Gears of War 2: bigger and more badass.  Bigger baddies, bigger weapons, bigger locations, bigger events, bigger story, and more badass.

I’m currently playing through a campaign co-op romp, and about halfway through.  Gears 2 is a great co-op experience game.  You can play the Campaign through with a friend (highly recommended over an AI buddy + revives), and through Horde mode with a party total of 5.  The campaign co-op is very much the same as Gears 1.  In fact, if you take the core mechanics of the game, the controls and combat, Gears 2 plays very similarly to Gears 1.  The differences that makes Gears 2 stand out in the campaign are easily the set piece levels.

If you remember, Gears 1 shifted scenes each of the 5 Acts.  Each Act had a different motif, and some played differently.  For example, Act 2 had those bats that would kill you when you walked into shadows.  Gears 2, however, shifts scenes and play mechanics every chapter (roughly 5-7 chapters per Act).  We’ve already played through more vastly different settings and set piece battles than the entire of Gears 1 (which was mostly “flank to position and plug the hole in the ground with a grenade”).

Gears 2 also introduces stun animations for the enemies.  In Gears 1, you would shoot people and either they would be alive and shooting you, or dead.  Blood would splatter, but otherwise there was little indication in animation or behavior that you were hurting them.  In Gears 2, you can stun them, they’ll brace against a shot and not just blindly run up to you and melee you with no consequence.  It’s great.  It makes combat a little easier overall, but is still a great addition.  It feels like they take less bullets now, whereas in Gears 1, combat became tedious since Locust needed entire clips to the chest and head to put down.

Ammo seems to not be nearly as much of a concern.  In Gears 1, there was only ever enough Lancer ammo for Player 1, and Player 2 almost always had to substitute for the Hammerburst.  This time around, that’s not as bad of the case (though still can happen), and the Hammerburst got a decent upgrade with zoom capabilities and higher damage.

Overall, this seems like a big step up in almost everyway.  If you didn’t like Gears1 for any of the above reasons, this may give you cause to look into it again.  If you liked Gears1, then this is a no-brainer pick-up.