christiangamer

According to whattheyplay.com; Gears of War 2, the ultra-gooey-violent-3rd-person shooter from Epic Games will feature a violence filter that will change the blood to sparks, and a swear filter that will take out “all” swear words.  Gears of War 1 had a similar filter in which the gamer could check an option to take out the “extreme content.”  I appreciated that about the game quite a bit.  The violence filter was pretty effective, but the swear filter only took out one word.

Goo: Gears of War 1 was ridiculously bloody.  The gritty atmosphere that was the alien invasion from within the planet Sera made for one of the most anticipated games of 2006.  Never before had the fight against your typical alien scourge been so intense and gory.  When you shotgun someone, they sort of explode and crumple.  When you snipe the head, it literally slides off the neck of your victim.  The Lancer’s primary weapon splatters blood from your enemy until they collapse.  When you get hit with it, it’s hard to see because of all the blood flying off of your face.  And the chainsaw – does exactly what you’d expect a chainsaw to do to someone – it cuts them in half, splattering blood everywhere (all over your TV) as your victim wriggles around helplessly.  The filter simply turned all of the blood to sparks.  The game was still atmospherically intense and mature, but the filter was effective in toning the game down (of course, I wonder if kids really used it).   Note: this filter was not an option in multiplayer games unless you host the game…  I hope that the new game will find a way to fix this.

F-Bomb:  No it’s not a weapon.  The F-word was a part of the single-player campaign.  It wasn’t as bad as Grand Theft Auto IV, but it was there.  The swearing filter in Gears 1 turned this word off, but didn’t do anything to the other curses. I hope that the Gears 2 filter is more adequate.

Gears 2 is one of the biggest games of 2008, and it’s not even out til November.  But it is definitely going to be a gory and violent game.  Parents are strongly urged to check out some video (available all over – try gametrailers.com) to get an idea of the level of violence.  From what I’ve learned it will be more intense than the first one.  For one thing you can now turn your chainsaw upside down and saw someone from the gut up.  There will be some serious executions as well (the “curb-stomp” returns even meaner than before).

I sure wish more developers would do this: Here’s the cool thing about Epic Games – ever since the first Unreal Tournaments waaaaaaaaaaayyy back in the day, they have always attempted to make their obviously violent games more kid/concerned parent-friendly by giving you the option to turn the junk down or off.  Looks like Gears 2 will be that way too.  While many folks will still want to keep their kids away from the intensity of the game (so the blood is sparks – you’re still sticking a chainsaw in a guy), some parents may find this to be a welcome option, as long as they can trust their children to use it.

The whattheyplay.com article is here.