & Current Events.