There are some advantages to going to a midnight launch.  Most of the time it's just getting to play the game for a couple hours that night.  With Gears of War 2 they were handing out cards with codes for a free Gears of War 2 theme for the new Xbox experience.  They also had a code to download a gold lancer for playing online.  The turnout for the game wasn't as large as Halo 3 but was easily over a hundred people at my suburban location.

First thing I did when I got home was enter the codes and download all the stuff I got in at the launch.  When i started playing I went straight into the campaign mode.  The game starts out with more story than the first and does a good job of catching up anyone who didn;t play the first one.  The first mission was classic gears fun killing grubs and being totally bad ass.  From there it goes to what I'd refer to a Call of Duty 4 level.    There is a whole lot going on with a ton of baddies to kill.  This is when you'll fight your first Brumack and it's kind of a pain in the but on Hardcore.  

I'll be posting a lot more about my experience as I go on.  I'm currently near the end of Act 1 and I may still be there until i figure out how to kill that Brumack.  The game looks incredible with a lot more detail and it runs a lot smoother than the original gears.  I have not tried much online but I will tonight.