[XBOX 360] Mindjack

 

 

 

Mindjack is a little known third person shooter from 2011
This game has an awful reputation and many people call it one of the worst games ever, if not the worst, ON metacritic it has a score of 1.1 out of 150 reviews.

I went into it thinking it would be really bad but something stupid to laugh at.
Luckily, the co-op still works so I played the whole thing with a buddy.

The premise is something like you're these agents in control of technology that allows you to hack into peoples brains and turn into them for a period.
I'm not too sure exactly what the story is, there are frequent cutscenes, and its actually kind of entertaining to watch with some decent voice acting and writing, but it was kind of in one ear out the other.

So its kind of a typical third person shooter of the era, its got some controls once again copied from Gears of War, like holding A to go into that running mode that controls like a car, A to snap into cover, blind firing, the whole lot. What it does unique is the hacking ability.
The way this works, is you can press a button to snap out of your current main character body, and you can go into any civililian body or captured enemy body. The main reason to do this, as far as I can tell, is to save your main character whenever they go down.

It has a revive mechanic similar to all the other third person games, once you go down, your buddy has to help you up. Well, you can help yourself up, by hacking into pedestrians and playing as them for a minute.
Its not really feasble to keep playing as other characters besdies the main characters, because the game will fail if both characters go down and are not revived within 10 seconds, so hacking into other bodies is only useful for saving the main characters when they go down.

You can also hack into any enemy you shoot at.
The enemies dont have health bars or anything, and if you shoot them too much they'll die
But if you shoot them just enough to get them into a downed state, where you can then press X to instantly from a certain distance 'mindslav' them into fighting on your side. And you can do this to as many enemies as you want, and they fight on your side indefinitely until the 'scene clears' and you move onto the next battle. This is a pretty entertaining mechanic, and feels overpowered at first, and like the game has no challenge, but soon enough the game starts to be pretty challenging because of all the bosses thrown at you that require you to shoot them with explosives/rockets while it just keeps spawning these regular enemies.

and there is a decent variety of enemies. You got standard soldiers, snipers, these weird spider mutants that are more a goofy annoyance than a real threat, flying robots that shoot rockets at you, giant mechs, etc.

The game is pretty generic, but at the same time its got tons of quirks of its own.
Like how it shows a kill log, as if youre playing a PVP deathmatch, but it shows the kill messages for every enemy you take down. Which is pretty damn satisfying and I prefer if more games had that.
And the fact that theres a psuedo leveling system, but it really does nothing at all. It unlocks these perks you can equip in 2 slots, and you can only equip them in the main menu, so you have to quit out of the game to even equip them.  stuff like more health, more accuracy, or strangely making your character twice as big.
Theres also these 'rules' you can unlock which is very odd, it like changes how the game plays, the 'rules' you can unlock basically just change the difficulty. But you can oddly only change 'difficulties' at certain levels, so we never touched this weird mechanic.

It also has this baffling mechanic of being able to drop in and out of any multiplayer game and choose your 'team' which means playing co-op or playing AGAINST the player and becoming an enemy. Who would want to do this? its like the game expects you to play through the campaign multiple times making it hard on yourself by allowing real players to become the enemies? i dont  understand how anyone would want to do that. So you have to explicitely make sure you select 'blue team' which is co-op whenever you join.

Its got other quirks like everytime you defeat a wave of enemies it will say ' Winner!'  and then force the co-op partner outside of whatever body they possessed, and turn into a floating camera just floating around until you wait for the scripted event to stop, then you press the bumpers to snap to the main character again and become them again. This happens frequently and just takes you outside of the game needlessly.

The length of the levels is strange too. They're called 'scenes' and a typical level will last less than 5 minutes. Its kind of a fun way to break up the game, it was more a funny thing than something good or bad.

The actual combat its self is pretty barebones. Theres really not that many guns, two different assault rifles, one full auto, the other burst, a few pistols, a sniper, a shotgun. Basically used the three round burst gun the whole game, except for this other odd quirk where every time you win a level/section you start the next one with only a pistol. So had to use the pistol a bit here and there.

The graphics arent anything amazing, all the locations look pretty samey and generic, just fighting on streets or in between lots of buildings, most of the game takes place outside or inside some office complexes, the game looks OK theres nothing really glaringly bad about the visuals though.

The controls are fine theres no major complaints, its responsive enough, the cover system is minimal gears of war influenced, it works but is clearly not very deep. Theres no way to crouch so you just have to press A to snap into cover.  Theres a roll mechanic where you can spam A to keep rolling like a maniac which helps getting yourself out of sticky situations.

The game is pretty short and we finished it in just two sessions. There was a boss part here and there which gave us some trouble and annoyance, some weird places where you'll get a checkpoint every 30 seconds, but then another section where you wont see a checkpoint for almost 15 minutes. Some boss fights like the giant mech where it isnt made clear how to take it down while waves of enemies keep respawning, but overall the game is nowhere near as bad as its reputation says.
Its a mindless co-op campaign shooter with campy voice acting, some funny one liners, a cheesy high-tech conspiracy story, and some kinda enjoyable shooting mechanics especially with the kill log  and trying to mindslave all the enemies into fighting on your side.
The game at first can be pretty confusing to figure out how it all works, "why do i keep turning into a floating camera this is stupid"  yeah, but once you figure out how it works the game is pretty painless and actually kinda fun. I dont know why everyone thinks this is like the worst game in the world, far from it, dont get me wrong its not a great game or anything, but its nowhere near a horrible one especially considering you can finish it easily in a weekend with a buddy.

6/10

[XBOX 360] Army of Two: 40th Day

 

 

 In the second Army of Two game, 'The 40th hour' this time things a little weirder.
The mechanics are a lot changed up from the first game.
No longer do enemies have those bars and icons over them,
All the controls are 'updated' to play more like Gears of War
You hold A to sprint just like Gears, you tap A to snap into cover, so many things feel like they abandoned a lot of what made the first game unique to try to become another clone of the era.
A lot of the original mechanics are still there, you can still take cover in the old way too, and the cover shooting acts mostly the same, but theres a lot of odd features and additions.
The 'select button' feature remains, telling you where to go, but it looks pretty ugly now like some stupid visor, and it highlights enemies and other weird shit.

Like in the first game, suppressing enemies and flanking them was a huge deal, but in this game it isn't as emphesized and is more like a mindless shooter. And in the first game there were tons of enemies that you could only kill by sneaking behind them , but in this game its kind of few and far between.

In the first game, the online co-op is permanently broken and disabled because of EA
But, fortunately, for some reason, in 'The 40th Hour' the online co-op works, but it seems like it shouldnt. It says the servers are offline, but then it allows you to host anyway.
So its a good thing I was able to play this whole game with a co-op buddy, cause this game has some serious flaws that make it much less enjoyable than the first one.

Though, are some good new features, like the Shop, which can strangely but thankfully be used at any time by holding Y.  You can buy weapons and attachments whenever you want. This is a big improvement over the first game where it awkwardly asked you in the beginning of the mission for upgrades, and then at random points in the levels, but if you accidentally skipped it or something you were shit out of luck. This game has the same quirk of the first one where it seems to give you way too much money and nothing to spend on it. Theres no real incentive to try out all sorts of different guns, besides if you're like a gun nut and have a hardon for that kind of thing or something. They all kind of feel the same and you end up slamming so many attachments on it anyway boosting the stats it doesnt really matter.
Also, you can pickup enemy weapns in this game, but you cant in the first.
So theres a few small additions that are actually improvmement,
However:

Most of the game is a massive janky, clunky, techincal disaster, and broken mess, and downgrade of the first game.
Where do I even start...

1) Theres no subtitles

2) Theres no audio controls for volume mixing. The audio is so awful and broken you cant hear ANY voices for 90% of the game. The music is way louder than everything else.

3) Because of this, we baiscally had no idea what the plot is about or most of the dialogue in the game. Just completely insane how they let this slide.

4) Worst of all, THE CONTROLS are some of the worst I maybe have ever seen.
Everything has an awful input lag where it feels like everything you press has a 1.5 second delay after it. Aiming becomes near impossible, it feels like you're streaming the game over a crappy internet connection and trying to 'remote' play it, its just that bad.

5) The game has severe framerate problems , most of the time it feels like its running at 15fps, frequently dropping to what feels like 10fps. This coupled with the awful controls leaves a dreadful experience

6) All the 'gears of war' influenced controls are just a clumsy mess, half the time when you want to snap into cover, you accidentally vault over walls, half the time when you want to pickup your friend, you accidentally vault over a wall, half the time when you want to NOT pickup your friend, you pick him up instead, it just goes on and on. None of the controls feel intuitive or good.
Even something as basic as using your weapon scope is some awkward Y+LB combination and the controls are so delayed and shit you accidentally end up switching weapons instead.
I could write a novel about how broken and clunky the controls are but i'll just say they're god awful.

7) And  the critical blow is that the game is completely a bug ridden glitchy mess. A significant portion of the time the checkpoints would just glitch out and would stop working. A few times we had checkpoints say "Eliminate all the enemies in the area'  and there were no enemies left, but it wouldnt progress. Turns out an enemy is stuck in the enviorment somewhere and you have to search around and kill his bugged AI.
Other times, the controls would completely break. One time it was like "press A to pretend to surrender" and then afterwards we were suppose to be able to shoot, but we were unable to use our guns and just got shot to death. This happened two times in a row, but miraculously fixed its self when I started sprinting and spamming buttons. Even the achievements are buggy and I didn't even get one for completing a chapter when I should have.

The difficulty curve of the game is pretty bonkers to. For the first half or so it was mildly challenging, we only had to restart a few checkpoints here and there, the game was almost even enjoyable, but then from missions 5-7(ending) the difficulty just got stupid. Almost every checkpoint in the second half we had to repeat 5-10 times. The game starts throwing dozens upon dozens of bullet sponge enemies at you, frequently doing bullshit things like spawning them behind you, ontop of you, or multiple RPG guys that one shot you before you can blink an eye. It starts to become a real slog and we got pretty damn frustrated at this point. Its almost like its not even challenging, but its moreso we were constantly fighting against the delayed laggy shit controls and abysmal framerate to be able to aim properly more than anything. To compensate for this, we end up buying 100 round magazines and basically just spray & praying the rest of the game because trying to aim properly was hopeless.

Some of the checkpoints in this game could give you nightmares. One of the levels towards the last half we played the same checkpoint over and over for literally an hour & a half. Inching our way towards hopefully seeing a new 'saving...' but getting one shot to RPG's or other bullshit or bad controls fucking us over. Then ontop of it once we actually did progress to the next part, we ran into the afforementioned 'fake surrender' bug and had to start all over again.
The whole game takes place in China and the locations are pretty generic and forgettable. ITs just apartment buildings/office buildings/streets the whole game. Though, there is one highlight level where you fight through a Zoo full of dead animals and elephants and stuff, that was kinda cool. Probably the best level in the game.

The whole game is a mess and seems like it was rushed or barely finished.
For example, youll be watching a cutscene then randomly you'll instead start watching a slideshow of some lazy deviantart comic book anime strips, what? The first game had pretty entertaining action packed high budget cutscenes, in this you get a bunch of awkward stupid looking comic pictures that looks like it was made by a 17 year old highschool girl.

This ontop of the fact that we had no idea what the fking story is about because of the broken audio, no subtitles, and extremely quiet dialogue just made for an awkward experience. I have no idea what the story was about.
This is made even worse by the fact that there are 'morality choices' where sometimes youl be confronted with Option A or B  (usually just something shallow like good or bad) and most of the time we didnt even know the context of what was going on. I dont really know what impact the morality stuff has, if any at all, but I guess it made for a funny brief discussion with my co-op buddy.


It's so dissapointing because with a little more effort, this game could be pretty damn good.
If this had a PC port, with 60fps, fixed control latency, slightly tweaked control mapping, a few major bug fixes, subtitles, fixed audio, audio sliders, it could be a solid game. But no, as it stands on the 360, it quickly became a headache to play. Heres to hoping the third game is better?

5/10

[XBOX 360] Gears of War 3

 

 

Gears of war 3 continues the story of course right off from 2,
The main differences in gears 3 is that it introduces many new enemy types
For the first few hours of the game you're fighting 'glowies' a new enemy type, its this mutated weird monster that glow brightly and you shoot the yellow part and they always explode. For the first bit of the game theres not much enemy variation, its just one 'glowie' soldier and some spiders. I wondered if the whole game would be like this.

Well thankfully as you progress through the game it introduces a lot more enemies. You do fight the classic Locust, quite a lot, but there is a lot of these annoying glowie enemies too. A lot of enemies in this game also have one-shot abilities, theres this guy that throws huge balls of goo at you that one hits you which can be more annoying than anything. You also have this weird tree that constantly spawns enemies unless you go around and pop all the balls on it.

Towards the end of the game you even fight some generic zombies for a bit, which just felt pretty shoe-horned in due to the times.


The guns noticably feel different in this game compared to 2. The Hammerburst even has ironsights and barely has any recoil, unlike 2 where it has a ton. The guns feel good and arent drastically different but it does seem like they were trying to make it more accessible to newcomers.


The game definitely has less filler on rails levels compared to 2 thankfully. 95% of the time you are doing what you want to do;  medium to big size battles in arenas shooting enemies. There a few sections here and there where you're on a turret on controlling some mech , and some weird underwater on rails level, but other than that its few and far between. Unlike gears 2, which had constant gimmicky vehicle sections.

The levels are also noticbly varied and more outside.
Most of the game is spent outside, not inside locations, unlike 2 which felt like you're just in  a cave the whole game.
You go through a lot of city locations , bridges, a sand level that has giant ants that come out of the ground like the antlions in half life 2, and towards the  end of the game some seriously impressive grand castles and palaces.


The characters this time around a bit puzzling, half the game you're playing as the classic team marcus, dom, baird, cole,  but then the other half you have these two females or some random guy named Jace, just seemed unnessesary and they werent as interesting as the original guys. you constantly have 2 AI partners with you the whole time, even while playing co-op. So 4 people on your team. Because of this, whenever you go down you can usually get revived pretty fast. The game is still quite challenging on the second hardest difficulty, its harder than 2.
Because a lot of the enemy types, the one hit mechanics especially from the glowies, and towards the end of the game this new enemy type that you cant damage unless you use explosives on him, it can be a challenging game.

Theres a few boss fights and one in particular is really hard, its this arena where a giant boss charges around at you , one hitting you, and in the second phase he makes lava wherever he runs which also one hits you.
Well the first time we did this I could not see the lava trails due to a glitch, this made us fail for like 2 hours straight which was incredibly annoying. We eventually restarted the whole chapter and did the boss fine, but wtf was not expecting glitches like that in a console game.

It's just another solid Gears game, its better than 2 as far as im concerned because of the greater level variety, not as many turret on rails sections, and fun gameplay. The game has some bad weaknesses at parts, mostly down to the new enemy types, the glowies arent especially thrilling to fight and are more annoying than anything, and theres a chunk of the game towards the middle where you fight boring zombies for an hour or two. The game ties up the gears story well and its got a lot of twists and turns and good cutscenes and funny dialogue between the characters, the last boss is a giant ant where you just shoot the yellow thing basically but still a decently fun fight.

7/10

[XBOX 360] Army of Two

 

 

 

Army of Two is a game that came out around the mid 2000s craze of third person cover based shooters, but this one has a sort of twist where its heavily focused around co-op, as per the name.

Unfortunately, EA shut down the online server sometime in 2011 so you can only play Single player with an AI co-op partner, oddly enough the second and third game in the series still works online though, so I just beat this first one solo.

The single player AI co-op partner isn't even bad though. You use the Dpad to tell him simple actions, left makes him follow you, right makes him hold position, Up makes him charge towards the objectives/enemys. You double tap the dpad  on each of these to change him from 'defense/gain health'  or 'be aggressive'. You can see your partners health bar in the corner which helps you determine when to put him in defensive or aggressive mode.

The co-op partner aint no slouch in combat, hes almost better than myself, when you tell him to Advance he just mows down enemies with precision, when you tell him to be defensive and regain health it usually works good. The only quirk is when you go down the AI partner has some issue with when to revive you / when to drag you into cover. And another issue where sometimes you'll tell him to 'advance' to the objective, but he stands around in odd places that make no sense, leaving you to try to figure out what to do. Its fine, the co-op AI is impressive and fun to interact with.

Theres 6 campaign missions, that take about an hour each
At the beginning of every mission you have an Upgrades shop, where you can buy a dozen or so different weapons, and do some attachments.
This system is pretty awkward and underdeveloped, though. You can only access this shop once at the beginning of a mission, and once or twice at select programmed places in the mission where it flashes on screen  "Would you like to go into Mid-mission shopping? "  other than those, you cant access this shop. It would have been better if there were armouries around the levels where I can access the shop, similar to Rainbow six vegas or something.

While the shop is a neat inclusion, it kinda feels like they were just copying the trend of the time, as its not that useful or deep honestly. Theres a money system and various objectives during a mission, but you get so much money that you stop caring because within a few missions you can already buy almost everything you want in the game. Strangely, there are 3 different 'armor upgrades' but you dont actually buy the upgrades at all, it just slowly unlocks the different armors and automatically equips them as you progress through the campaign.

 I basically only used the Ak47 the entire game, and decked it out with full upgrades, as I saw the statistics of the AK grow to almost maximum, i found no need to experiment with the other weapns, and since I only get a handful of opportunities to interact with the shop in the entire game, I didnt want to be stuck with using something crap for an hour on end. You also cannot pickup guns from enemies or anywhere in the maps.
Theres a primary sniper weapon, and a secondary pistol/SMG. The snipers feel really awkward and the aiming sucks so I never used it, and the secondary pistol or SMG is really only needed when you run out of ammo for your primary, which never really happens because the enemies drop bags of ammo which give you 200+ bullets at a time.

The combat is pretty unique though, its got all these odd little mechanics, like all the enemies have healthbars and different color icons to demonstrate how challenging they are, they all constantly take cover or try to flank you, their AI is pretty entertaining. Theres a suppression mechanic where if you just blindfire towards enemies it works to suppress them, you can tell your AI partner to hold position and just aggro them while you flank around corners to surprise them, this is actually crucical as there are some heavy armored enemies that can Only be killed from behind, and the best way to do this is have your AI partner distract them while you flank behind and take them out, its pretty fun.

Thats the main loop of the game, its a lot of cover based wack-a-mole gameplay, but between the ability to command your partner, and the satisfying gun combat, its a decent game overall.
Theres only 6 levels, and the obviously half assed filler levels are towards the end. Theres multiple hovercraft sections where you drive this awful hovercraft through the water with terrible controls, stopping in places and getting out to flip switches, like something stolen straight out of Half life 2, those sections were really shit and poorly developed, as you dont even know where you can get out of your hovercraft without looking at this weird Select screen that highlights the whole enviorment and you drive the hovercraft into the green highlighted place and it just slides into place, its just medicore.

Besides those few hovercraft sections the levels overall are pretty decent, theres a few places here and there where you cant figure out how to progress because of some switch in the enviorment (really, really bad during the hovercraft levels),  but other than that its pretty straight foward, and usually whenever youre stuck you can just hit Select and follow some arrows to the next place to progress, or tell your AI partner to Advance and he usually goes towards where to go.

The best level in the game is the aircraft carrier probably, graphics are decent for the time, I like the controls and the linear constant combat of the game, the 'story' / dialogue is pretty entertaining, its just two 'dude bros' just being hired mercenaries only in it for the money. They're always cracking jokes and talking about how they dont care about anything besides making their pay, its funny and entertaining.

I'm not sure how much different the experience would have been with actual online co-op, it would probably be better, but the mechanic to control your AI partner is pretty fun too surprisingly.
Atleast I finished the first one, now I can play 2 and 3 with actual online co-op, its strange how EA shut down the online for the first game but it remains for 2 and 3.


7/10

[XBOX 360] Castlevania: Harmony of Despair

 

 

 

Harmony of Despair is a game in the long line of Castlevania games, its very similar to the classic Symphony of the Night but this game has a unique twist where its specifically focused on co-op multiplayer

Theres 6 levels of gigantic maze maps where the goal is to find the boss and kill it. Theres also chests all around which give you new items , because the game has RPG mechanics as well.

You start off on level one going around collecting chests to find new equipment, you're pretty weak in the beginning and items play a significant role in how well you do. Before every stage, you have an intermission screen where you can buy new weapons and armor , you play the stages collecting gold to be able to upgrade yourself.

The game has a good first impression, the graphics and spritework is very impressive and visually appealing, the controls are great and its one of the few co-op sidescrolling platformer RPG type games, and I think the only co-op Castlevania game. The enemy designs and variety is just amazing theres so many different monsters and their animations and sprites are great

However the game has critical flaws which almost ruin the fun for me.
Level one alone took us more than an hour of just dying over and over and going back to the store to buy items, we had to grind.

Thats ok, but the real problem is the other levels.
The level design is pretty awful. Its like those paper maze maps where you draw a line to the end of the maze.
The levels start to be gigantic, with hundreds of different possible routes and rooms. And theres only one specific route which you need to take to the boss.
The bulk of the game is just spent wandering around from room to room trying to figure out what the correct path is to take to the boss, long after all the enemies are dead.
"Where the fuck do we go" is the main gameplay.
On all the levels except stage 1 and 6 you start off separated from your teammates which is strange, but we managed to meetup.
But just the level design ruined a lot of fun in this game.
Level 4 in particular was the worst level in the game, having all of these paintings you can jump into, which teleport you around the map at seemingly random, which wasted so much of our time. We would get so close to the boss, not know what to do next, jump into one of the teleport paintings, and get sent across the map to wander around some more. Just really boring.

The bosses are also really trial and error, its unlikely youll ever finish it on first attempt, you need to learn the moves and exactly what to do. We had to look up how to beat the boss of level 3, because it turns out you have to hit a switch somewhere and go stand on a bridge instead of fighting him at the first part.
We also could not beat the final boss and had to open a public lobby for some overpowered pro to come in and finish it for us.

So while all the mechanics of the game are great, the platforming, controls, its fun to collect gold and buy new items, its fun to get chests and get new gear, the enemys are cool and maps look good, unfortunately the level design ruins it with too much "Where do i go" moments.

5/10

[XBOX 360] Gears of War 2

 

 

 

Everyone knows Gears of War, the first game was revolutionary and a classic. and a much wanted sequel followed

In Gears of war 2 its a continuation of everything in the first game, theres a few new features and mechanics like meat shields and chainsaw duels among others.

Its the same game as GOW1, all the shooting and cover based mechanics are very much unchanged, its really just more levels and continuation of story.
Though, a ton of new enemy types have been added which are awesome.

Theres four difficulties, three are unlocked by default and the hardest you need to finish the campaign atleast once.
Of course, I played in cooperative mode on the 2nd hardest difficulty (hardest avalible by default)

So the levels can be actually hit and miss.
And honestly the first half of the campaign is underwhelming
You have a lot of the standard in the streets/apartment buildings levels which are decent, but a significant chunk of the campaign is these 'filler' levels. There is atleast 6 entire vehicle levels, be it flying these alien monsters, driving tanks, vehicles ,
Then you have another handful of boring levels where you just sit on a turret and mow enemies down for 15 minutes, or stand on a moving platform like a train. Theres a lot of that crap in the first half of the campaign and it just feels like filler.

Besides those moments, you have some really memorable and amazing segments, mostly and especially in the second half of the game, lots of weird alien caverns, and places that look like they belong in Quake 1 or something, some really crazy bosses like the sea monster and another level which takes place inside of the guts of some huge monster.

One of the greatest things about the game is the gigantic variety in monsters. It seems every 30 minutes you're always coming across some new variety of enemy to fight, they all look awesome and menancing and are engaging too. You got these ticking time bomb little crawling monsters, giant guys with flails/swords/shields, standard grunt soldiers,  sniper guys, Commanders with exploding crossbows, the list goes on.

A lot of the game is spent in dimly lit caves or city streets, which is fine, but it does lack a some exciting locations from time to time.

Sometimes you have these options in co-op to pick a path where you and your IRL partner split up , but usally theres another AI teammate to help you if you go down. These parts are decent for mixing it up, but sometimes the way to progress can be annoying and unobvious like tiny switches hidden on the walls in huge rooms.

A lot of the love for this game I think comes from the story and dialogue. The writing is genuinely entertaining and has a lot of hilarious parts and funny voice acting , just tough guys saying macho shit and being snarky. Its also a very emotive story, looking for loved ones and some crazy dark cutscenes like the one where the guy gets his brain warped and then commits suicide.

The difficulty felt just right and definitely a good game for co-op teamwork, the classic 'downed' mechanic where you crawl around and your buddy can pick you back up causes a lot of high tension moments.

The gunplay of course is very similar to gears 1, its unique and a lot of weapon variety, but it can feel like the enemies are bullet sponges while youre dumping magazines into them just for them to hide behind cover and regain health, not really a negative more a nuance of the gameplay, the enemies are almost as tough as the players.

So the first half of the game is a lot of crawling around generic looking caverns, dark apartment buildings, city streets, some turret/train sections though it has one unique level inside the monsters belly, so the first half could be a bit dull. But the second half of the game it started to pick up, except for the vehicle sections like the tanks and the flying monsters crap, filler filler.

The levels in the section have are very other worldly and nautical, and it has a few boss fights which really helped out the experience. You start to get introduced to more and more enemy types , and it gets more challenging and levels more interesting.
Like you start to experience levels that are like big open medevial castles and creepy palaces, deep into the enemy hive. The arenas start opening up, and you have these places where you can lower or raise cover to hide behind with switches. These parts were the highlight of the game as it had a lot of expansive combat opportunitys and large scale battle without the filler.

The graphics are also very impressive for a 2008 game and a lot of the models and draw distance and enviorments are great, especially the monster designs and that insane water boss, it just looks incredible no matter what the release date is.
Theres a few other bosses, like the one where the guy knocks down the pillars and goes into chainsaw battles with you, pretty high tension thrilling cooperative action there as well.

Then the last hour or so of the game is spent on this stupid flying monster vehicle which again, just felt like lame filler. These sections are even more boring in co-op because the co-op partner barely does anything just shoots the turret. After that you fight through the streets some more, then get into yet another vehicle section some giant mech, which felt like more filler, then you see the "final boss" where you shoot him for 10 seconds then the game ends.

Its a great co-op game, a decent Gears game, but personally I think some of the level design was under whelming and had a bit too much filler in my opinion to call a 'masterpiece' like a lot of other people seem to think it is. Its a classic gears game, the controls are great (albeit with some hiccups like accidentally snapping to cover instead of rolling out of danger, a problem in all gears games for me) graphics are very impressive, and the story, characters, and dialogue are engaging and fun.

7/10