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| At Least the art is nice. |
The following review is intended for adults only due to the games content, foul language and
may cause cause a massive level of butt hurt if you love the franchise you have
been fairly warned so please proceed with caution.
Now if you all now what's going on in my personal life money is tight for me and that means cutting down entertainment cost as much as possible. In short I have to bargain bin shop for games, movies, music and books which lead me to buying Gears of War from Game-Stop for $4.99. So please keep in mind while I am doing this review, it will not based on any form of nostalgia. However this will be based on a first time experience with a pair of fresh eyes looking in so look forward to some fun.
Gears of War is your a-typical 3rd person shooter developed by Epic Games and Published by Microsoft Game Studios on Nov 7th 2006 in North America as an Xbox exclusive. This was to be the first hyped up shooting game since Halo was still in production for people to play online. The game sold 5.8 million copies sold world wide by 2008 and even made japan's top 10 list of best Xbox games, won game over 30 gamer awards and you know what?? I don't give damn about any of that because this game is just a huge pile of broken programming offline.
Now keep this mind being a rpg/visual novel gamer I do not have a bias agaisnt shooting games 3rd or 1st person. Actually that's quite the contrary since I like games such as Halo, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Perfect Dark, Half-Life 2, Resident Evil 4 etc. Something else that will piss you off is this I only played the game for 30 minutes before saying, " I would actually have more fun playing Jaws on the Nes" So let the flaming commence from here.
The main problem is not the story, the lay-out of the controls, graphics or the music. I actually think the male lead Marcus Fenix is pretty bad ass and the whole end of the world setting is fine with aliens that live underground called the Locust that live in huge swarms. None of that is really a problem for me for game that came out six years ago sadly it's something all games need to be concerned with. The major compliant is the offline single player that is a huge pain the ass to play making me cringe. This due in part of regenerating health so you need to duck behind chest high walls, while ten baddies try to blow your damn face off.
Listen I understand that the point of this game was to push X-box live at the time so people would play online in co-op modes/multiplayer. However this doesn't hold up now being a six year old game where most people have moved on. Now comes in my major compliant you are being forced to play this online in the campaign if you want to get anywhere in the game unless your some kind of nimble fingered god or again like standing behind chest high walls to avoid getting half of your damn head blown off.
The AI is riddled with so many bugs such as not covering you when you need to plug up a locust crater. My favorite part is just how most stand looking around like a bunch deers caught in a pair of headlights, while you are having your face mauled off by the locust This was the turning point where I raged quit for a week before playing the game again. I did manage to get a little further from my last check point, however the same shit happened again and officially gave up on the game. Hell I even went to the multi-player lobby to look for anyone to help me and it was to my big surprise there was only forty people online and half didn't speak any english, so I just officially gave up on this game.
There is no excuse why epic games could have thought of ahead to prevent this happening. Someting I need to point out is that I manged to play Halo 1-3 just fine by myself with no help needed and was able to fully beat the games while still having fun. That's the problem here I can not find any fun to be had in offline single player for Gears of War based on my limited thirty minute experience with the game. I realize some of you will call this unprofessional, I call it damn well efficient use of my time so I can actually have fun doing something like writing this review.
Now maybe I am being to damn cynical with Gears of War but lets face facts people for a game that is six years old it has aged worse than 2% milk left out in car on summer day. I actually find this quite sad really since games like Contra, Zelda, Castlevinia SOTN are even older but aged just fine or are overall more fun to play. I could go on rambling away like a damn old fool but there isn't any point since you know my stance on this. I wasted 5 dollars shit just happens, well that's it for now I hope you enjoy this review or take offense it is of no concern to me.
Single Player Game Play: 2/5
Online Game Play: Unable to do so
Music: 4/5
Characters: 3/5
Story: 3/5
Controls: 3/5
Overall Total: 2.5/5
-Cecil The Dark Knight
