Gears of War: Review'd

So Gears of War was a pretty sweet game, still is in infact, but now its younger, less fucked up, brother has come of age and been released into the wild. At first glance, you'd swear that the two are one and the same, that Gears of War 2 is, as many people call underwhelming sequels these days, Gears of War 1.5, but if you adhere to this theory then I'd probably have to tell you you're wrong. No, Gears of War 2 isn't exactly the 'bigger, better, and more badass' game that we were promised, but thats not to say its bad. Simply put, its different, and I'd probably say I like it, but there are issues. Hundreds of critics have talked about the campaign and said its wonderful etc.etc.etc., but when you buy Gears of War you're not thinking about the next eight hours you're spending with delta squad, you're thinking of the next seven hundred hours you're spending with the xbox live community. That said, I'm primarily going to address the multiplayer game.

Its funny how after playing a game for so long, the slightest tweaks to a minor detail in gameplay and visuals can feel like night and day. If you take that, and multiply it by about seven thousand, you get the difference in feel between Gears of War 1 and 2. Obviously they're built on the same engine, obviously they share gameplay mechanics. Then what am I talking about?

Color and Lighting: It has become a trend in the world of game criticism to rail games because of their color pallet. This wouldn't be such a big deal if game designers didn't listen to what critics have to say. In the case of Gears of War II, it seems that somebody got upset that people didn't like their color scheme and decided that things needed to change. Now there are all kinds of brilliant colors filling the screen that dramatically alter the mood that was established by its predecessor. For a game that seeks to up the ante, to present deeper, darker themes that pinpoint our fragile human emotions it looks to me like there may or may not be a magical unicorn shitting some rainbows included for all of those with widescreen televisions. In some games, being thematically and visually contradictory can work, but Gears of War doesn't have the necessary leeway created by its shallow story.

Weapon Tweaks: I've been playing the game for quite some time now, but initially I was pretty upset about the way some of the weapons have changed. The Hammer-burst is fine, and it feels like there may even be some good reasons to use it every once in a while, but some major work has been done on the lancer and shotgun. First of all, the chainsaw, ohhhh dear lord the chainsaw. In the original Gears of War, I considered using the chainsaw to be an art. To be quite honest, I was never very good with anything but sawing and some may think that thats really a weapon reserved for kids and noobs, but that really depends on how you use it, and how often. See, typically I would go into a match and rack up two to three kills per round without firing a bullet. Try that and see how easy that is. Its a psychological game with your opponent. There is much hiding, feigning and acrobatics involved. Typically, succeeding will get you kicked from the match, but isn't that really the ultimate compliment?

Anyway, the chainsaw has been bastardized in the second iteration. I will regularly walk straight through shotgun blasts, boomshots, etc. and chainsaw people in the face completely unharmed. I suppose there is added risk to using the chainsaw altogether now that you can be blown away/sawed while mid-saw, but once you've become discerning enough about when to use it, it becomes a weapon of tremendous power that completely turns the game upside down. In the original gears, getting shot while having the chainsaw raised will stagger you, but this mechanic no-longer exists, and it shows. Now, all the skill is in avoiding the chainsaw. Finding the perfect moment to melee a prospective chainsawer or being able to roll out of the way just before you get sucked into the weapons abnormally massive attach radius. One other gripe i have about the chainsaw is the inability to saw people while they've been knocked to the ground by a stun grenade. More than once I've been standing, revving over a fallen opponent to have them stand and challenge me to a chainsaw duel when in any realistic situation I would have torn them in half nearly five seconds previous.

The shotgun has been pretty considerably altered as well, but I've actually grown fond of its changes over time.

The map designs and their lighting mixed with the increased number of players has completely altered the online experience. Matches are quicker and more action packed, but require alot less tactical prowess. Over all it has lost a lot of its intimacy, something that made it stand out greatly from other games. I has a feeling, now, more akin to Unreal or Halo, particularly with its increased number of respawnable game modes.

Ultimately I do not hate this game, but it isn't the same gears that I grew so fond of two years ago. In some ways this is good, and in some ways this is bad, but overall its still an incredibly enjoyable experience that I'll probably be still playing when Gears 3 comes two years from now.

(I will not be assigning number or letter values to my reviews as I think they trivialize the personal tastes of the individual and draw attention away from the specifics of what is actually said in the review itself.)

Retroactive Review: The Dark Knight

I'm going to try and make this a regular segment and I want to say at the outset of this little endeavor that I do plan to review current things too, but the general idea of this will be that I will be reviewing something anything as some would say a day late and a dollar short. Short list of things to review: movies just out of the box office, old video games, newer video games once I can afford them, old pieces of technology, really this could devolve into me picking up some random piece of crap off the street and giving it a full rundown. Why the hell not?

Dark Knight: Alright now to get into the meat of the pudding. The Dark Knight was the "Blockbuster" hit of the summer that everyone and their mother went to go see(except my mother). Staring Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, Heath Ledger as The Joker, and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes.

I will come out and say that I really enjoyed the Dark Knight, and I don't think it is too far of a stretch to say that it was all the movie that Batman Begins wanted to be. The action was better, there was no "shaky cam" effect to make everyone want to vomit, there was actual on screen chemistry between Bruce and Rachel (bye bye Katie Holmes), and lets face it if you were not weirded out Heath Ledger's Joker well then I don't think he should have been the only one popping sleeping pills.

I want to make a point of this because I am kind of a gore make-up fan for lack of any better words. The Joker make-up was so fantastically stupendous made and I can give you at least 3 good reasons why: 1. If you had not been told you would have had no idea that was Heath Ledger under there 2. While looking completely different he didn't look "covered" and I mean it did not look like a mound of latex on his face it looked like a face that was disfigured. 3. And Even with out the "You wanna know how I got these scar's monologue his face was still creepy as can be.

The problems I had with The Dark Knight are still few and far between. Biggest issue for me was that Christian Bale continues to do his "Batman voice" like he is whispering sweet nothings in my ear in the most angry way possible. If a masked crusader were wandering the streets and came up to me talking like that I would probably laugh in his face and then he would beat me up. The second and much smaller issue is that I feel the character of Harvey Dent was rushed I don't mean rushed in an underdeveloped kind of way, but more in he went from charismatic prosecutor to gun slinging maniac in one day. :::SPOILER ALERT::: Now I have never had half my face burnt off or had my girlfriend explode in a building, but if those two things happened one day something tells me that the last thing on my mind would be to go out and flip a coin and decide who lives and who dies.:::END SPOILER ALERT:::

And the wrap-up part. THE GOOD! The Dark Knight was great they made a mess then cleaned it up, this movie looked a whole lot more like Chicago than Batman Begins did and The Joker made me nearly crap my pants. THE BAD! Christan Bale whispering angry sweet nothings in my ear.

THE SCORE::::: 4/5
Not bad at all. Wall-e was better but that's because Wall-e is the greatest movie of all time.




Interesting afterthought: They should continue with the Christian Bale Batman movies and at the same time continue to release garbage ones from someone like Uwe Boll. First it would make us enjoy the Christian Bale movies more and second well...It cant really be nearly as bad as Batman and Robin was...seriously

It gone...

Despite Matt R.'s desperate and shameless begging, I have decided to sell my Wii. Alright thats a lie, I've already sold it. I had actually been contemplating it for months, but had no reason to get rid of it until now. The holiday season is hitting its peak and with a massive imbalance of quality ps3/xb360 vs wii titles hitting shelves, I've found myself disenchanted with Nintendo's flagship console. I did what I had to do, and now the little white box is gone. Its a shame really, because there were still a few good titles I was looking forward to. Other-Matt still has his, so I'm assuming he'll still be rambling about it.

What did I do with the money? Gears of War 2 of course, which I'm thinking about writing a review for. Its a great game, but there are a few things that bug me about the multiplayer tweaks. I'm going to dwell on it for a day or two and perhaps one will pop up.
I also picked up Sega's Valkyria Chronicles which has some interesting art style and is full of innovative TRPG goodness. Also, the music is composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto (FF Tactics, FFXII, Ogre Battle, Odin Sphere, Grim Grimoire, I could go on forever) which these days is pretty much an immediate sell for me.

The rest of the goods I'm saving for the time being. I'm considering a few titles, namely Little Big Planet, Far Cry 2, and CoD: World at War.

Those games will have to wait a few weeks as between school, work, and trying to find time to play the games I'm working through currently I've barely got time to eat much less add to my collection.

Look for a GeoW II review sometime later this week after I get some more time with the multiplayer modes.

Third Parties learning to kick ass on the Wii.

Big deal you say right? Well the big deal is 1. Its Nintendo and all you hear from PS3/360 fanboys is the lack of 3rd party games. 2. These are some of the bloodiest games to come out on any console, not just for the Wii.(please show me bloodier I am interested) 3. One of those Third parties happens to be an old friend trying to dig out from a world of awful arcade style games that never happened to live up to expectations.

MadWorld


The only thing that could bring this all home for me is more zombie killing.
Goodmorning Capcom.

Dead Rising Chop Till you Drop


I am going to have absolutely no money this year.


Oh yeah! I said i wasn't going to focus on video games didn't I.

Holiday 08 What will I be getting?

The gaming season is pretty much in full swing by now with heavy hitting titles dropping just about every tuesday. What am I looking forward to playing?

Dead Space
Truth is, I've already played it and finished it, but that was mostly while passing it back and forth with a couple of friends. I'm looking forward to privately re-crapping my pants in the comfort of my very dark, very cold room, that is after I plow through a couple of other big titles

Fallout 3
Over the summer I finally hit 1250 gamer points for Oblivion on xbox live and with that I banished the game from my presence forever. It seems that Bethesda took note and decided they'd start ruining my life again, starting this upcoming tuesday.

Far Cry 2
Seriously huge game world and an incredible map editor.

Gears of War 2
Chainsaws

Little Big Planet
I've always not so secretly wanted to be a game designer, but I don't have the programming know-how to make it happen. This game gives a little taste, plus its adorable. C'mon, just look at it.

Animal Crossing: City Folk
I'm not so sure I'm going to be getting this one, as I'm not exactly in love with my Nintendo products anymore, but Animal Crossing is addictive as hell and I'm excited to see how this one turns out.

Valkyria Chronicles
Looks like a pretty solid tactical RPG with some slick visual design. Not a buy-on-sight, but definitely something to watch

Fable II
Another game that I've already played a decent amount, but not in the comfort of my own home. From what I can tell its pretty solid, but not sure I'm going to lay down the goods to purchase it for a while.

TGS: I didn't talk about it?

So TGS this year was not very impressive. No heart-attack moments or really anything beyond the expected. Most of what was shown was basically new trailers and gameplay for old games. Some of which had already been released. Yeap. Anyway, some other cool stuff happened like Bioshock PS3 was released and included this:



BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN???! Thus starts at least another year of wild speculations as to the plot of this game.

TGS---I'll probably talk about it.

Matt R. down there busted in my house the other day with a baseball bat and threatened to take out one of my kneecaps if I didn't start writing on here more often. I lied to him and said I would, and then we played some cricket.

Anyway, despite almost all of that being a total embellishment I'll be considerably more active later this week when TGS starts (Thursday)

I won't be there, seeing as its happening on the other side of the planet, but I'll be ravenously pouring though the web for any good info and let all zero of you know what I think.