Gears of Blah

Let me begin by saying I've never been fond of GoW. So for those of you who think this blog is going to dis Gears, you're absolutely correct. I know the objections I'm going to hear already; 1 You haven't played enough, 2 you're just not good at it, 3 you never gave it a chance, 4 you're ugly. Well, let me answer these premptory critiques.

1.) I played the devil out of GoW 1 and hated it. I played the bejesus out of GoW 2 and hated it except horde, and that got old fast... And I played a solid 5 hours last night in every mode available, and hated all but two modes; Horde and Beast modes. I have a feeling they're going to get old fast too.

2.) I generally do well in almost every FPS. GoW is no different. I played 5 hours last night and after getting re-used to the controls, I was kicking ass with no problem. The fact I was beating it with no difficulty is probably a reason I'm not thrilled with the game.

3.) I played the heck out of GoW 1 and GoW 2. Hated em both, but played anyway because that's what the majority of the people on my Friends List played. I borrowed the game from my brother last night and played for 5 hours. Not only did I play for 5 hours straight, I played every gametype available and some of the campaign. 5 hours is enough to know the game hasn't really changed,

4.) That's not what your wife and/or mother and/or sister and/ or legal age daughter said last night. Hell, your dad even complimented me while he sat in the room and watched me with them.

So with that over with, let's commence the GoW bashing.

This game is the same. Let me emphasize this with some caps...THE SAME! They added a new game mode which is just the opposite of the old game mode and essentially the same deal. They changed the enemies that you fight...Big whoop. You still kill em the same way. But in the end GoW 3 is just GoW 1.3. The same problems I had with the original GoW are still there. That the friggin A button is the same to run as to take cover drives me nuts. Get next to a wall and you're screwed. "What's this? I'm running away from some dude and I get stuck on a wall that's parallel to him? Better bend over and kiss it goodbye."

Host still gets a big advantage. It's still more than any other game I've ever played. The first GoW was really bad, and they've improved upon every version so far, but it is still quite evident by the extra rate of fire the host gets and his ability to get in the actual game first by about 2 seconds. Some of you will say, "But it's no worse than Halo or CoD." Wrong! Double Whammy for you, sir or madam. The host advantage now in Gears is akin to the host advantage Halo 3 had....not Reach. You'll also say anything is better than CoD's crap connections...Wrong! Do not pass go, do not collect $200. In CoD your connection to the host was a toss up. Sometimes you might not have host, but you could still kick the host's butt because he couldn't keep up with you. Sometimes you had a close connection to the host and any difference to said host was undetectable. In GoW, none of these things matter. When you are the host, everyone else is at a distinct disadvantage.

The campaign story mode is made for morons. What's this you say? "The story mode is fun and makes me laugh." If that's the case, you are the weakest link. Goodbye. The story mode has about as much plot line as Plan 9 from Outer Space. Plan 9 was so bad it was funny. Gears is so bad I wanted to jam an ice-pick in my eyes and ears simultaneously, but I only have two hands. It's still a 50/50 shot which I'll choose if I ever play it again. The dialogue makes no sense and is redundant. "Hey, let me touch my two fingers to my ears so I can hear some blithering idiot tell me something I don't already know." Thank you Mr. Redundant. A child could've written this game and come up with something better. Michael Bay could probably write something better...and that's saying something. On top of this, the situations make no sense. If you think GoW campaign scripts are good, just stop and listen to it for a second. The ask some questions about why these guys are where they are. Like in the first scene, why the hell is Baird in some dumb city looking for food when there's food on the dumb ship? Why is he expecting some poor survivors to give him some food if they are starving? Why is there still a grocery store less than half a mile a way from a large colllection of survivors that still has food in it? Why are these idiots on a boat? How the hell did they decide a boat was the best place to be? Lord, I could go on.

The campaign, even on the hardest setting, is still easy. You now have so many companions that as long as you don't stray to far away from your group, you'll always be revived and never die. Running out of ammo is never a problem because the ground is littered with guns. I did 3 scenes by myself and only had to be revived once, and that was a freak occurance caused by me running into a dumb wall at the most inopportune time...which is, of course, when you run into walls in this game.

But hey, if you liked GoW before, you're going to like it now. It hasn't changed, so there's going to be more of what you liked. The same goes for if you hated it before. There's going to be more of what you hated. If you were ambivalent to it before, you won't find anything new to warrant a new purchase. If you must buy it, buy it used or for real cheap.

So now you know how I feel. Let the flame war begin!