GoW-op 2 player game.

E and I gave this game a shot on Friday night in co-op mode. E played Marcus and I played Dom, and we spent about 4 hours in the game. It was pretty good, the mechanics of the game were pretty much the same as the first one, with it's take-cover mentality, tough-to-kill foes, and do-or-die(-and-replay-it) scenarios.

I was pretty bad at it. I was knocked out of action a lot but the NPC rookie kept reviving me. (Its ironic that I'm supposed to be the hardened veteran here).

The chainsaw gun never felt like it had enough ammo and I was always out. I probably just have to practice and keep my bursts shorter. The gun is great when you do have ammo though - it hits without delay like the Locust rifle and has a decent range. The chainsaw function is a godsend too. Even if it locks you in the animation sequence for a painful 2 or 3 seconds, you can be sure that enemy locust is hit and downed.

Unfortunately, during a really rushed section on top of the Betty armoured vehicle, I ended up dropping my chainsaw while in dire need of a weapon with ammo in it. The game saved before I could get it back, the weapons were bouncing around on the deck. Dammit! I had to go for many scenes without it, relying on dropped locust ammo and close range shotgun shots.

In the four hours of play we went through a LOT of scenes. But I think they tried to cram too much story into too short a time. I felt like we were always being rushed along, characters introduced, characters leaving.

There were some neat weapons and concepts along the way though - there was a new mortar launcher weapon that we could choose the range it hit at. There were also some nice portable chaingun turrets as well, even if they did slow us down a bit - sort of like the ones in Halo 2, except it had a heat meter in addition to an ammo count.

In the underground sections, you could use the indigenous rockworms as cover, except the worms really didn't like me and ate me on 2 occasions. I thought they were supposed to be vegetarian? The first one even snapped it's neck in half in order to turn around and get me, killing itself in the process.

Another thing about the game is that it felt like every short scene was giving a 10 point achievement. That's way too often and too automatic. They didn't feel like they meant anything since we were just playing through the game normally. :P

We wrapped up the game somewhere down the bowels of the planet (or was it in the bowels of some giant animal?) and we'll pick up again another day.

Upsen.