Overview

The potent arsenal available to you in Gears of War 2 covers everything from the explosive Boomshot to the searing flames of the Scorcher and the devastating firepower of the Mulcher.

Many weapons in Gears of War 2 have a distinct purpose; they are very useful for a few specific combat situations and less effective outside that role.

It’s certainly possible to play through much of the game using only a few weapons that you’re comfortable with, but it’s definitely worthwhile to master all of the weapons. Many are highly effective against certain types of Locust or during certain encounters.

Note that weapons have different statistics and behavior when you play multiplayer. Additionally, while their general role usually stays the same, some weapons become significantly more or less powerful in a multiplayer game, simply due to the way that human opponents fight. Consult this guide’s Multiplayer Warfare chapter for information about multiplayer weapon statistics. Also, it’s good to use all weapons in order to earn the “Variety is the Spice of Death” achievement.

Difficulty and Damage

One interesting fact about the way weapons and health are handled in Gears of War 2 is that each difficulty level puts a scaling value on the damage you inflict with weapons, as well as the damage enemies need to deliver in order to kill you. You can see these damage values in the weapon charts, but for the sake of completeness, we’ve included the scaling modifiers on the damage.

You normally have 600 health (in Hardcore difficulty), which is then modified by difficulty level, giving us the following breakdown: 900 on Casual, 720 on Normal, 600 on Hardcore, and 480 on Insane. Be careful!

AI partners have a lot more health, though they are not invincible. Most squad mates have 1800 health. Dom has 1200 and Hoffman is incredibly sturdy, with 7000, though he’s rarely exposed to direct enemy fire.

Meat shields have 1000 ‘health,’ just enough to sponge up a big explosion or a lot of smaller hits.

Because you can select your difficulty in co-op play, it is entirely possible for one player to burn through ammo more quickly and die more often. But this is usually compensated by the player that selects a higher difficulty, who, we assume, possesses greater accuracy and better tactical acumen.