Oh I’ve been a bus bee lately. After picking up FarCry 2 and playing that almost constant, on friday I picked up Gears of War 2, and again played that to death.

When I got the game, the over enthusiastic salesman is Zavvi went on to tell me how ‘awesome’ the game is, and as a fool I actually asked him how he’s managed to play it through already, even thought it had only just come out, ‘Well obviously we can’t have it on during the day, but last few evenings we’ve had it out after closing, finished it.‘, now, I didn’t bother asking anything else ’cause I was too busy thinking, ‘Wow, must be a short game’.

Coming in at around 8-9 hours, it might be classed as ’short’ when you compare it to FarCry 2 (i believe 40 hours was the benchmark?) but it really is a truly remarkable 9 hours. Those fella’s at Epic have pulled the cat out the bag again and have produced a marvel of a game.

So, this isn’t a proper review review, just my immediate thought. I’m not really one to review a game after the first play through, that’s like reviewing a car if you’ve only driven it round the block. You need time to rip down the tires, get a feel for it, because you never know on the first drive, you might miss something truly amazing… or bitterly disappointing.

Obviously the first thing that hits you are the graphics, which are amazing, whether or not they are the best graphics on any game out there, i doubt it. But the texture rich environments and the character design are once again amazing. I had a few problems with frame rate (SHOCK HORROR!!) , mainly in the later stages of the game, with several different ‘explosions’ and bodies flying around the place, I had several moments when the frame rate just wasn’t quick enough. This also coincides with ‘freezing’ of the cinematic moments, this is probably down to my disc (but brand new out of the box?, tut tut), when for 1-2 seconds the screen, and sound would freeze, often resulting in ‘come in this is de-de-de-de-de-delta squad…’, a minor annoyance, but an annoyance none the less.

Despite those slight flaws, I found the play extremely enjoyable and well worth the hours put in (I wasnt doing anything anyways!). The story really did throw twist and turns, and some emotional cinematic scenes, one critic? Sort out the ending. They had it set perfect, MORE than perfect to end with an amazing end, but instead your left with a, roughly, 3 minutes, ‘Jerry Springer’-esc end. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is ok sometimes, but when you put the pad down and think, ‘Yes, a good 20 minute end here’, to then be let down is slightly disappointing. Oh, and it’s not really worth waiting till the end of the credits either, sure, it’s probably a big deal, but an additional 20 second audio isn’t worth sitting through credits.

I tried multiplayer, but the lobby seemed to disagree with me. So I can’t mention that, but considering I tried for a good 20 minutes and it didn’t seem to find anyone, I just gave up.

Videos etc. to come, along with a more detailed review, but got to fit my work, plus FarCry 2 in there somewhere, and I want to get my hands of LittleBigPlanet soon, soooo… I don’t know, hopefully not too long.