Before Gears of War, Epic was mainly known as a PC powerhouse that provided middleware for countless of developers and popular for its Unreal Tournament series. Now, they have a tight foothold in the console world, as well, with their Unreal tech powering most next-gen titles and they're getting ready to "Emerge" once again on November 7 with their upcoming blockbuster, Gears of War 2.

Building Blocks

While the groundwork for Gears of War proved that a third-person shooter could work, be incredibly visceral, and spectacularly beautiful...it doesn't mean Epic just stood on their laurels and quickly hashed out another one. For the second game, they've gone back to the drawing board and worked harder to make the sequel "bigger, better, and more badass" as the game's creator, Cliff "Dude Huge" Bleszinski, would say. Starting with the campaign's length:

"We definitely want it [Gears of War 2] to be longer," he told CVG. "I think that, with campaigns like in Gears, Halo or Call of Duty, my personal preference is around the 10+ hours mark, with a co-op and a multiplier you can play in the longer term."

Aside from a longer game, Epic has also promised to make the levels more color-varied than the dark-and-gray matter that plagued the first game -- as pretty as those grays were, they did repeat all too often.

An Added Touch...

Multiplayer in GoW1 was a fun experience that, unfortunately, was quickly exploited and ruined for a lot of people. Epic is hoping to fix a lot of the issues with Gears 2 (i.e. host advantage) and add a few more modes to make fans happy.

The biggest update to the game will be the "Horde" mode which pits five online buddies against -- you guessed it -- hordes of enemies. It will ramp up in difficulty and keep throwing waves after waves of evil-doers to see how long your team can last. Ah, and instead of 4-on-4 action, Epic has upped the count to 5-on-5 multiplayer action now.

"No" to Four-Player Co-op

Online co-op makes a grand return, but the hopes that it would support four-players (a la Halo 3) were disbanded when the game was first shown and later reiterated on by "Dude Huge":

"We knew from the get go that we'd go with two players," he told VideoGamer. "[...] once you start with three of four players the game is no longer about the narrative, it's about shooting ----. And therefore we said let's do that in Horde."

Before You Buy...

Parental controls are something the music and film industry are used to working with, but Gears 2 just might set that precedent in video games. When it launches, the Mature-rated title will come equipped with a "violence filter" that replaces blood with sparks and cuts down on profanity. A plus for permissive parents, we're sure.

Considering glowing reviews already published, the choice to buy the game has been made months (years, even!) in advance already, but where is the best place to buy it? If you're buying the limited edition, we'd say go with Best Buy.

Like every other electronics store, it'll have a midnight launch, the requisite DVD extras, in-game gold lancers, day-one Flashback map pack, but the retailer plans on throwing in a free Centaur RC car modeled from Gears of War 2, as well. Wherever you choose to buy it, the game will be available November 7 exclusively on Xbox 360.

Carlos Macias is a featured writer for Xomba.com. Read the rest of his work here .