My Gears Review and other ramblings

Overall it isn't that much different from Gears 1.  However it is different enough to warrant buying it.

I didn't play multiplayer much on the first game because of two major issues I had with that.  First is the artist direction of the game.  With everything being shades of grey or brown everything looks the same.  I had a difficult time distinguishing friend from foe.  They solves this in Gears 2.  the Gears have a distinctive blue color scheme, the locust have a red scheme, and the levels actually have color.  That's one thing I noticed about single player, especially once I got to the palace.  There's a bunch of color.  It isn't as bright as UT3 is but it is enough to not look dull.

The other issue I have with Gears is the weapon balance.  UT3 has great weapon balancing.  You'd think from the same engine and makers Gears would.  Nope.  They didn't fix it in Gears 2.  I have two problems with the weapons balancing.  The power weapons are so powerful people rush to them.  The team that has control of hte power weapons usually win.  The other is the default weapons have a huge difference in power.  I unloded an entire lancer clip into someone.  Yes, the entire clip, not a bullet missed.  The perosn was in cover but I was on the same side of the cover as him.  He got up, turned to look at me, and one burst of the hammershot and I was down.

However, this time around Epic did do some major improvements.  First the party system and general menu mechanics is awesome.  It's really easy to get people together and setup games.  The "What's Up" view of your friends list is awesome because it highlights the people currently in the game.  It lists everyone else as greyed out.  However, anyone online and not in the game will be listed first.  This makes so much sense I think other games will copy this.

I love the addition of bots.  If you want to play with a couple of friends but do not want to deal with the public bullshit you can.  The bot AI is pretty good.  This isn't surprising considering UT3's bots are pretty good (once you bmp the difficulty up).

One feature I have always complained about with most games is when you set the room to private it is invite only.  Your friends cannot just join.  In Gears 2 a private room is open to friends joining at will.  This needs to be an option.  I don't mind friends joining my game when they want, I do mind friend of friends joining though.  Resistance 2 has a great party system.  You can set it up so it is invite only along with only allowing friends, clan members, or public.  That's how it should be.  

A slight subject change: 360 needs clan support.  Several PS3 games have clan support.  Warhawk's clan support is decent.  Socom's clan support isn't finished, they are going to patch it.  Resistance 2's clan support could be the template for other games to follow.

LittleBigPlanet for the PS3 has a cool invite system.  You can either invite friends or ask a friend if you can join.  When you select a friend from your friends list you have the option to Join or Invite.  If you select Join your friend will get a message.  If the friend accepts you will join.

In the theme of comparing features of PS3 games and 360 games Socom allows you to sort your friends list.  In a lobby you can bring up the friends list to invite people.  At first there is no order to the list, it seems very random.  However, you can highlight any column and sort by it.  So if you want to sort alphabetically you can.  If you want to sort by people in the game or not you can.  With Gears 2 having a similar feature and not using the guide's friends list I could see other 360 games doing the same thing.  While Microsoft did provide the basic tools needed this is a great example that if you give the developer enough space they can come up with something better yet still work with the existing system.  Sony needs to learn that they can provide a basic toolset to the developer to handle online games so there is consistancy yet it can be open enough so the developer can do what they want.

After this holiday season I will say that the PS3 is really close to being as good as the 360 online.  Because it is completely up to the developers on the PS3 how you play online games is inconsistant.  However, if the developers put the work in they can come up with some really good multiplaye systems.  All the PS3 really needs to allow now is voice messages and private chat.