I very much enjoyed the single player component and worked my way through it in co-op mode with Jason or Dan. It plays relatively similar to the first game (ie. enjoyable) but with a few new weapons and some prettier levels. You do have to be wiling to overlook a fair share of plot holes and about 95% of the dialogue will hurt your brain. Also be aware that Gears 2 has only slightly more of an ending than Halo 2.

Horde mode on multiplayer is good fun if you can round up three or four friends to play with, and is responsible for keeping me up well past 2 many a night (a mark of a good game.) Jason’s assessment of the rest of the multiplayer is pretty spot on though: it is broken. When Gears 2 first came out matchmaking effectively didn’t work; they’ve since improved that with a patch, but I wouldn’t call it fixed as it can still take an exceedingly long time to locate matches. Once you do find a game they have a tendency to end abruptly when the host leaves (which seems to be often.) Purportedly some kind of skill system akin to Halo is employed to select your opponents, but most of the matches I’ve been in have seemed pretty lopsided. The interface itself for setting up multiplayer games is clunky with a two-lobby system that is probably reflective of what is happening behind the scenes, rather than what makes sense to the players. Even playing with a group of friends is broken compared to Gears 1, in so far as you can no longer set up a map rotation or banter with the other team between rounds. This travesty seems the worst, to the point where playing Gears 1 with friends is effectively easer than playing Gears 2, (of course then you miss out on the new weapons and maps).  To have so many steps backward is a rather bad mark for any sequel, let alone one as hyped as Gears 2. My hope is that for Gears of War 3 they’ll hire a few people to design a multiplayer system that works and is usable, even if they have to lay off a few people on the team responsible for making sure it is “bad ass.”

The one sentence version: the campaign mode was fun but why struggle with lousy multiplayer when I could be playing Left 4 Dead?