First Look: Gears of War 2

I'll start this post with the summary. The more the merrier.

To be fair I can't really take the generic space marines and their generic tale of aliens wiping out the free world terribly seriously. Despite the high production values I've had to skip the gung ho cut scenes and where possible the radio chatter to.. to which Marcus often grunts "enough chatter" to which I say amen.

Apparently the single player campaign gets better and better as it goes along but from playing through roughly half of it I'd have to say it's more of the same. Fortunely it's action sequences are still rock solid and this time your AI buddies can recover you if there about and you can even crawl towards them to give them a helping hand. Add another player though and it's a whole lot more fun.

The actual multi player components themselves are also solid. The competitive stuff is still as hardcore as ever. I played with four of my fellow forumites (all of whom are solid gamers, I was by far the weakest link) and we lost five out of five. The best new addition is the Horde mode where me and my team (Or Team Bob if you will) take on wave after wave of Locust. This proves to be a very entertaining and action packed mode and by far the most fun.

If you where expecting reinvention of the gaming wheel look elsewhere. If you're looking for a solid update of the franchise and can look past the macho bullshit it's very entertaining.