Gears of War 2

WARNING:

Spoilers, Bad Language!

Gears of War re-defined the thrid-person genre by updating the cover mechanic and truly bring HD content to gaming.  However, after completing Gears of War 2, I'm quite disappointed that the campaign introduces boring content - which I never saw in Gears 1.

• The campaign story was okay but I can't help compare it to Halo's story: Humans vs. Locusts (Covenant) vs. Lament (Flood).  There are large amounts of more enemies than Gears 1 - just as I hoped.  The ending was very, very poor.  All you had to do was aim your Hammer of Dawn at the mutated Brumak and it was game over.
• The level designs was not interesting as around 60% of the time, you'll be underground.  This resulted in seeing the same underground structure designs.
• The vehicle event in Gears 1 was just the truck driving scene (which sucked).  This time around, you'll be driving a COG Tank, Reaver and Brumak.  These events were frustrating, controls are terrible and quite boring.  I would've never thought I'd get bored playing a Gears game.
• Boss battles... the thing I hate in FPS's.  Gears 1 probably had about 2 sub-boss battles (Berserkers) then RAAM himself.  These are fine.  However, the boss battles in Gears 2 are frustrating and annoying.  The most frustrating times during my playthrough were the boss battles.
• The music sounds great.
• They updated the way to find allies (holding LB) but still needs improvement, like an indicator above each player's head.  Also, way points displayed in this feature should include Annex locations, Meatflags (for Submission) and Enemy Leaders (for Guardian).
• I expected Epic to change the Insane difficulty by increasing the number of enemies we have to fight instead of increasing the damage they do but they didn't.
• Horde mode and bots is a great addition to the game.  However, a change in the weapon placement is needed for Horde as there are mostly pistols in the maps instead of the better weapons.  Also, the multiplayer maps that change or has events in them (such as: Tyro Station's Train) are disabled, which is stupid because that's what makes those maps fun to play on.  Also, the Locusts spawn almost anywhere on the map, even right beside you!
• The new weaponry are great except for the Mortar, which is hard to use and its damage affects friendly targets.  Also, the poison grenade doesn't seem to affect the A.I. enemies.
• New ways to kill enemies and the ability to take them as hostage is a nice addition to the game.
• Old weapons sound and feel much better, with all the uprades (like Boomer now holds 5 ammo as standard).
• A few cutscenes were glitchy but looks good.  Some dialogue was too dramatic.
• There's still the case of wall-sticking (where you were trying to jump instead of backing up to a wall).
• Multiplayer matchmaking has changed in that you can only play a match type on one map before heading back to the lobby and setting up the game again.  Nothing bad about that but it doesn't fit the Gears-style.
• The new multiplayer match types and maps are great and 5v5 is awesome.
• Epic's built-in Achievement tracker is a nice feature but it's still quite basic, not specifically detailing what you need to do left before you unlock the Achievement (such as: Variety is the Spice of Death)
• Ally A.I. can now revive players (which is highly requested) but seem too stupid to revive you when there's a lot of action on higher difficulties.  Enemies A.I. is smarter and more accurate as the difficulty increases - combined with taking and dealing much more damage, this is a nightmare for players playing on Insane.  Also, when the enemies is down, they tend to revive themselves in about 5 seconds.  WTF?!  How can they do that, yet we can't?!
• There are no references of Beserkers nor Kryll in Gears 2, which is disappointing.
• Vehicle combat in Multiplayer is still dream...
• Most of the Achievements are great and with the integretion of both multiplayer AND campaign kills contributing to "Seriously 2.0", it's a great game for Achievements whores.

Overall, Gears 2 feels, looks and sounds better than Gears 1 but the game content doesn't surpass the "Wow!" factor that Gears 1 had.  It's a good game, just not great.