Gears of War

[Canai]

Originally posted by: Thraxen

Originally posted by: Canai
It's really useful for controllers, but sucks for keyboard / mouse... I'd much rather be able to crouch behind the wall and pop up when and how I want, not having to stick to the wall.

Meh... you can crouch just as easily with a controller as a KB. I don't think that has anything to do with it. I didn't mind the cover system at all, in fact, just having the ability to crouch is unrealistic. In an actual shootout I think it would be fairly normal to put your back against a wall and then peer out. Ideally I'd like to have a game with both a cover system and a crouch button.

Yeah I'd like a game you could choose whether to crouch or stick to the wall, but when the gameplay forces you to stick to a wall or cover in every room, it just sucks.

 

[Thraxen]

Originally posted by: Canai
Yeah I'd like a game you could choose whether to crouch or stick to the wall, but when the gameplay forces you to stick to a wall or cover in every room, it just sucks.

I can agree with that. Overall I thought the cover system in GoW worked well and I also don't mind them in games like R6 or Ghost Recon. But I would prefer to have a simple crouch as well.

 

[ja1484]

I didn't mind the cover system. There was the occasional oops when I wanted to do a jump-dodge and ended up hugging the wall instead, but I've yet to find the perfect game.

I can't help but feel that some of the criticisms here are grasping at straws a little. Epic did about as well as you *can* do justifying available cover...it's a warzone, there's going to be a lot of rubble, burnt out cars, barriers, etc. The spawn holes are kind of covered by the fact that your enemy is a burrowing race. Them coming out of little spigot holes in the ground kind of makes sense in that light.

My main beef is not with the gameplay, but with the theme. Epic obviously has very talented artists, but they sure weren't put to use here. Everything looks the same. It's a shame really, because I remember the broad color palette of the original Unreal and Unreal Tournament being one of my favorite characteristics of those two titles. I wish Epic would get back to that and give us some visually interesting titles again. It also doesn't help that the manchildren main characters act like what a 14 year old thinks is a badass (Bring it on sucka! :roll: ). I much prefer the maturity of the characters that you find in, say, Half-Life 2 or BioShock, who at least act like real people and not a junior high basketball team.

All told though, I had fun playing it, which was all I was asking for. I felt like I got my money's worth.

 

[andrei3333]

^ excellent post

Yeah as i stated earlier in this thread, the visual style could use a tone of colour. Game play is fine, its the way the game was designed, you would not be able to play without the cover mechanic by using crouch, cover works faster since its automatic button tapping. The cover system makes it feel more realistic i think. In COD4 you must use cover as well, but there is no cover system, you just stand behind a wall and pop out and take a few guys out at the same time, its more satisfying because the enemy dies faster since they dont take a whole clip and then some to go down. In Gears you have to stay in cover but keep an eye on the enemy because they will converge on you. Thats where COD4 shines - its realism in every aspect of the game. The game scales very well though, see my sig and i play 1280 max everything

If you lower the difficulty setting in gears you still get the same amount of enemies but they dont take as many shots to go down, about half a clip per guy compared to a clip+

You guys seen the trailer for gears 2 ? the same chainsaw but the grunt got cut in reverse, i think its going to be more of the same, they will not deviate from their formula too much since its worked so well on the 360...

I also agree that Gears has cartoonish characters, the dialogue was immature, but then again the whole game is kinda unrealistic too so i think it almost fits in.

 

[ja1484]

Originally posted by: andrei3333
You guys seen the trailer for gears 2 ? the same chainsaw but the grunt got cut in reverse, i think its going to be more of the same, they will not deviate from their formula too much since its worked so well on the 360...

Oh definitely not. As well as Gears sold, I don't expect them to alter too much. Supposedly they're going to be adding a few new tricks, but I'm not expecting major new features. I mean, let's face it...they're shipping later this year. Essentially, they started slave-laboring on this thing as soon as Gears was out the door. They don't have *time* to change much.

I also agree that Gears has cartoonish characters, the dialogue was immature, but then again the whole game is kinda unrealistic too so i think it almost fits in.

As discussed, it's definitely stealing a page from summer action flicks. In fact, large portions of the game are obviously designed to be cinematic, such as the shaky-cam effect during the roadie run, and just the over-the-shoulder third person perspective in general. I think what Cliff really wants to be doing is making movies, but this is kind of his middle-ground catharsis instead, since he has so much games industry experience.

 

[onlyCOpunk]

For everything that Gears is or isn't I enjoy it. I don't play it religiously, but every now and then I will spin it up for an hour or so of mindless entertainment.

It's a nice break from the onslaught of constant overhyped fps titles as far as fast action titles go. And it's one where I can focus on actually playing the game rather then tweaking out the settings and spending the majority of the time finding a good medium.