My favorite parts of the first Gears of War were the awesome battles with the Berserkers, and defeating them with the Hammer of Dawn. Granted, I'm not finished with the game, but I'm the majority of the way through, and there hasn't been a single Berserker battle. Also, I've only recently gotten to use the Hammer of Dawn, and there hasn't been anything truly epic to use it on, though I'm sure that will change. Of course, the majority of the game you couldn't even use the Hammer if you had it, because of the setting. Which brings me to...

Am I the only person who thought that the ascension of Mount Kadar and looking for an entrance to Nexus was a little too close to Mt. Doom and Mordor? That, you know, two guys sneaking around armies of big, ugly, freaky looking dudes who look like they were born from mud seemed a little to familiar? That's right, I just compared Marcus and Dom to Frodo and Sam, what of it? There's one particular scene where they look down on an army of soldiers marching by that feels right out of Return of the King. It could just be me, but the entire setting of this game felt a little off, and this level is a prime example of it.

I love the Gears of War cover system. I love that stop-and-pop style of game play. I think the addition of a cover system to GTA IV, while not implemented to perfection, was a great idea. But Gears of War 2 is trying to drive this great little game play idea into the ground. Let's remember why the cover system mechanic works so well in games like Gears, Rainbow 6: Vegas, Uncharted, and even GTA IV: because it forces you to attack enemies strategically, it increases the sense of desperation in intense fire-fights, and it raises the sense of immersion in the game. Gears of War 2 gets this wrong by throwing millions of things to take cover behind at you. The Palace level where you have to continually pull levers to make miniature walls pop up and other miniwalls is a prime example of this. First of all, there's no explanation of what the things popping up are, or why they're there, except that the original architects of the Palace were planning on an invasion, and set those up beneath the ground in for the defense to hide behind. It's too bad that this section of the game makes absolutely no sense, because it's one of the best battles and the constantly switching cover points makes for interesting game play, but in creating exciting game play, the game's internal logic is sacrificed.

Honestly, I'm surprised I kept playing after the journey through the giant worm. Outside of being pretty gross (You're crawling through a giant worm, why are there tickers?), it was basically a level of mediocre platforming and timing puzzles (two things Gears ain't great at to begin with), while having very limited actual shooting (you know, the thing Gears does extremely well?!) I want to be in the meeting where they thought up that level (note: this conversation contains spoilers.)