Possibly the most anticipated game of the year gets a little more publicity today as Epic released about 50 pictures/screenshots of Gears of War 2. You can find a small sample below, the rest can be found over here at Joystiq. In addition to this photo-blitz, several lucky bastards over at IGN UK got to try out the Gears 2 multiplayer. They got to play through rounds of 5 v 5 action (teams of 5 instead of 4? Sweet!) in War Zone (deathmatch), Meat Flag (capture the live enemy as a flag), Wingman (5 teams of 2 working against eachother) and Guardian (5 v 5, unlimited respawns until the guardian is killed, then you have one life left to beat the other team), making me one insanely jealous fanboy. Of course, the highlight of their coverage for me was this little tidbit:

Locust now have individual finishing animations, and they are cool and varied. Rather than just stepping on heads, you get COGs kneeing enemies in the chest, flipping them over and curb stomping. Sometimes a downed enemy takes multiple fists to the face till it's just meat, and "meat fest" is the only way to describe grenade sticks -- which you can also now do in a retaliatory nature from beyond the grave.

Wait a second! I can now grenade stick someone trying to finish me off up close? And now I can choose how to better finish off my opponent by either "fists of fury" or "boot stomps of justice"? Why is this game not out now? Seriously, November cannot come fast enough. Be sure to stay tuned to Gamervision for more on Gears of War 2, as I'm sure they have quite a presentation planned for E3, which we'll be covering live.

Click on any of the pictures to view them in Expand-O-Scope.

Shields?! Flamethrowers?! Dual-chainsawing a guy?! It's... glorious.

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