Gears 2 to have "best cover system ever"

Gears of War 2 has "the best cover system ever seen in the videogame industry", lead designer Cliff Bleszinski said in an interview with Eurogamer this week.

"I'd say about 90 percent of the time, it worked exactly how gamers wanted it to work. About 10 percent of the time, players were going into cover when they didn't want to," Bleszinski said of the cover system in Gears of War 1.

"We put some of those tweaks in a patch for Gears 1, we iterated on them for Gears PC, and now we're bringing it full circle for Gears 2. I think players are really going to love the system this time around," he added.

Key to the appeal of Gears' cover system were the game's claustrophobic level design, meaty enemy characters, entertaining melee combat animations and of course Active Reloads, which stopped things getting boring.

To see what else Bleszinski and his Epic cohorts have planned, check out our Gears of War 2 preview where we walk you through Assault, level two of the single-player campaign.

Alternatively, check out the rest of the interview with Cliff Bleszinski, which also features video of him and Microsoft's Kudo Tsunoda and gameplay footage of Gears of War 2.