[1] Gears of War 2 rebalances the power of the existing weapons while introducing five new ones: a flamethrower, a chain gun, a mortar cannon, a "Gorgon" Pistol, and the Ink Grenade.

The chain gun and the mortar are heavy weapons, forcing the player to move at walking speed while carrying it in both hands.

The Ink Grenade doesn't damage with its detonation, but instead temporarily poisons the area it was thrown, making it very useful for driving enemies out of cover.

Depending on the game mode or difficulty, if the player takes too much damage, they enter a downed state where they can crawl around the map to get out of battle and seek help.

[4] Like its predecessor, Gears of War 2 features an optional mature content filter, which, when active, makes blood appear as sparks and removes harsh language from the dialogue.

[1] The campaign features a deeper story with new characters, new weapons, and new enemies according to John DiMaggio, the voice actor for Marcus Fenix.

[9] Cut-scenes use the better facial rendering technology of Epic's Unreal engine, and engage in more dramatic angles for the conversation, as well as using a video screen on Jack (the all-purpose robot used by Delta squad) to talk with their commanders face-to-face.

[1] Gears of War 2 features an upgraded multiplayer mode that allows up to ten users to simultaneously play in teams of five-on-five.

[2][10] Guardian is a modified version of Assassination from the original Gears of War, but allows players to continue fighting after the leader has been killed, but losing the ability to respawn.

The 10 maps shipped with the game originally are Avalanche, Blood Drive, Day One, Hail, Jacinto, Pavilion, River, Ruins, Security and Stasis.

After months of peace, the cities of Tollen and Montevado suddenly and mysteriously disappear underground, leading the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) to suspect the resurgence of the Locust.

[1][13] Senior Producer Rod Fergusson says "In order to save Jacinto, [the COG] have no choice but to take the war to the Locust.

[14] It was later revealed that the original Anthony Carmine would not be present in the Gears of War 2 campaign, but rather his brother, Benjamin,[15] would make an appearance.

[1] As Gears of War 2 begins, the COG army mobilizes forces to deploy into the depths of Sera, known as the "Hollow", to assault the Locust directly.

Delta Squad, consisting of Marcus Fenix, Dom Santiago, Benjamin Carmine, Tai Kaliso, Augustus Cole and Damon Baird; fight the Locust alongside thousands of Gears.

During the battle, Tai is taken prisoner by Locust general Skorge and is tortured to the point of insanity, resulting in him committing suicide after being freed by Delta.

The Locust plan to destroy the rock structures in the outskirts of Jacinto, the last major human city, in hopes of sinking it underground.

Chairman Prescott declassifies an intel file that reveals a nearby abandoned COG outpost that has a lead on the location of the Locust capital and their queen.

Inside, Delta learns that the outpost is "New Hope", a genetics lab dedicated to studying human children of Imulsion miners suffering from Rustlung, resulting in mutated experiments called "Sires".

Heavy Netcode optimization has been done to negate the host advantage problem in the first title[18] and hundreds of tweaks have gone into improving the cover system and movement.

[19] To provide a deeper story, the team brought aboard novelist Joshua Ortega as to incorporate more personal drama within the sci-fi setting.

The video showed several demonstrations of the improvements, the initial being improvements to the in-game lighting through Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, in which dynamic shadows could be generated through the use of a pixel shading technique to render more realistically lit and shaded objects and actors, illustrated through comparison between character and environment models in the original game engine to that of Unreal Engine 3.

The largest of these physics engine related changes was the introduction of destructible environments due to the implementation of real-time structural analysis tools to generate the damage of the materials and subsequently their deformed shapes based upon resultant forces placed upon them.

This was demonstrated with the use of explosive arrows fired from the "Torque Bow" of the original game causing damage to wooden planks, and also revealing rebar present after destroying areas of a stone structure.

The Joseph Kosinski-directed trailer,[29] which features the Trans Am track "Diabolical Cracker" from the album Red Line, takes its title and spoken words from Alan Seeger's World War I poem I Have a Rendezvous with Death.

The edition features alternative cover art, a SteelBook case with a bonus content DVD, a book entitled Beneath the Surface: An Inside Look at Gears of War 2, which includes concept art and story-related information, a keepsake photo of Dominic and Maria, and an exclusive Xbox Live code to unlock a gold-plated Lancer for online play.

The update added an experience-based ranking system in which the player is given a numerical value based on their number of experience points, which are gained by shooting or killing enemies in public multiplayer.

The update also addressed several issues with matchmaking, including adding bots in place of players who have quit or lost connection to the game.

The All Fronts Collection was to be sold as a retail package, and would have included all add-ons released for Gears of War 2, a poster, and a strategy guide for the game.

"This technology's great because it works on normal HD TVs, as well as the very high end 3DTVs," Rein commented to Computer and Video Games.