David Houghton - Content Editor, GamesRadar
The excitement about Gears Of War 2 for me comes fron the potential of all the things it could fix from the original game. The first Gears was a very good game, but after a while it definitely began to feel a little one-note and limited. That's understandable, given that Gow was the first outing for the Unreal Engine 3 and technical considerations were probably as big a deal as game design, but now that that side of it's up and running, I want GoW2 to seriously build on the foundations of the first game.
Thankfully, if they make it into the game, the things we've seen in this week's tech demo have already ticked quite a few of the boxes on my wish list. Much more varied environments? The water demo hints that we might get them. Properly destructable scenery that really adds to the gameplay? Yes again. I want to blow the hell out of combat environments and shape them with my gunfire. I want to gradually blast enemy cover apart and have the same thing happen to me, forcing a whole new level of tactical play. And it looks like that might be possible. And most of all, for the longest time I've wanted Gears 2 to throw some truly epic battles into the mix. Massive, Lord Of The Rings level warzones I can work my way through, or that would maybe even allow me to switch between three or four different groups around the battlefield to direct the fight on an even greater level. I'm probably getting way ahead of myself here, but with all that in mind, seeing that legion of "flocking" Locust put a big smile on my face.
This might make me unpopular, but I honestly wasn't looking forward to GoW 2 anywhere near as much as most people a week ago. Having seen the way things may be going though, I'm now officially keeping a very close eye on it. And if they can use that meat cube technology to get rid of the comedy balloon corpses from the first game, then all the better.
Paul Ryan - CheatPlanet Editor, GamesRadar
The most important part of any of this is the combination of chainsaws and the new meatcube jiggilization tech. Gears let you saw through your opponent, what other jiggly things will we be sawing through in Gears 2? - hopefully, a whole hell of a lot of things.
Chris Watters - Former Intern, GamesRadar: The destructible scene is probably the best bit because, seriously, more shit should explode in videogames.
Shaun McInnis - Former Intern, GamesRadar: I haven't actually been paying much attention to the Gears stuff... I'd love to give you my opinion on Wacky Races: Crash & Dash for the DS, though!
