You can say what you want about Cliff Bleszinski. Some love him and some hate him. I personally think it’s a little goofy when someone gives themselves a sweet nickname and then decides to quit using it only to get pissed off whenever someone else brings it up again. But, who really gives a crap, a guy can call himself “King Pimp Daddy Big Dick,” but if he makes great games he’s alright with me.

And, I know there has been debate on the relative “greatness” of “Gears of War 2,” as a game. Yes, to me the story was a little all over the place, but they may tie it all up in the end. And, yeah, the characters may be a little one dimensional. But, what gets me into “Gears” is the way it looks and plays, and this is where I applaud Mr. Bleszinski. For whatever you think about him or the game, he is not afraid to try something new and over the top. It is, in fact, these over the top moments of the game that I initially dismissed as gimmicky, but as a gamer, grew to love. The chainsaw bayonet from the original “Gears” was something I thought was kind of stupid, but like just about everyone else, after I sawed my first locust in half, I was converted. The same can be said about the various ways of finishing off downed enemies on “Gears of War 2.” I initially thought I would just shoot them, or maybe take time to do the occasional curb stomp, but when after a big fire fight, you see a lone locust trying to crawl away, there are few things more satisfying than pressing “Y” and beating his eyeballs into the ground. And, while these and many other moments are cool, there is one that is my “Gears of War 2” great gaming moment.

THE BRUMAK RIDE

While many have said the end of “Gears of War 2” was too easy, I don’t think many will deny that it was fun. Finally getting to climb atop and control a beast that you couldn’t even fight in the original console version and cutting through enemy forces like butter was extremely satisfying to me. But, there was something in particular about the Brumak ride that made it really stand out to me.

There have been many games that let you take the command of a huge fighting machine. But, in those other games, whether you were piloting a mech, Imperial Walker, or any other gigantic form of destruction, I never got the feeling that I was in the command of something truly massive, it just seemed like everything else just got smaller. I thought the game “Chromehounds” did it pretty well with it’s sound and scaling, but to me, the Brumak ride took this feeling to another level. What was done in this part of the game is what George Lucas did in the opening scene of the first “Star Wars” (and by first, I mean “Episode IV,” I’m sure as hell not saying anything good about “Episode I.”) He made the Star Destroyer in that opening scene bigger than the screen that the movie was on. The same can be said about the Brumak. The players point of view is fixed over the beasts shoulder, just like it is fixed over the main characters shoulder throughout the rest of the game. The result is a forced sense of scale in which we can’t even see the whole of the creature we are in command of. For the first time that I can remember, a game made me feel like a giant, and it was awesome. The Brumak’s thunderous footsteps, loud panting, and sufficient armaments sent one message to the enemies that had given me trouble throughout the game: “Now you’re all really fucked.” The Brumak ride is not the first time that you get to rain terror down on an enemy force in a game, but it was the first time you got to do it from a 36 foot tall snarling tank, and that’s why it’s one of my great moments in gaming.