Gears of War 2
All right! Ok, I’ll cover Gears of War 2. So stop asking! The short of it is “Yes” I disagree with the ESRB and “No” I do not seem to like the game very much. I liked Gears of War fine, wasn’t great but the cover system was new and things blowed up real good. The sequel is several orders worse in terms of writing, plot, characterization, and all the other stuff most teens don’t care about. Maybe I should play more but -yeesh- all the faceless/personalityless enemies and the dunder-headed characters. I have trouble getting past that. Anyway, “yes” I disagree with the ESRB.
Gears of War 2 is a violent game.
But the gore can be turned off.
Without blood, it’s still pretty violent.
(pause) That’s true.
Gears of War 2 uses most of the profane language you’d hear on a schoolyard.
Yes, but it has a language filter too. It doesn’t take the bad writing out of the picture though. Oh, it and the gore filter work online. That’s a good thing.
True, so what’s the verdict?
It’s one of those games that LOOKS mature because it’s got the red stuff, violence and vocabulary – but I really don’t think Gears is aimed at a very adult audience. It’s rated Mature, but it isn’t Mature – if you get me.
Kid Factor
14+ with all the safeties on. The reasons are simple, though violent, Gears of War 2 isn’t much more violent than PG-13 movies (think the battle scenes in Lord of the Rings), especially with the gore turned off. The other thing to remember is that the bad words may be overused, but they’re exactly what a 14 hears at highschool.
16+ for parents who think all shoot ’em up action games that use bad language are bad for younger kids.
April 2nd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I thought the writing, especially compared with other games, was fairly decent. Based of the reccomendations of a Hugo winning author I really enjoy, I read the Gears novel which fills in plenty of details on the past of Marcus and Dom. I prefer it to the writing in Resident Evil 5, Killzone 2, and most of the other recent shooters. Obviously, it is step below most published novels, but I can live with that if the game mechanics are fun.
I agree with your rating and would let a 14+ kid play the game. Bad language doesn’t offend me in the proper context. I expect soldiers and other people in violent stressful situations to use something a little more than “golly gee willikers”. I don’t have a problem with teens hearing that kind of language provided that they show some discretion and restraint…such as not dropping the F bomb in the playland of McDonalds.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:56 pm
I guess the thing that had me calling the original ‘rusty’ when it hit PC was that the cover system wasn’t ‘new’, or particularly innovative, even based on when the console version hit. But it was still pretty decent. Haven’t had the chance to play this one at all though. It is good that the gore & language filters work so well – that is becomeing an increasingly important issue for me!
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Maybe my aversion to the type of characters Fennix and Whomever are. Sometimes that can transcend but there’s a real blandness to Gears I’m trying to identify. — I feel the same about Halo 1-3 (another problem those two share is “monsters I care nothing about) — Sure the writing isn’t Resident Evil bad, maybe it’s the tone I find dumb? I can’t imagine reading a novelization though.
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Maybe my aversion to the type of characters Fennix and Whomever are. Sometimes that can transcend but there’s a real blandness to Gears I’m trying to identify. — I feel the same about Halo 1-3 (another problem those two share is “monsters I care nothing about) — Sure the writing isn’t Resident Evil bad, maybe it’s the tone I find dumb? I can’t imagine reading a novelization though – decent?
April 2nd, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Ah one word makes a difference in tone, no?
April 3rd, 2009 at 10:18 am
The novelization was by Karen Traviss. Another author, John Scalzi, suggested her on his blog and I figured I would try it, given that I liked his books. I avoid game novelizations, but this was pretty good. It covered events that happened prior to the first game and in between Gears I and II, including some stuff on Marcus’ childhood.
What kind of FPS characters have you liked?
April 3rd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
this game was epic. i can’t believe you didn’t like it that much.
April 4th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
I have to agree with wampa king-but only once!
April 4th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Gears of War is equivalent in tone to a Van Damme or Steven Seagal movie.
Kudos for the language/gore filter. Something I need nowadays too.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:12 am
“I have to agree with wampa king-but only once!”
:O
April 6th, 2009 at 6:18 am
And this is much more violent then LotR.
April 15th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Yea I agree with The Wampa King because this game is really more violent than an LotR video game or movie. But I also agree with you GamerDad that it should be really T “IF” you turn on the language filter and the blood filter. Otherwise this game should still be M-Mature.
April 20th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Maybe they should just give it a T-M rating like The Orange Box. Also the story is very dark and mature.
February 7th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
my friend said this was the most age innapropriate game out there but i dissagreed and said it was gta then he said blood-gorewise and i read this and laughed in his face