On the easiest difficulty level, you can breeze through the game in about seven hours the first time through. Your regenerating health system is generous, to say the least. Enemies are generally stupid, standing out in the open with a common death-wish. And your weapons cause considerable damage.

Not so on Hardcore difficulty. Enemies are aggressive and will attack your weak positions. You will be flanked. You will be pinned down. Some enemies will wear helmets, protecting them from head shots from the sniper rifle. And up close, it will be you who gets chain-sawed. Yes, the Locust are a mean bunch, and beating Gears on hardcore is a gaming achievement anyone could be proud of.

And then there's Insane. Insane is, well, insane. I couldn't get past the first chapter, the training chapter the first ten times through.

The game defaults to the easiest setting, called casual. On this setting, taking cover only becomes important when you're up against heavy odds or later in the game, when the enemies get tougher. The middle setting, hardcore, feels just right at first--you need to take cover, but you can usually pop up and take shots without immediate punishment. But near the tail end of the game, both difficulties ramp up quite a bit. Hardcore starts to get a little unmanageable. Casual gets to be about as hard as the hardcore setting is near the beginning of the game. And once you unlock insane, you'll find that it's aptly named, though not impossible.