Well I'm a really big fan of Gears, the first one was my favorite game and I've got out of my ways and got GoW2 at midnight yesterday, here's my impressions.

The graphics while are more colourful and there's more on the screen than before but they are less polish, the textures are not that great and seems sometimes more of a Halo game graphics than a Gears one, feels more like a kiddy game than anything else at times.

The sound is still good, don't like the gun sounds but its different

Gameplay while the cover system is good and the tweaks are good the weapons on the other hand feels clunky and the shotgun is useless, the lancer is your primary weapon and the general feel doesn't seem as good as the first one. In the campaign is alright, you don't really notice since you usually don't use you shotgun in Gears1 but in multiplayer its defenitly different.

The multiplayer in my opignion is the biggest setback, the matchmaking is similar to Halo, you can't choose which map you want to play in, the weapons are unbalanced, the whole experience is clunky, you can't quit a match so if you have some lag going on you have to shutdown you xbox to quit. The shotgun is useless and laggy, the chainsaw is like godlike, you can't be stop with the chainsaw. The hammer burst just plain sucks and the other weapons are just weird in there own ways. Yes there's more weapons but the whole experience is not as good and did I say you can't quit ? The whole experience seems slower and is just not right, the graphics really lacks in the multiplayer and its a setback from the last one.

This game is the biggest setback I've ever experience in a sequel, while the campaign is still good, the multiplayer is useless and I feel letdown by EPIC in this portion of the game.

EDIT: Well after playing a few more hours of the campaign I will say that the graphics for some reason seems to be a lot better the more you play ;) The campaign is truly amazing and its something to not miss, will say that the campaign is better than Gears1. I'll play a bit more of multiplayer, maybe when I'll get used to the changes that it'll be much better.

Lol the one bad part about halo and its matchmaking system is that its so good that every other game feels shafted in the online dept compared to halo.... as far as the weapons go, the same thing happened with H3 compared to halo 2, they dumb down the weapons to make the game more NOOB friendly..

Matchmaking like Halo is a big plus for me. I am about to go pick up my copy and can give my impressions.

Are you playing a different game than me? lol

Granted the game has only been out for 1 day so any impression (including my own) should be taken with a grain of salt.

The graphics I think look really good. There is a reason why reviewers are almost universally praising them. I don't see how you can say they even compare to Halo in the slightest....have you even played H3 lately? It's a totally different art style and color palette. Sorry but as nice as the textures were in the original gears it was kind of boring to look at. A lot of the outdoor environments looked very similar and drab. This one trumps that in scale, variety, and overall quality.

The matchmaking is probably the BIGGEST improvement of the whole experience to me. Last night from about midnight to 5am I had friends coming on and offline and we played Horde and some public & private matchmaking. Inviting and setting up matches was extremely easy and quick. If anything was clunky it was the original Gears setup. I know you said it was your favorite game but compared to other games out there the MP implementation for setting up matches was mediocre at best. There is a reason why all the big MP games now (Gears 2, COD5, Resistance 2) are trying to emulate this setup.

As far as the weapon balance I haven't played enough to comment on that. The shotgun does seemed to be toned down a bit but to be frank it was pretty overpowered in the first game. Host advantage & shotgun DDR matches were annoying and I'm glad to see they attempted to remedy the problem. Epic actually spent months beta testing in house multiplayer so I'll take their word for it (at least for now) that the overall changes were warranted. They admitted themselves that the MP component in the first Gears was tacked on and things like weapon balance & overall gameplay mirror that statement. The few vocal people I've seen so far remind me a lot of the diehard Halo 2 players that complained about the BR changing in H3.

I'm sorry you're not enjoying the game though. So far I'm having a blast. Fable 2 and this have been my favorite games so far this year.

uaaaaaaaaoh... men.. i think you dont like gears..

this game is effin awesome. what are you talking about?

Accoring to my friend, its amazing, and the graphics are the best he has seen on a console(though he says Gears of war has better visuals than Gears 2, but says uncharted looks better than gears of war, strange friend I have)

Im really trying to get to play the game, then I can have the impressions on it, I really want to know how good the visuals are, and want to see them in person.

im playing it as we speak. its a game of the year contender.

Game of the year is still MGS4. Gears 2 and Resistance 2 are hella good though.

My impression of gears 2 after playing it for 2 hours. I am impressed with everything so far. Epic seems to have really expanded on the original in every way. I'm definitely pleased with my purchase.