Gears of War - The easy choice for most overrated game of the year...

I've gone on huge tirades over at 1up.com with guys about this and I won't do this place the injustice of copy and pasting.  Instead I'll use handy bullet points to make my argument. :D

I'll go over the most common complaints that I have heard about the game, but before that I want to discuss the term "overrated".

People tend to confuse dislike with overrated.

They play a game and it doesn't jive with them.  People they know are fans of the game.  It's getting great reviews from videogame publications which in turn causes an individual to lash out, kindof like what I did with Guitar Hero II.

Except that I'm not wrong about Guitar Hero II.  ;)

So, common complaints regarding Gears of War.

• It's short.  I beat it in five hours with one hand down the front of my pants.

Bullshit.  No one is ripping through Gears in five hours unless they're playing on Casual, or they're downright bad ass on Hardcore.   Is it short?  Sure.  Thankfully so.  By the time I put the final round through General Raam's skull I'm about ready to take a break from Gears.  Can you beat it in a weekend if you rent it?  Sure.  There's nothing wrong with that.  Just because one individual has nothing better to do with their time than pour themselves completely into a game and beat it over the course of a day or two, doesn't mean that a game is poor.  It might mean that person has too much time on their hands but it doesn't mean it's a bad game.  Between work and "life"; I don't have a lot of time to invest in a game.  Being able to complete a game a number of times on different difficulty levels is a welcome feature as far as I am concerned.

To put it plainly, a game that is "too short" by default doesn't make it overrated.  It just means that YOU think it's too short.

• The graphics suck.

I haven't seen a single person that has admitted this but no doubt there's a few maniac fanboys out there that think so.  The truth is that people who know nothing about videogames can walk past Gears of War on the television and say "Wow!".  They nailed the details in Gears, right down to the dust chips flying off debris when you slam into them like a gun-toting freight train.  I could go on and on about the graphics but even blind people have to admit the graphics are insane...so yeah.  That's that.

• There's no colour, everything is grey and boring.

It's a demolished world in a ruined city.  It's called ambiance, soak it in or go play Geometry Wars to get your colour fix.  It's like looking at a masterpiece in the Louvre, wrinkling your nose in distaste and saying,  "Yanno...I think it could use more pink."

• The story is shallow and contrived.

So is porn but it's a multi-billion dollar industry.  Gears is what it is.  It's gun-porn.  If you want a detailed story, you shouldn't be playing a third person shooter, or any shooter for that matter.  There are many, many games out there with a story worth experiencing OR...if you want a story so badly, read a book.  I hear they have those things out there now for sale.

• The multi-player is riddled with cheats and exploits.

I've played a number of ranked games and unranked games and I haven't seen a single exploit.    Newsflash.  You catch someone using one of the exploits, report him.  Another newsflash.  Whenever you compete against someone, be it online or face to face some people will definitely try to cheat to win.  Remember that part in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum's character says "Life uh...finds a way."  Yeah.  Just like that.  Online games will ALWAYS need to be patched because people are always going to find a way to cheat.  So let it go.  You play against strangers, tucked safely away behind their anonymous gamertag and chances are some of the little shits are going to burn you because they know how to work the system.  It doesn't make the game overrated.  it means an aspect of a single portion of the game is slightly flawed.

I have more to add but I need a nap.

This will have to do for now.

<3
S.