Sudenak said:
It boggles the mind that this game has any fans.
I watched my roommate play while I was cooking dinner. He was at some part where they were fighting some big monster (I'm sure this is vague enough to not require a spoiler, as I imagine there were plenty of big monsters). Every second or third hit he would fall down, limping away, waiting for someone to pick him up. The repetitive battle theme in the background would have put Quest 64 to shame. Their terrible, guttural voices barking out "manly" lines grated against my ears. When I finished cooking dinner, he was still fighting the same big monster. When I finished eating, nearly thirty minutes later, he was done.
Granted, my forays into shooters in general have been limited, with Heretic being my shining example of a great, fun shooter. Is this....is this abomination considered good? With the awkward, clunky chest-high walls everywhere, the hilariously disproportionate bodies, the clunky manly-man dialogue...is this good? There was some multiplayer thing where he played as the bad guys, and 60% of the fight was reduced to him breaking down fences so he could kill stupid AI.
Is this fun?
I think the same thing.
GoW seems to have the same fanbase as the
Madden series and the group of people who lauded
Halo like the second coming, blissfully unaware that the PC has "been there, done that". To note: I have nothing against the latter game.
Halo was really only innovative in essentially bringing what PC FPS games had been doing for years to consoles, and doing it correctly - namely controls and networked multiplayer. There's no denying that. The ignorant fanbase, however, is what I'm getting at.
I don't get the insane amount of adulation
Gears of War, especially
Gears of War 3, has been getting. Namely the lead developer/designer/brain behind the series Cliff Bleszinski getting time on
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Fallon seems to be the exact type the game caters to. If I have to explain that point further I will, but it's fairly obvious to me what kind of audience he addresses.
The mere fact that the mind behind the game was put on a widely watched national talk show is baffling to me. It implies that the people behind that appointment really think this game "has something" and is breaking new ground or doing something so innovative and progressive that it deserves national attention and, if possible, reverence.
I played the first game on PC because I got it from someone who bought it for me as a gift. Another friend of mine, hearing this, decided to purchase the game as well because he wanted to see how good the co-op single-player experience was. So we jammed the game for a while. Sure, it was alright fun, but I was far from impressed by it. The gameplay was somewhat repetitive, especially concerning the cover mechanics - that was such a core part of the game that it literally held the experience together. The story was completely forgettable so the plot, and our character's involvement in it, was blurry at best. The co-op system was however fairly well executed and gave positive reinforcement to continue, but that's all that held the reason to play the game together - the fact that another human being was also playing the game in the same vein as you, getting a similar experience and
(somewhat) dependent on you to complete it.
I suppose it's preferable to another Call of Duty...