Personally, I liked the fact that Gears 1 had virtually no story to speak of. I was disappointed to hear that they were trying to step up Gears 2 in that regard.
There's nothing wrong with going for the mindless action genre. Not everything needs to be an attempt to recreate a Dickens' novel; that applies doubly to the videogame industry that is so notoriously bad at creating engaging plot lines.
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