Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Mixed reactions"

I want to start this review my stating that I am a huge fan of Gears of War. The first game was the reason that I purchased my 360 and I haven't looked back since, I have played the campaign over and over again and most of the people on my friends list have come from playing Player matches on the multiplayer.

Now, on to my review of the second instalment in what I am assuming will be a series.

The game dynamics are much the same as the first game, and anyone who has played that will be familiar with the control system, however the graphics are much improved (even though they were fantastic in the first one), and there is actually a semblance of a story, albeit largely incidental. The game feels much bigger than the first game, the environments are larger, the vehicles are larger, even the characters look larger.

The campaign builds slowly from a relatively sedate start to an action packed final few chapters. Towards the end of the campaign I felt that I was playing the lead role in the biggest action movie ever made. There are thrilling chases through trees, precarious navigation of tanks over ice, and endless gun fights with new enemies, all delivered with overblown gusto. The part where you have to *spoiler* literally cut yourself out of a giant worm is one of the most hilarious moments in my gaming history. In short, I think the campaign is fantastic, much improved on the first one, it is packed to the brim with action and the added element of a side story with Dom helps to move it along nicely.

Now, on to the multiplayer! As I said earlier, most of my friends list has come from playing Gears1 so I was looking forward to playing the multiplayer on this game with said friends. I am left slightly disappointed though. Don't get me wrong – the multiplayer is fantastic when you get a game, but that is the problem – WHEN you get a game. I really like some of the new game modes, Horde is exciting and encourages team playing, I love the new Submission game where you have to take a human flag to a particular point in the map before the other team does, and I enjoy Guardian as well. Wingman, although fun with friends is fatally flawed on ranked matches as all you get is a line of people queuing to kill whoever is in front of them.

The ranked matches or public matches take forever to get in to and when I do, they are invariably full of lag and unplayable, unless I am fortunate enough to land in a game where the majority of players are from the UK (which is where I am). There is nothing more frustrating than having your chainsaw go straight through a player with no effect and then a second or two later find yourself dead with no idea how it happened. But it is the private matches which have left me the most disappointed, these games can only be played by people on each other's friends lists, they cannot be searched by someone who just wants to play a more social game than the public matches so I am not meeting new people online to play with. The lobby system is irritating as well in that you cannot cycle maps at all and after each game of multiplayer you are transported back to the lobby again to choose another map, why you can't just keep playing on a map rotation like the first game bewilders me.

In short, this game is fantastic, however the edge has been taken off it for me because of the restrictions on the multiplayer. Unless the private matches are opened up and become searchable for other players then I fear that this game may well dwindle out for me over time.