Gears of War - Reviews
- Thread starter Deepblue
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TurnDragoZeroV2G
Regular
Seems to fit right in with other shooters these days. ~8 hours on an easier setting, more on harder settings.
Personally, I've played through the game over 3 times completely (casual co-op split screen, hardcore singleplayer, hardcore co-op xblive). Part of that has been the COG targs and the achievements for playing as Dom. Most of it is that it's simply fun to play.
(moving to my own sort of review, sorta Therefore, there will be SPOILERS )
Honestly felt slightly disappointed playing through casual, but switching to hardcore just made every single thing more rewarding. Headshots are more important, a chainsaw kill is more risky/rewarding, and it just requires you to be on your toes more. That said, the last time I played through(hardcore co-op, live), I was experimenting more than I had before. Mostly this included finding out what could be grenade tagged. I was laughing like a Hyena when I tagged one of the Boomers, rolled back and watched the explosion. I was also amused to tag one of the wretches, roll back, get knocked down-but-not-out by the explosion. Blood never wows me, since I played so much mortal kombat and eventually was just like "why the hell do I even care about blood? Blood.... meh." So, don't care much about the blood in the game (it looks good, but again, I don't really care). However, explosions + Gibbs? Awesome. Torque Bow is also one of the best weapons in the game.
And in my opinion, one of the best features is the active reload. Now, every time I look at video of some other game I'm all like: "Why didn't you hit reload again and get a faster reload?" and such. I can't believe how much more interesting reloading is now. I almost want every game to include it. It wouldn't fit into many games' mechanics, but every time I look at another shooter now, it's like there's this empty void where there should be a double damage/quick reload or gun jam. It's the little things, I suppose, even in this way.
And the cover works so well. The system simply feels like it's rolled all together, being able to fluidly move from one piece of cover to another. It's not perfect, but it's very good and quite solid. Blindfiring is very interesting, and can also be very rewarding. It's been essential in hardcore for those guys charging towards your cover, as the chainsaw can easily be countered by an enemy aware of you (and those carrying shotguns aren't exactly the best targets for going melee with any of the other weapons, perhaps including the torque bow--2/3 hits for a kill, i.e. quite risky with other enemies around).
So, my problems with the game? In the first couple hours of playing I really wished there were a way to turn off auto reloads. It's not such a big deal now, after hours of playing, but it still occasionally messes up my damage bonus active reloads. You want it basically all the time you can get it, so it pisses me off when I go to hit the reload button not realizing it's in the middle of a reload already, or realizing it's initialized a reload and frantically trying to get the damage bonus/fast load, only to miss--since a normal reload just seems to take an eternity. With the sniper rifle/torque bow/boomshot it's fine, since it's one shot, and you're fully prepared after a while of playing with them. But the other weapons were annoying. Even now, I don't always hear that sound as the Lancer rifle is getting close to empty. Not so big now, and it was probably the best choice to fit all situations.
Besides that, the cover system doesn't ALWAYS work perfectly. As has been noted before, it's simply the case that TOO MUCH has been shoved onto the "beachfront property" that is the A button. Dives/rolls, into cover, out of cover, roadie run.... too much. It's fine most of the time, but when the game mixes things up a bit (like the end of Act IV as you have a short time, lots of enemies including boomers, and you basically HAVE to make a mad dash for it--the cover really hampers things, and killed me several times trying to get around those boomers; that was much easier on co-op, being hardcore, with the use of two torque bows and one person making the dash while the other fires off a round or two). On one hand, I feel they definitely needed to split some of those functions off into another button, but one the other, doing that would probably also break some of the seamlessness of getting into cover, out of cover, moving to the next piece of cover, etc. that is part of what makes the game seem so great. One of those lose-lose situations, I suppose.
One out of the two most serious complaints I still have at the moment (and is somewhat of a testament to how much the game gets RIGHT), after around 20+ hours of playing, would be the difficulty of finding a weapon to pick up in a mess of gibs. The environmental detail is enough that it certainly doesn't HELP, and so when the Gibbs are of the same color as the weapon I want... it's hard to do anything but wait for the debris to clear, for my enemies to be gone as well, etc.
The other one some of the poorly placed checkpoints. I got really, reall sick of listening to some piece of stupid dialogue (which includes you walking really slowly) over and over again to get to the part where I was actually dying. It only happened occasionally, but it's still quite annoying. In fact, the dialogue/cutscene system in general ticked me off, since it's unskippable for the sort of "in-game" cutscenes such as the wretches in the hallway (ugh...), and others like that. I've seen it, let me play the F'n game! They got it right in terms of how long people would tolerate a loading screen, but they messed up here.
Ultimately, still very much minor details, when looking at the bigger picture and just how solid everything else is. Besides that, the game is also a visual treat (purely as a bonus on top of the gameplay), and like Dan Hsu has said, I now wish alot of other games looked as good as this/like this. Some of them may be in the middle of development and have tons of programmer art and such. But it's still disappointing when you have Gears to compare to, and most freshly in mind.
I run the game on a 36" SDTV with Component cables.
It's amazingly beautiful, with virtually no jaggies. They didn't add AA in, but with the way the game is renderd you don't notice a bit. It's without a doubt the best looking game I've played on the system, looking cleaner than several games that I know for a fact are using 4X AA. The text is approprately resized for SDTV, and there hasn't been a single time where I've thought that SDTV users were left with an inferior looking game. They've clearly put a LOT of work into their SDTV support.
I am.
I would be playing on Legendary, but you have to beat the game in Hardcore to unlock it first.
Doh, you are right. 480, line output is low res. WTF?
SDTV is soooooo last gen, SDTV owners are being ignored.'SDTV? You don't deserve our wonderful consoles! Upgrade now! We will cut your eyes with jaggies until you do!*'
* Though noted by Powderkeg, this title doesn't look bad on SDTV. Just not as good as it should.
1UP went out of their way to comment on how SDTV looked and how compared to the PS3 games they are testing and most X360 game Gears of War maintains a high fidelity and graphical punch even on SDTV displays.
Obviously downsizing (if filtered correctly) would be better, or flipping on some MSAA at the lower resolution, but from all those I know playing on SDTV resolutions they feel this game doesn't punish non-HD gamers as much as the majority of other software does.
As for being ignored, if the quality is good and the text resolution issues and HUD placement is tailored to SDTV resolutions I am not sure "ignored" is the best word for it. Not the primary focus demographic would be fair (of course we have heard arguements about early adopters and HD media and formats from posters and analysts for a long while).
That said, what I would like to see, is that if a game is GPU limited at 720p, but isn't fast enough on the CPU end to double the framerate to 60fps at 480p, would be if they upped graphical settings. If not MSAA, things like AF, maybe some extra lighting tricks, etc... e.g. the GOW cutscenes show an increase in detail, assuming that some of those extras are resolution limited (e.g. extra detailed textures that push memory bandwidth to the limit would be out of bounds) it would be nice to see some longer shaders and detail if possible as, in theory, you have well over 2x the GPU processing resources. But that ain't gonna happen
It would be like making 2 different games.
Obviously downsizing (if filtered correctly) would be better, or flipping on some MSAA at the lower resolution, but from all those I know playing on SDTV resolutions they feel this game doesn't punish non-HD gamers as much as the majority of other software does.
As for being ignored, if the quality is good and the text resolution issues and HUD placement is tailored to SDTV resolutions I am not sure "ignored" is the best word for it. Not the primary focus demographic would be fair (of course we have heard arguements about early adopters and HD media and formats from posters and analysts for a long while).
That said, what I would like to see, is that if a game is GPU limited at 720p, but isn't fast enough on the CPU end to double the framerate to 60fps at 480p, would be if they upped graphical settings. If not MSAA, things like AF, maybe some extra lighting tricks, etc... e.g. the GOW cutscenes show an increase in detail, assuming that some of those extras are resolution limited (e.g. extra detailed textures that push memory bandwidth to the limit would be out of bounds) it would be nice to see some longer shaders and detail if possible as, in theory, you have well over 2x the GPU processing resources. But that ain't gonna happen
It would be like making 2 different games.I played it for 3 hours coop last night at a friend's place and I definitely noticed aliasing. IMO, AA should be an always-on feature on 360 and I'll not muddy the issue by saying it looked "pretty good even without it". Goldeneye has AA. So, please gimme a break lol.
Playing it on a SDTV actually made it hard for me to really judge the graphics. It did remind me though of why Wii didn't make a big mistake with going with cheaper hardware: it is actually hard to tell you are seeing state-of-the-art rendering instead of playing on a Cube. Almost... And you better believe that the majority of gamers use SDTVs.
I thought the game was fun, but I'm not much of a fan of split screen so I need to play SP before judging it really. It's, as par for the course for FPS games, totally obviously linear. As in only one route thru levels linear with lots of fake unopenable doors. I was considering buying my own 360 for the game, but hearing that it's super short has basically changed my mind on that. Control is surprisngly complex and innovative, and is definitely something to master. Sound was great. I love the chainsaw gun lol.
Ok game so far.
Playing it on a SDTV actually made it hard for me to really judge the graphics. It did remind me though of why Wii didn't make a big mistake with going with cheaper hardware: it is actually hard to tell you are seeing state-of-the-art rendering instead of playing on a Cube.
Almost... And you better believe that the majority of gamers use SDTVs.I thought the game was fun, but I'm not much of a fan of split screen so I need to play SP before judging it really. It's, as par for the course for FPS games, totally obviously linear. As in only one route thru levels linear with lots of fake unopenable doors. I was considering buying my own 360 for the game, but hearing that it's super short has basically changed my mind on that. Control is surprisngly complex and innovative, and is definitely something to master. Sound was great. I love the chainsaw gun lol.
Ok game so far.
My brother and I started playing this in co-op mode via Live! It is amazing. We are constantly yelling at each other, competing the get the most kills, best weapons, trash talking, etc. Going through it with a buddy really makes this game shine. I now have the 360 outputing at 1080p on my Sammy HLS5687W and the game looks INCREDIBLE. I hate using caps, but it really is that good. There are some post processing effects you can choose from the video menu, we have it setup on "Vibrant" and it looks so choice. Been playing with the HD-DVD drive some as well, and I have to say the entire experience is top notch. You can bounce between games, movies, arcade, chat at will. Everything is snappy and looks great. With all the chatter between us, I think my next toy will be the wireless headset.
I did a SD vs HD comparison of Gears on my own set just a few mins ago. Can't speak what the 1up guys used for a display but for me the different is huge! This is on a 50inch screen sitting 4-5ft away.
As impressive as the graphics are, the sounds over a home theater setup, to me, are a bigger leap.
As impressive as the graphics are, the sounds over a home theater setup, to me, are a bigger leap.
Of course the difference is huge, they are rendering the game with 1/3 the fidelity in 480-line output modes. I understand having to format the text and such to be visiable on lower resolution displays, but that can be accomplished without letting all that rendering power go to waste.
I just swapped out my launch day system today for a newer one. (just because I could at no cost, the launch day system worked fine)
The new one is MUCH more quiet than the launch day system was. In the dashboard or playing a movie it's nearly silent. When playing a game it's only about 1/4th the volume of my original 360. And it does run noticably cooler too. It still produces heat, but I can't use it as a supplemental space heater anymore.
The noise was a problem with the Hitachi drive. The Toshiba/Samsung drive is MUCH better.
Yep, I noticed that too. Especially trudging around the dilapidated mansions of course.
Cliffy said the game was based on a lot of things and they all make sense after playing. Band of Brothers, obviously for the soldier comradery aspect. Kill Switch, for the cover part. And he mentioned Resident Evil too.
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Sunset Boulevard Residence Pattaya
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