Dark Corners: Does It Deliver or Leave Gears Fans in the Dark? Dark Corners released on Tuesday (July 28) for 1200 MS points, and with seven new maps comes a “deleted scene” for the campaign. Assuming the multiplayer portion of Gears of War II is a big part of your Gears experience, this is a heck of a lot of bang for your buck. What’s even more inviting about this deal is the fact that none of the maps are real stinkers, and the deleted scene doesn’t ruin the Gears gameplay.
The deleted scene, “Road to Ruin” takes place after Dom euthanizes Maria. On their way to the Nexus, Dom and Marcus either choose to traverse the Locust highway in “stealth” by donning Theron Armor or, in classic Gears style, with guns blazing. The “stealth” mechanic is best described as “stealth-the Gears way.” The scene is broken up in to five distinct sections, so if stealth doesn’t go exactly as planned in one section, you can try again after getting to the next segment.
It is not the most robust stealth mechanic, as you simply have to remain a certain distance away from the Locust guards. It never really gets too heart-pounding, however, and the best way to tackle the highway is with a classic guns blazing style. You’ll get to fight the usual assortment of Locust baddies as well as some of the bigger, meaner beasts. The most disappointing thought about the whole Road to Ruin scene is the fact that they actually took it out. It really brings the Locust underworld together. Before seeing this highway in action, it’s easy to mistake the Hollow as a couple unconnected temples and the Nexus, without much in between.
Moving on to the multiplayer maps, these will provide hours of fun for the Gearhead in all of us. Plenty of the maps offer long alleys for snipers and close quarters encounters for the shotguns, while most offer interesting little quirks for some truly unique battles.
Sanctuary’s three-tiered construction means there’s plenty of opportunities to score some potshots on your enemies as they run through the exposed middle areas. It also means you’ll be battling for the high ground, but because grenades spawn on the lower tier, it won’t be too hard for well communicating teams to take over.
Memorial’s multiple pathways and staircases means that it’s easy to sneak up on camping snipers and mortars. Nowhere’s periodic sandstorm makes it a little tougher for snipers to pick their targets, though I’ll admit it would be nice to see even more of a blinding effect, as silhouettes are still easy to pick out through the sandstorm.
War Machine is a remake from one of the more popular maps from the first Gears of War. As of right now, it plays exactly like the first one: A battle for the sniper on one end and the torque bow / boomshot on the other end, with most people ignoring the upper level. However, Epic added in a mulcher in place of the troika and put in some more waist high walls for cover. Once more people get acquainted with the mobility of the mulcher and the added cover, I think we’ll see more battles take place on the upper level, though the mulcher still has a disadvantage if the enemy team has the sniper.
By now you know whether or not you like Gears. If you’re even a casual Gears player, you owe it yourself to pick up this map pack. They all have interesting traits that make each map work differently.
Posted By: Devon Marshall
Monday, August 3rd 2009 at 12:23AM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
