I am an overmuscled, testosterone for blood ape - with a chainsaw bayonet on his gun.I have ploughed through a hundred, nay a thousand locust bodies to get to this point.


Wait no i did not. I am in fact a overweight bear with a square nose and a redesigned face much akin to a gargoyle. Welcome to the world of nuts&bolts where the once athletic duo has spent the last couple of years in less than pristine shape. The game starts with the revival of grunty the witch without a body anymore. Your first "challenge" in the game is to race the bouncing head around the local hill. No problem right?


Wrong i am infact so out of shape that the head zooms off into the lead as i am left wondering why i move slower then a snail in a full body cast. Thankfully i dont need to continue with this as the showdown is interrupted by L.O.G the lord of games. Who decides much like a child being ignored that everything must be done his way. Banjo being stupid as he is fails to take this chance to sit on the witchy head and crush it into a fine dust with his immense weight and goes along with the plan.


So we finally get to the game and are given a magic wrench. This allows us to build any vehicle we want however we dont have many if any parts so early into the game. In the games central hub zone "Showdown town" we set of in what can only be described as a shopping cart with a weak motor in the bottom. We cant go up steep slopes at the moment so were left with doing the tutorial levels.


Yes like every tutorial ever made they are a drag a huge drain on the willpower to keep going with the game. However there easily disbatched and bested despite the best vehicle i can make is the same slow as hell trolley from showdown town with better wheels and three engines. It fails to steer like anything else constantly ramming itself into the wildlife and anything else it seems to be able to find.

I am an overmuscled, testosterone for blood ape - with a chainsaw bayonet on his gun.

I have ploughed through a hundred, nay a thousand locust bodies to get to this point - and am considering fitting chainsaws to my muscly knees for that extra edge.
I've taken down gigantic monsters, flying reavers, and sneaky dodge jumping little sissy officers.
My balls feel so big i've had to order some new extra roomy pants.
I am Marcus Fenix.

And then i go online, and suddenly i am transported to a world where, heck i may look like marcus fenix - but i am infact his retarded younger brother - Doofus Fenix. Little more than a bloody smear on the ground waiting to happen.

Let's step back a bit - single player of GOW2 was fantastic - a cinematic spectacle of violence and wonder the like of which i haven't seen since Halo 3. Even better it was one i could enjoy co-operatically with a real person sitting next to me, as opposed to a mysterious American teenager swimming like a deranged sperm through the immoral ejaculate that is the Xbox Live community. Simply splendid experience.
And then, like a big brave boy I made the big step of trundling onto the online multilayer. I shall list my grievances against it thusly.

It takes around five minutes for it to find me a game - pretty much as long as the games themselves last. Unlike for example Call of Duty 4 (god praise you - i am not worthy), where the the occasional thirty second break is introduced more for the sake of preventing massive brain heammorages from too much awesome.

The maps are simply awful. The maps in the first gears of war were, generally rather intuitive - if a little simple. But their simplicity made them extremely visceral and more importantly - an awful lot of fun. GOW2 seems to be trying very hard to expand on the original in ways that didn't need to be expanded - heck if it ain't broke, don't fix it.