There's a problem with Gears of War

[duckman2000]

And that is that there's really nothing out there that can compare to it, let alone function as a decent stand-in while waiting for the real deal. I'm psyched about Gears of War 2, but the only game that gives you that experience is the original. If I want to play COD4 but don't have access to the actual game, well, playing just about any other FPS provides some satisfaction. But that just doesn't apply to Gears. Watching that "trailer", there's this finely tuned brutality about it that is unique to Gears of War. So I played through the first one again, and now what? Is Dark Sector any good? I played the demo, felt sort of like shit. Is the full game any better?

[cool breeze]

I don't know what level the Dark Sector demo had in it, but the game is pretty decent if you want more some more Gears action.  It is a bit different in how you play it since it is less about hitting the enemies with a barrage of bullets and more about more well placed shots and glave throws.  The bad part is that there isn't any blind fire.  I would say that Dark Sector is a lot closer to Gears than Uncharted was (which felt really different despite seeming to have the same gameplay.

There is also Army of Two which really tries to copy Gears, but it isn't that good.

[duckman2000]

Yeah, I actually had real trouble with Uncharted at first, because I was trying to play it like I would play Gears. That really didn't work.

[duckman2000]

Yeah, I actually had real trouble with Uncharted at first, because I was trying to play it like I would play Gears. That really didn't work.

if you can stick with Uncharted it ends up very good - probably after level 5 or so.

Oh, I played it. I "got it" one my third try, which is when I realized that the game plays nothing like Gears. Not a bad game, nice production values and good action. Don't really get the insistence of people like kittonwy that it's an icon of greatness, but not a bad game. It's nice to play games from really experienced developers, everything works as expected.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Until the damned trigens appear.

[close]

[pilonv1]

The people who think Uncharted is great also probably list stuff like The Mummy and National Treasure as their favourite movies. They're just after shallow thrills.

If I was a real troll I'd tell you to play kill.switch loul.  But as said Dark Sector is your best bet but I'd rent only.

[duckman2000]

The people who think Uncharted is great also probably list stuff like The Mummy and National Treasure as their favourite movies. They're just after shallow thrills.

If I was a real troll I'd tell you to play kill.switch loul.  But as said Dark Sector is your best bet but I'd rent only.

Well, there's nothing wrong with good action adventure, at least not when it's this well designed and pretty. But yeah, I wouldn't call it the Indy of video games. The characters were well designed and acted, but I can't say any of them were all that memorable. Generally, it felt more like a homage to (pulp) action adventure, as opposed to a great standalone adventure experience.

[AdmiralViscen]

Kill.Switch and Winback!

Gears is so derivative dude!

[Great Rumbler]

The problem with Gears was that the single-player ended right when it should have started ramping up.

[MrAngryFace]

The problem with Gears is that it was boring

[Mupepe]

The people who think Uncharted is great also probably list stuff like The Mummy and National Treasure as their favourite movies. They're just after shallow thrills.

If I was a real troll I'd tell you to play kill.switch loul.  But as said Dark Sector is your best bet but I'd rent only.

wrong.  i hate those movies and uncharted is awesome

[duckman2000]

The problem with Gears was that the single-player ended right when it should have started ramping up.

Really? I thought it was pretty good length, and pretty well trimmed too. The ending felt a bit weird, but a massive explosion is more than most games send you off with these days.

Kill.Switch and Winback!

Gears is so derivative dude!

I'm the only person I know who liked kill.switch back in the day. I don't think it would hold up very well though. :/

[Great Rumbler]

The problem with Gears was that the single-player ended right when it should have started ramping up.

Really? I thought it was pretty good length, and pretty well trimmed too. The ending felt a bit weird, but a massive explosion is more than most games send you off with these days.

It only took me about six or seven hours to beat, that's way too short for me.

[duckman2000]

The problem with Gears was that the single-player ended right when it should have started ramping up.

Really? I thought it was pretty good length, and pretty well trimmed too. The ending felt a bit weird, but a massive explosion is more than most games send you off with these days.

It only took me about six or seven hours to beat, that's way too short for me.

To each their own, I suppose. I've really come to treasure short but well paced games, and having played the PC version of Gears, it's pretty clear that what Epic decided to cut from the game would have only been to the detriment of the game experience, added hours be damned.

[Great Rumbler]

The ending just felt a bit flat to me. Everything up to that point was great, though.

[hyp]

i laugh at anyone who played gears for the story.  and i can definitely see it being boring as a single player game.  the co-op made it goty 2006 for me (or was it dead rising), but if co-op didn't exist it would've just been a decent third person shooter to me.

[duckman2000]

The ending was a bit irritating as it again hinted at something greater going on with the story, which was of course completely disregarded throughout the actual game. The base storyline, the plot, really isn't bad, they just seemed generally uninterested in communicating much of it.

[cool breeze]

The story in Gears actually wasn't terrible at all, it was just that Epic knew that their audience would rather curb stomp some bitches than try to understand and deal with it.  I think the way they went about it was much better than how the Halo 3 story was handled.  Halo 3's boring and uninteresting story got in the way of gameplay and forced you to play through a shitty anus level and have lame flashes that slowed everything down, yet after all that they still didn't tell you a proper story and to understand it you needed to read terminals and all that shit.  Gears's story didn't bog down gameplay, but it was still there if you wanted to think deeper about it.

[duckman2000]

The story in Gears actually wasn't terrible at all, it was just that Epic knew that their audience would rather curb stomp some bitches than try to understand and deal with it.  I think the way they went about it was much better than how the Halo 3 story was handled.  Halo 3's boring and uninteresting story got in the way of gameplay and forced you to play through a shitty anus level and have lame flashes that slowed everything down, yet after all that they still didn't tell you a proper story and to understand it you needed to read terminals and all that shit.  Gears's story didn't bog down gameplay, but it was still there if you wanted to think deeper about it.

Most of my dislike for Halo 2 stems from Bungie deciding that its shallow, artificially convoluted and largely stolen story was worth giving the majority of the spotlight, and the game suffered because of it. Whereas in Halo CE, the story was good enough to serve as a vessel between great battle scenarios, and was given the space that it deserved. Although it seems as if I'm in the minority in having that opinion of the Halo franchise.

I still don't think the story in Gears was explained well enough though. It would have been alright if there hadn't been the occasional "slip" where the story was suddenly presented as being very important.