Gears of War 2 Reveiw

Well I'll start at the beginning, the Story and Campaign. If you directly jump into this game without playing Gears of War 1 then you may not get a general idea of the storyline. The storyline does have a few kinks where will leave you scratching your head, but nothing dramatic. The story tries to go on to an emotional level at a point, but it just doesn't seem to work.There are a few surprises in store that will definitely please a Gears 1 fan. I'm not going to spoil anything, but the vehicle controls are kinda crap and there aren't too many vehicles that you can ride in-game, which may be a good thing.Now that we have got that out of the way let's move on to the Game play. The controls, first of all, are a bit loose. The "roadie run" is really hard to control, the only way to turn a corner whilst running is having to stop, turn, and then start running again. It's moderately hard to aim as well, maybe not with the zoomed-in sniper rifle, but not with the lancer. The bullets are also slow, making an enemy able to dodge and duck behind cover before the "flying death" gets to him/her.The camera is one thing that is GREAT. The cover is good, chainsaw duals are sweet and the button layout is ok. Now, the game play is one thing, but the Graphics is a force NOT to be reckoned with. Gears of War 2 is probably the best looking game out there along with Crysis an Far Cry 2. The visuals are amazing, and the environments are extremely detailed. The blood and gore is a plus with this game, I've seen many games that try to be gory, but do not succeed, this game succeeds. The only major flaw with the graphics is the texture popping. If you haven't noticed in the beginning of a screen the surfaces may seem bland and not detailed, but after a few seconds the textures will suddenly pop-in. The lighting affects aren't as great as some other games and the weather is always gray clouds which makes the items a dull-gray color as well. Here is one thing that Epic did great on but failed all at the same time, the Multiplayer. The multiplayer side of Gears of War 2 has alot of nice gameplay modes, such as new ones like Submisison. The amount of people has also been raised to 10 instead of 8. A huge part of this game consists in multiplayer, Horde. Yes you can play single player on Horde, but something about playing with four other friends and beating the crap(or geting the crap beaten out of you) by fifty waves of ever increasingly difficult locust is fun. There are things that are very wrong with the multiplayer too, such as lag and connectivity issues. Gamers with a strict connection will experiance difficulties connecting to other host who have the same type of connection. The lag is another thing that turns me off the multipalyer sometimes. Over all this game is a definate buy to fans of any type of shooter. Gears fan and non Gears fan. The story is interesting, the gameplay is nicely put together, the graphics are(once again) the best i've seen this year, and the multiplayer is alot of fun, apart from the lag and connection problems. That is why i am giving Gears of War 2 a(drum roll) 9 out of 10