Gears of War impressions

I've been doing a lot less posting and a lot more gaming lately. Hopefully we all get back into the normal routine of things.

David and I beat Gears of War over the weekend. It was my first time playing and was happy to get it finished so quickly. Overall the game was pretty good. I haven't played any multiplayer yet, but me and David gave the game an honest effort, and I'm not getting the "OMG greatest game ever" syndrome a lot of other people seemed to have experienced. I think a lot of it had to do with how amazing the game looked. The game did have very satisfying gunplay and it felt really nice when you landed a well placed shotgun blast to the face. I just wish there were more weapons and more ammo for the better weapon as I spent nearly the whole game using just the chainsaw gun and the shotgun.

The teamwork aspect is really cool. The way the game keeps tension high with the teammate spawn system is pretty awesome. The best moments were when I was dodging rockets and torque bolts trying to get to David in time to save him in time. Although he was doing most of the saving I guess since I prefer the "Rambo" style of gameplay. In contrast, the worst parts of the game were when we were split up and one death meant we had to go back to a checkpoint. It became very much a trial-and-error game where we had to figure out at what points we should be helping the other teammate. It became borderline ridiculous in one part when we were literally like 10 feet from each other but our rocky paths were separated by a small gap and therefore one death meant game over.

One more noteworthy part of the game had to be enemy AI. There was rarely a moment to breath in the game because the enemy was always advancing on us. Much like the players, the enemy uses cover to its advantage in both combat and sneaking up on the player. Nothing is more terrifying than the sound of an enemy chainsaw or the orange glow of the enemy torque bow. The enemies aggressive nature was pretty refreshing.

Overall it was pretty enjoyable as it seemed the last two acts really cut down on the splitting up and David and I really started to develop our combat skills. I'll try to get a full review up when I try out the multiplayer.