As good of a game is Gears of War 2 is, it falls short in many areas
Graphics - The game's graphics are incredible. They are a technical masterpiece and it's great when you shoot at a wall and pieces of the wall fall off. The physics engine has really gotten better and the game looks more crisp, cleaner and nicer. One change I noticed was that in Gears of War 2 they added more color into the game, it's more vivid and it sometimes comes off as "strange". The COGs' armor used to be a dull color, but now it's bright and somewhat uglier than the previous armor.
Sound - 80% of the sounds in Gears of War 2 have been re-recorded. This is good and bad. A lot of the guns feel different such as the lancer. It makes sense to change a gun's sound to make it sound better, but what I don't understand is why they changed some of the sounds that they did. Storywise why does the lancer sound soo f'in different in Gears of War 2? I liked the sound of the lancer in Gears of War 1, it sounded unique, now it sounds like some automatic assault rifle in Rainbow Six Vegas 2. The voice acting is still great and the music is better. Change can be good, but it can also be bad. The sounds in Gears of War 2 even out to be equally good as they are bad. If you play Gears of War 1 and then you play Gears of War 2 you'll understand what I mean.
Gameplay - The gameplay mechanics are basically the same. What's different now is when you jump over a barrier it's much faster, the game is still in third person but it's zoomed out more which makes the characters seem smaller (I hate it), the smoke grenades have the ability to knock people over and they don't really leave smokescreens anymore, they're basically like a flashbang without the flash, grenades can now be stuck to walls which is an interesting addition but I wish you could take the back off because while trying to frag tag this does get very, VERY irritating when you frag tag a wall and you kill yourself because the enemy sets it off and you're closer to the radius of the grenade, there are new weapons but you'll find yourself using the weapons from the first Gears of War, and there are more executions and you can also use downed enemies as meat shields.
Online - Online gameplay in Gears of War 2 is very different than Gears of War 1. Only thing similar are the guns and the voices of the characters, even the characters seem different. Gears of War 2 attempted to copy Halo in the match making format of online gameplay, but this ruins what Gears of War had which was when people hosted what map and what game style they wanted to play, now you cannot do that you HAVE to do match making and it's all off voting. So good luck playing whatever mode you want to play because the odds are always against you and you'll end up playing some mode you won't want to play. Even as bad as match making is you can now set up your own parties and bring your friends, wait a second do not bring your friends. Match making takes about 5-8 minutes to find a match. The longest it took me was 14 minutes and I finished a take home test while I was waiting for a match with my friend. He drove and picked up his girlfriend, came back and the game was still finding a match. It's ridiculous, it really is, I actually hate playing online unless it's "Horde". The game mode Horde saves Gears of War 2 from becoming the next popular game to be returned at Gamestop. Horde is a fun mode where you face 50 waves of Locust, you and your friends can work together to survive 50 waves and this really is fun, but time consuming. Play it with your friends in a private match. If you play Horde in a public match, when you lose there's no starting over and the game just CUTS out. You'll just return to the lobby screen in less than 3 seconds, so have fun making friends online because it's hard to keep in touch with people. In Gears of War 1 the game never cut out and you could talk to people after a match ended and then you could set up your own match just by talking to people. In Gears of War 2 there is no talking, it's very fast paced online gameplay that gets you in and out as fast as possible.
**What I hate most about Gears of War 2**
(smoke grenades because they knock you over and everyone uses them and I also hate that fact that...
They got rid of 4 vs 4 online gameplay. That was the reason why Gears of War 1 stuck out. It made you work together as a team and you needed your teammates otherwise you wouldn't make it.
To be honest I want to just get the achievements for Gears of War 2 and go back to playing Gears of War 1. Gears of War 2 is itself a great game but it lacks in too many areas and in result isn't as good as Gears of War 1. If you're a fan of the series you should get Gears of War 2 but do not expect to be blown away by the online gameplay.