Whilst the first Gears of War game left somewhat of a good impression on me, it’s fair to say that it suffered from Halo Syndrome and lodged itself into part of my brain that was easily glazed over after a month or so. Apart from the basic details I can’t actually recall in much depth any part of the original, and hence it was with a slightly weary eye that Jay and myself kicked off our multiplayer co-op campaign about a week ago. Ahead of us lay ten-or-so hours of shooting, shooting, ducking a bit and shooting, which is why I have come out the other side so surprised that I enjoyed it so much.

Kicking off where the previous campaign ended (or thereabouts), you once again step into the slightly generic boots of Marcus Fenix and his bestest buddy Dom Sanchez as they chew bubblegum and kick Locust arse at every given opportunity. In general it all works pretty much the same as the first game did and there’s nothing wrong with that at all; Gears 1 was a solid, enjoyable shooter with a heck of a lot of spit and polish, so there wasn’t much that needed to be done to the basic mix in the first place. What they have done is add a couple of little tweaks here and there and dolloped a couple of vehicle sections on top, and it works very nicely indeed.

As with the first, the name of the game with Gears 2 is cover. Fighting the Locust head-on is a sure way to reach the Game Over screen quicker than fat guy reaches for a pie, so via deft use of the A button you can duck and cling to pretty much and piece of scenery you see to hide from the shower of bullets trying to breach your grizzled flesh. The original Gears was by no means the first game to do this, of course (heck, Rogue Trooper managed it back in 2005), but it’s an entertaining way of going about your shootery and adds a good dose of tactical skill in there.

Last time round, finding a decent piece of cover simply meant holding out and waiting for the slightly simple nature of the Locust troops to reveal themselves before capping them. This time around they’re slightly more of a tricky proposition and will run for new cover, lob grenades and dive around in an attempt to vex you, the upshot being that every encounter now feels more like an actual battle rather than a glorified game of Locust duck hunt.

A couple of other new features have been added in to combat this time around too, such as the ability to pick up a downed enemy and, rather than stop them into the ground, use them as a handy bullet shield. Should you find yourself low on cover (and hey, it happens) then having a handy Locust solider on hand to absorb the pain for a short time can make the difference between life and death. Another neat touch is that when downed yourself you can now crawl for cover and ask for assistance, which comes in particularly helpful when someone (not naming any names JAY) accidentally flicks a switch to lower your cover mid-fire fight. Buffoon.

Another thing that seems to have been tinkered with over the game’s five levels (each divided across five chapters) is the sheer variety of weaponry on hand, with rifles, pistols and shotguns scattering themselves around. The chainsaw rifle is back again and still particularly useful, but as we found on one particular section of the game it can be rather too useful for its own good; having spent a good five minutes being teased about being flooded by a series of nasty looking enemies, myself and Jay then managed to literally cut our way through them all by running around holding the B button.

Still, apart from the above the overriding positive you can take away from the single player experience in Gears 2 is that it’s bigger, better and offers much more of an emotional trip through what is supposed to be humanity’s last stand. You often find yourself in massive gun battles as supporting troops try to overturn the Locust around you, and on more than one occasion you are put into situations where you are actually trying to help others as well as yourselves. If Epic went into Gears 2 with the plan to stretch the boundaries of the story out to widen what was, at times, a pretty narrow corridor of storytelling in the first game, they hit the nail on the head.

Something that almost works as well is the character development. In the first game Marcus and crew were decidedly flat and pretty difficult to attach yourself to, but this time around a bigger degree of care has been taken in spending a bit of time exploring Marcus and Dom’s backstory. One complaint that is raised as a result, however, is that half way through the game the thing pulls on the heart strings and then almost immediately seems to drop the angle that it had built for itself, with a particularly tragic plot-hinging incident going unmentioned until the end having spent a good few hours being built up to. As a whole, though, one comes out of Gears 2 with a lot more attachment to Marcus and crew, and the experience flourishes because of it.

Another thing that adds greatly to the pacing of the game are the above-mentioned vehicle sections, which break up the careful progression of the on-foot stuff with a chunk of wanton destruction. These are not necessarily limited to just driving cars either and as much as I would like to spoil the fun and let you know some of the more impressive moments later in the game I won’t, suffice to say that they’re hectic and as action-packed as you’d have wished.

All of the above takes place in a visually resplendent world, which takes the (often criticised) greyness of the original and boosts it up a notch. During your time trogging through the chapters you’ll come across some horribly gooey organic settings as well as the shattered remains of the world, and one particular part of the game sprays so much claret at you that your characters end up looking like they’ve just lived through a particularly nasty explosion in a tomato sauce factory.

Of course, once the single player mode is done and dusted you have the multiplayer side of things to work through, and this time around there’s a couple of new modes to get stuck into alongside the excellent co-op campaign, which benefits to a degree from allowing you to split into two and complete separate level sections. Having completed the game, though, you get the feeling that had this happened on more occasions and had the game made more of these rather than simply making them relatively short detours then it would have been all the more impressive. Still, good fun it remains and on harder levels you really do reap the rewards of having a human ally alongside you.

The other multiplayer modes are a great blast too, with Horde being my initial favourite. Pitching you and up to four others into a battle against waves of Locust, your task is simply to survive as long as you can before the odds stack too far against you. With a group of mates this can become laugh-a-minute stuff as you cover each over and rush to a friend’s aid as he crawls toward you, and it’s testament enough that even though I am not someone who particularly enjoys much in the way of multiplayer gaming, I ended up playing it for well over two evenings without getting bored.

Likewise, the other modes provide some fantastic entertainment to keep you logging up the Live hours. Whether it be the frantic Capture the Flag nature of Submission or a two-by-two game of Wingman, there’re plenty of thrills and spills to be involved in, whilst the maps are much more involving and sprawling than they were in the first title. It’s not hard to see why the first Gears game was continually one of the most popular multiplayer titles on live, and by the same logic it isn’t hard to see the sequel’s expanded multiplayer offering picking up the baton and running with it in months to come.

In fact, it’s safe to say that the entire product takes that same baton and moves Gear up a few… er… gears by expanding upon the story, padding out what were slightly hollow characters and adding a few well-placed changes to keep the thing feeling familiar but fresh. With the added bonus of a compulsive multiplayer offering heaped on top, it’d be a surprise if that little grey disc with the stained red front you have spinning its way around the inside of your 360 wasn’t a regular fixture until the concluding episode in the trilogy is released. Colour me one pleasantly surprised critic.