Ok, i' m closing on the end of the main campaign and i' m increasingly impressed.
In the original GRAW there were no environmental effects and the lighting while nice really well done was a bit too much. In this game there is wind, smoke, rain, lightning etc and sun that shines through the clouds realistically, but one of the coolest things is that because there' s a large scale battle going on there' s loads of dark smoke rising everywhere and during the evening/night section the anti aircraft lights up the sky and you can see the highlights in the smoke. It adds an unbelievable amount of atmosphere.
Early in the game you have to take control of a mounted machinegun in a Blackhawk during a rainstorm. The rain looked great and everything but the thing that really struck me is that the rain flowed and trailed off the weapon when the helicopter was moving. It' s that kind of attention to detail that i love about this game.
Gears is stunning, but mainly because of the textures. GRAW2 doesn' t have as detailed texture work as Gears and probably not even Vegas, but it makes use of a huge selection of graphical techniques the other games don' t have and it has greatly superior lighting and particle effects. The explosions are simply perfect.
I just wish the solo campaign had co-op like Gears. That' d be cool. As it is the co-op is like in the first GRAW, only better.
Hahaha, i also like the inclusion of proper secondary weapons. In the PC version of GRAW you could have your assault rifle or sniper rifle/whatever
and a sub-machinegun. In the 360 version you were limited to a pistol. In GRAW2 on 360 you get to choose from a couple of pistols and a selection of sub-machineguns. It' s nice to be able to take a sniper rifle and have an MP5 or P90 just incase
I also like the inclusion of a shotgun and proper grenade launcher. It' s all good!