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@Kyle-- I get the twitch appeal, and while a lot of games have copied parts of the cover system that Gears used (Uncharted and Mass Effect 2 come to mind), no one has yet included all of the moves you can do behind cover--or things like SWAT turns. That--especially in co-op--makes the game really fun to play. It's more in retrospective that the game begins to fall apart (for me). Like I said in the article, though, the third game will make it home sooner or later."
@Jason-- If we can go off the original Game Informer reveal, the PC version will be saved from this relentless 'streamlining'. And shaving a little of the 'moving into range' can't hurt, as long as the strategic view/ability to pause and issue commands is kept in place. Heck, even in Mass Effect I like (and need) to pause the action now and then."
I'm surprised people are complaining about lost value, because I thought there was more than enough gameplay in terms of time and content quality to justify $15. Besides maybe Dragon Age and Red Dead Redemption, DeathSpank is one of my favorites this year."
Glad I'm not the only one who enjoyed the first but thought the second was a let down. Are you up for the third?"
Hardcore as a definition is poor--in fact, I've wanted to write an article about casual vs. hardcore but struggled, because hardcore could just as easily describe:
1. someone who loves games (your 'passion') and plays a wide array of genres
2. someone who is entirely devoted to ONE game, e.g. World of Warcraft or Halo 3.
Which, of course, are two very different people. Passionate gamers are also well-rounded, and might even read books based on the games they love so much."
Personally, the absolute FAIL of the netcoding and back-end server lag at launch made me give up on Gears 2's multiplayer. I had too many other games to play to keep checking back. After a couple weeks of patches that STILL didn't fix the problem. . . I gave up."