From what I can tell from trailer video of this game and getting to the halfway point in this game, Gears of War 2 builds upon the gameplay of the first title and the first game’s gameplay. In other words, the story of this game is part two of humanity’s war with the Locust army. The scope of the action is bigger by including new characters, more weapons, nastier enemies, bigger vehicles. And grander locales offer more action, more emotion and more thrills.

Another part of the scope is every major aspect of the game has been refined to create heightened, more immersive experiences. Of the experiences I encounter in this game, the ones I found to be quite thrilling were driving a Centaur tank through the mountains, fighting in the Locust stronghold, killing the Rift Worm from the inside and fighting the Locust during the evacuation of Jacinto in the final chapter. The few chapters these experiences took place in did give me a nightmare or two, but it was not enough to make stop playing the game.

The length of the story starting on the surface leading up to the drill site is not too intense, but once underground the combat gets really challenging. Since the Locust are an Alien race from underground, the game may start off above ground, but the majority of combat within the game takes place in the Hollow underground, and in the Locust stronghold.

The encounters in the hollow and in the stronghold occur around almost every corner and every few minutes, meaning the horde never eases off.  With all the violent language and fighting in this game, it makes the entire Gears of War collection more rated M than Call of Duty games in History’s Warfare, Modern Warfare, Ghosts, and Black Ops.

Sure, those games have some bad language and plenty of violence in them, but the Gears of War collection has way more than them all combined.

I cannot even count the number of times I have played the game. But what I do know is that I have not tried it out on the difficulty Insane yet, which is the toughest difficulty. To play the game on a difficulty like this means you will not survive unless you are an expert and you have beaten it on the other difficulties before Insane.

To play the game on its highest difficulty will push anyone’s skills to max, not to mention it could cause game rage if they are overdoing themselves in the game.

One thing’s for sure though: it is not all about winning, but having fun as well.