Like a great number of you, I eagerly picked up Gears of War 2 on Friday and dove right in to the campaign. As I made my way through Act 1, everything I heard about the many improvements over the original were highlighted.

Having just played Gears 1, the graphical polish is noticeable. The environments and animations look better & more detailed in spots. Surprisingly there were a few times where the frame-rate dropped, but I think people make way too much of little visual hiccups, especially when it doesn't affect gameplay.  There is a lot more going on screen than the original so it's a trade off of a few seconds every hour of choppiness that I'm more than willing to make.

Gears 2 also seems much more epic in scope, giving you more the feeling that you are part of a bigger conflict where Gears 1 gave me a feeling of isolation, as if most of the time there was no one else around for miles besides Delta Squad and whatever enemies they were fighting. They did a smart thing with the collectibles too, making them be things like newspaper clippings, medical files and letters which give more information about Sera's back-story and, I hope, hint at where the narrative is heading. That makes them much more rewarding to find, than just to get achievements, which have also improved. Instead of getting points just at the end of each Act, they spread them out to major events throughout the chapters that make up each Act. They followed Valve's intelligent lead from The Orange Box and included progress indicators for the statistical achievements. A little, unobtrusive pop-up appears as you rack up kills, complete perfect active reloads or perform the different flavors of finishing moves. The achievement for killing an enemy with every possible weapon is smart as it gives you incentive to try out the entire arsenal. I've only encountered a few of the new weapons, but they've added a few new fun death bringers. I used the Locust weapons in Gears 1 only as a last resort as they were never as satisfying to use as the COG guns, but that has changed. The Locust assault rifle is great. It packs a punch and has a zoomable targeting reticule if you click the right stick, making headshots easier. The pistols, usually only brought out in low ammo situations, have been beefed up, especially the 6 shot Boltok and can be relied on to bring enemies down. The shotgun is still as reliable for short range blasting as before. It is my go-to weapon when facing those annoying new Tickers. Exploding Wretches 2.0 are still a pain. I still haven't found the flamethrower or the Mulcher, but using the Mortar to rain down fire on Reavers is pretty badass. A great addition.

The controls are still as solid and satisfying. Hopping from cover to cover is easy and smoothe. The level design is more varied than the original through the first Act, not that Gears 1 ever got boring. Gears 2 just does a better job, so far, of pacing the action. Having multiple Brumaks & Corpsers show up early on really hints that the scope of this game is far more epic than what we've played before. I'm excited to see where it goes.

That's just the campaign! I haven't had the chance to touch Horde mode or any multiplayer. The fact that you don't need a full room of people, and you can go up against AI bots with your friends make it way more likely for me to give the multi more of a chance than having to play with the random XBox live mutants. I dig how it plays, but I'm never going to be good enough to hang with the twitchy, killing machines online. I'm looking forward to teaming up with you guys to kill some Locusts soon. It's a great time to be playing games!