Gears of Disappointment?

I've now managed to play around 3-4 hours of Gears of War and am honestly a bit confused about why the game is scoring so high. I do have to admit that the visuals are great, if you are into the whole "use lots of shaders" and "keep everything dark" sort of thing. Is it just me or do the characters look a bit too plasticy? However, with my old age, I no longer just am interested in games due to their graphics. That might grab me at the start, but unless there is some innovation or compelling gameplay underneath the pretty cover then I tend to get bored somewhat quickly. To me, Gears of War just seems to be a more-polished version of other games out there, namely Namco's kill.switch. Granted, kill.switch was not the greatest game ever but the whole "using cover a lot" idea was its biggest feature. GOW has taken that feature, polished it and made it look cooler but it still feels very familiar. I'm not going to give my full impression of GOW until I am able to play further into it, but I hope that some new gameplay mechanics emerge or that there are some intense moments that have me saying, "Wow!" As of right now, I am feeling a lot of repetition: watch cinematic, enemies attack, find cover, kill enemies, look for COG tags. And, I think we are now beyond the point where we should be awarding 9's and 10's to games that mainly rely on a visual components with little innovation underneath. Oh, the multiplayer is fun, but I attribute that to the people I am playing with rather than the game itself. I think Splinter Cell's 2-on-2 design was way more innovative and refreshing to play. Lastly, what is the deal with only having support for two-player co-op? Even SOCOM manages to allow four buddies to team up and save the day. Can't Epic even do the same with a powerful Xbox Live network behind it? Apparently not. Anyway, I'll hold me breath and keep playing. Hopefully, I'll run into some really cool stuff before I pass out from lack of oxygen.