_____ of War?

After waiting far too long for Gears of War 2 to be mailed to my home, (props to Future Shop for waiting a full week before starting the shipping process and to the Canadian postal service for not working on Saturdays), I've finally played through the single player campaign. Aside from having an absolute blast, there's something I began to notice around halfway in: Gears of War 2 reminds me a lot of the God of War games.

In terms of level structure the games are quite similar, (especially once you go underground). Gears of War 2 and God of War both create breathtakingly epic environments, but put you on an ultra-linear, almost claustrophobic path through them. Both games utilize super-simple puzzles or minigames from time to time to break up the standard action gameplay. Both games involve rooms full of enemies where the exit will not open or appear until all enemies have been defeated. The civilizations represented in both Gears of War and God of War have a ridiculous fixation with switches and pressure plates.

(SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH) In Gears of War 2 the bosses also seem to draw directly from the God of War school of design. Seriously, taking down Skorge boils down to not aiming, not shooting, not moving, but just PRESS 'B' RAPIDLY. The bosses in the original Gears of War resembled classic FPS bosses, the sort you might see in Doom or Quake where you unload boatloads of ammo until you find a weak point, then unload more boatloads of ammo into the weak point while not dying, (think of RAAM or the corpser). In all honesty, while fighting the Leviathan, (though it was undeniably fun and one of the more graphically stunning enemies to date), I may as well have whipped out my blades of chaos and started yelling "ATHENA!!!!!."