Oh man, fighting the Berserker on harcore with my buddie in co-op was intense! The cutscene with the "big bad dude" was great too...
Gears of War - Reviews
- Thread starter Deepblue
- Start date
Oh man, fighting the Berserker on harcore with my buddie in co-op was intense! The cutscene with the "big bad dude" was great too...
Yes. The answer is 'no'
. Case in point, I watched Resistance footage and thought the gameplay was manky, only to hear they had it in God mode. Only if you know the player playing the footage you're seeing is competant can you guage what's at fault with the game.I think your car analogy is back to front. The argument works for anyone watching a pro. I have no experience of racing cars, but if I watch Top Gear and the Stig takes a motor around the track, I can tell whether a car handles well or not because I know he can handle any car. If the gameplay footage is from a pro, I'd say yes, you can tell from that what the game is like, to some extent. You could maybe spot flaws in the game. I don't think you could determine whether you'd enjoy the game or not. So games look slow to watch but can be really engaging (chess anyone?!). You need to know who was playing the game though. Like my earlier post, what if you were watching a gameplay video of my friend playing BGDA for the first time? You'd think it lacked variety because he wasn't playing it very well.
I would hope games sites have capable players (and this argument is probably about game footage from such sites), but I'd still be hesistant to take how they show the game being played as indicative of the gameplay overall, especially when different playstyles are supported which they don't show.
I'm just thinking of real pros doing speedruns. Could you watch footage of a pro speed-running Halo in the hardest mode without ever dying, and appreciate what the game is like to play for you in that same game?
Start doing barrell rolls + in your face shotty/chainsaw combos.
I think I learned most of the gameplay mechanics in the first 5 minutes,after that it was rinse and repeat and that's the problem for me. I'm not the kind of person who wants to play the same game over and over and that's what the SP basically is.
I prefer more variety, and storytelling. I'm sure it's a great game if you love MP gaming,but it's just not for me I guess.
Ninzel, doesn't GoW have some form of storytelling. I remember one of the demos showed scripted sequences and there are background narrations too.
Well yes of course there is but it's not much. The SP feels basically like a MP game with a story tacked on.
Buy this game if you love MP gaming.
Edit: The lack of any good story really isn't the main problem though. I don't want to come off as some gaming snob that needs some sophisticacted story in every game. I enjoy playing simple arcades games as well. The main problem is the lack of variety in gameplay as well. It is a very simple straight forward shooter that you can tell was developed by people who historically have leaned heavily towards MP gaming.
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Jon Brittan
Newcomer
Can we please get away from these car analogies and even the point they're trying to get at and now let this thread get on to the experiences of the people who are playing the game as they're far more interesting...
I agree with your point about not being able to judge by watching, but even your example above is wrong. I have, in the past, done internal road-testing for several major sports car manufacturers and my father was a professional racing driver, both of us still spend a fair amount of time in very high end performance cars and, while there is no doubt "The Stig" is an exceptionally good driver, there have been times when we've watched Top Gear and wondered what the hell he is doing with some cars, his performances in them are just not consistent and cars our personal experience tells us are better than others haven't fared as well in his hands, while sometimes he looks like he's taking it very easy on some cars and really thrashing others... So, even with a professional behind the wheel you can't always get a true impression.
I think the same goes for computer games, I've watched people playing games before and thought they looked like great fun, but when I've got to play them found they were too easy, or the game mechanic was just too simple and the same works the other way, some games that look boring in the hands of one person are actually great fun to play (can anyone say Tetris would give a great impression to watch?).
I agree with your point about not being able to judge by watching, but even your example above is wrong. I have, in the past, done internal road-testing for several major sports car manufacturers and my father was a professional racing driver, both of us still spend a fair amount of time in very high end performance cars and, while there is no doubt "The Stig" is an exceptionally good driver, there have been times when we've watched Top Gear and wondered what the hell he is doing with some cars, his performances in them are just not consistent and cars our personal experience tells us are better than others haven't fared as well in his hands, while sometimes he looks like he's taking it very easy on some cars and really thrashing others... So, even with a professional behind the wheel you can't always get a true impression.
I think the same goes for computer games, I've watched people playing games before and thought they looked like great fun, but when I've got to play them found they were too easy, or the game mechanic was just too simple and the same works the other way, some games that look boring in the hands of one person are actually great fun to play (can anyone say Tetris would give a great impression to watch?).
Here's my opinion on the game. I spent a few hours with it yesterday. This game really does have quite a few "wow" moments and I'm only a few hours in. I like the combat that occurs, it did take some getting use to the way you use cover. Honestly I took me about an hour before I was good at it. once you do get accustomed to how it plays it really is fantastic. At first I hardly used active reload, but then once you get the hang of the mini game i find myself trying to get the perfect reload quite often. The action in the game is a lot of fun. I do recommend everyone putting the game on the "vibrant" setting in the options menu, it makes everything look so much better.
The graphics are really amazing, there's so much detail on everything and also no loading screens. it only loads when you reload a level or load saved data. Otherwise the game streams everything in and looks amazing to boot. I guess they can stream in high res textures easily since you can't move through the environment at a speed that is too fast. This certainly isn't a run and gun game. You get your ass kicked when you try that for more then a few seconds. So far and I'm at the beserker portion of the game (this part is quite cool) and the game seems to have more variety then just pop and stop. One thing that I always enjoyed about the halo games was how the combat was fun, they always had that spot on. the same can be said about this game, the combat really works well ( until you get too close to each other). The cut scenes so far are awesome as well. So far I think this is one of the most impressive games I've ever seen, and it really screams "this is next gen". I think the only game that will compare is heavenly sword.
Now there are some things about the game I wish were improved.
1. The dialog is pretty bad at times. Just bad dialog writting or whatever. The story is kinda cool, but the dialog has me laughing at times. typical action movie style which is fine in my book, but it could be better.
2. When you get in close with enemies I with there was more you can do to put space between you and them. For instance I wish you could "body check" hockey style, or just grab enemies and throw them into each other. That would help get around the awkwardness of trying to shoot in close and not being able to target each other.
3. There some spots in the game where it looks like you could take cover but you can't. I hope that is fixed in the next game to be a little smoother. Sometimes you end up up against something you should be able to hide behind and you do a dive/roll move. I've found myself doing that quite often and getting killed because I'm standing up.
4. The AI can be a little strange at times. I do understand that you can't have the AI play through the game for you, and I actually like having to revive them at times. However sometimes it seems like they are standing around not knowing where to go. I think they are waiting for you to hit the next movement marker so you can transition to the next scene. I know some people complained that you have to revive your team mates too often, but so far I found it to be just right. One thing I found annoying is when Dom keeps strolling up to the Beserker. i watched him do this a bunch of times, get punched and knocked to the ground three times, then start bleeding out.
5. Man the characters are ugly, and I ain't talking about the locust! Marcus is considerably uglier then we when first saw pics of this game.
Comments:
- Those that complained about low res textures:
I had a look at a few spots where a few others complained about low res textures and there clearly isn't any. It's just what I thought, was causing blurrinesses. Either the visual settings chosen, or motion blur ( and motion blur occurs a lot when the camera is moving). Also I have noticed that sometimes when you pause for a while and come back, not all of the textures have finished streaming in, so you can see some textures at their lowest mip-map level before the higher res/detail textures pop in a few seconds later. this could also explain a few screens where the textures didn't look very high res. Either way, anyone complaining about this hasn't seen the game up close.
- those that complained about low poly models:
All I can say to that is "bull$hit". I simply don't see this, and I tend to look for it since I'm a hobby 3D modeler. the character models in this game look fantastic and high res. They don't look low poly at all, and neither do the environments. Are they using normal mapping to add detail? yes, and it looks great.
- Those that complained about a low number of enemies on screen:
I call bull$hit on this too. Again these um "concerns" were premature. You do fight more than 4 enemies at a time. A lot more than that at times.
- to those that complained about the frame rate:
This game has a extremely solid frame rate 99% of the time. So far I've only seen it dip below 30 once during combat for about 3 seconds. Other than that, the frame rate is perfect. During cut scenes the frame rate isn't locked at 30, but that's because epic threw extra stuff into the scenes (that's what the art director said.).
Well that's my comments so far, this game is really impressive and really fun, although it has a learning curve. Playing coop online and being able to jump into a friends single player game is F'ing fantastic! The check point system reminds me of halo, which I'm glad for and the coop play is a blast.
I really hope epic though ahead and will all for some extra down loadable (even if you have to pay) episodes until the next game comes out. I have a feeling I'm gonna play through the game and still want more missions and story to uncover.
The graphics are really amazing, there's so much detail on everything and also no loading screens. it only loads when you reload a level or load saved data. Otherwise the game streams everything in and looks amazing to boot. I guess they can stream in high res textures easily since you can't move through the environment at a speed that is too fast. This certainly isn't a run and gun game. You get your ass kicked when you try that for more then a few seconds. So far and I'm at the beserker portion of the game (this part is quite cool) and the game seems to have more variety then just pop and stop. One thing that I always enjoyed about the halo games was how the combat was fun, they always had that spot on. the same can be said about this game, the combat really works well ( until you get too close to each other). The cut scenes so far are awesome as well. So far I think this is one of the most impressive games I've ever seen, and it really screams "this is next gen". I think the only game that will compare is heavenly sword.
Now there are some things about the game I wish were improved.
1. The dialog is pretty bad at times. Just bad dialog writting or whatever. The story is kinda cool, but the dialog has me laughing at times. typical action movie style which is fine in my book, but it could be better.
2. When you get in close with enemies I with there was more you can do to put space between you and them. For instance I wish you could "body check" hockey style, or just grab enemies and throw them into each other. That would help get around the awkwardness of trying to shoot in close and not being able to target each other.
3. There some spots in the game where it looks like you could take cover but you can't. I hope that is fixed in the next game to be a little smoother. Sometimes you end up up against something you should be able to hide behind and you do a dive/roll move. I've found myself doing that quite often and getting killed because I'm standing up.
4. The AI can be a little strange at times. I do understand that you can't have the AI play through the game for you, and I actually like having to revive them at times. However sometimes it seems like they are standing around not knowing where to go. I think they are waiting for you to hit the next movement marker so you can transition to the next scene. I know some people complained that you have to revive your team mates too often, but so far I found it to be just right. One thing I found annoying is when Dom keeps strolling up to the Beserker. i watched him do this a bunch of times, get punched and knocked to the ground three times, then start bleeding out.
5. Man the characters are ugly, and I ain't talking about the locust! Marcus is considerably uglier then we when first saw pics of this game.
Comments:
- Those that complained about low res textures:
I had a look at a few spots where a few others complained about low res textures and there clearly isn't any. It's just what I thought, was causing blurrinesses. Either the visual settings chosen, or motion blur ( and motion blur occurs a lot when the camera is moving). Also I have noticed that sometimes when you pause for a while and come back, not all of the textures have finished streaming in, so you can see some textures at their lowest mip-map level before the higher res/detail textures pop in a few seconds later. this could also explain a few screens where the textures didn't look very high res. Either way, anyone complaining about this hasn't seen the game up close.
- those that complained about low poly models:
All I can say to that is "bull$hit". I simply don't see this, and I tend to look for it since I'm a hobby 3D modeler. the character models in this game look fantastic and high res. They don't look low poly at all, and neither do the environments. Are they using normal mapping to add detail? yes, and it looks great.
- Those that complained about a low number of enemies on screen:
I call bull$hit on this too. Again these um "concerns" were premature. You do fight more than 4 enemies at a time. A lot more than that at times.
- to those that complained about the frame rate:
This game has a extremely solid frame rate 99% of the time. So far I've only seen it dip below 30 once during combat for about 3 seconds. Other than that, the frame rate is perfect. During cut scenes the frame rate isn't locked at 30, but that's because epic threw extra stuff into the scenes (that's what the art director said.).
Well that's my comments so far, this game is really impressive and really fun, although it has a learning curve. Playing coop online and being able to jump into a friends single player game is F'ing fantastic! The check point system reminds me of halo, which I'm glad for and the coop play is a blast.
I really hope epic though ahead and will all for some extra down loadable (even if you have to pay) episodes until the next game comes out. I have a feeling I'm gonna play through the game and still want more missions and story to uncover.
hmm are you sure you played the game long enough? I'm not sure what you mean by rinse and repeat, that's the case for ANY action game. What where you expecting to see exactly?
Also where's your gamer tag? let's see it u
Listen, I simply know from experience that I can tell whether I like a game by watching. I've been watching and reading about games, and making accurate predictions here is all about data.
Important factors are getting info on what features the game has, and as many impressions as possible from different reviewers. It helps even more if you know the reviewers a little.
I was generally already very good at this back even waaaaay back when we didn't get video reviews, by the way, but they help - the more data, the better.
Of course, one of the reasons why I am actually good at this is because I actually tend to bother to verify whether I'm right by actually playing the game ...
Heck, I am generally even quite good at figuring out what game someone else will like. A colleague of mine, for instance, I had to show Gears to, because I was sure he'd love it. And, just by looking at it, he did - but he's a PC-only guy, and I haven't managed to convince him yet to change his ways. He'll wait to see how the PC version turns out, even if that's going to take at least a year.
And now I promise to shut up about this game until I actually have tried it, ok?
Important factors are getting info on what features the game has, and as many impressions as possible from different reviewers. It helps even more if you know the reviewers a little.
I was generally already very good at this back even waaaaay back when we didn't get video reviews, by the way, but they help - the more data, the better.
Of course, one of the reasons why I am actually good at this is because I actually tend to bother to verify whether I'm right by actually playing the game ...
Heck, I am generally even quite good at figuring out what game someone else will like. A colleague of mine, for instance, I had to show Gears to, because I was sure he'd love it. And, just by looking at it, he did - but he's a PC-only guy, and I haven't managed to convince him yet to change his ways. He'll wait to see how the PC version turns out, even if that's going to take at least a year.
And now I promise to shut up about this game until I actually have tried it, ok?
ManuVlad3.0
Regular
Now I am having some problems with the game:
Terrible cliched dialogue, getting annoying.
I'm not sure why they insist on subtitling every last drop of dialogue either. I'm not sure but I suspect the dialogue might be less annoying if every crappy b-movie line wasn't printed on the screen for you to see as well as spoken.
Lack of variety in some levels.
Lack of enemy variety. Too many wretches.
Not really enough weapon variety. All the weapons are fairly the same in power, which is always one of those, damned if you do damned if you dont things. But I kind of tend to like, a progression of better weapons I guess. Instead this game just has four or five, that are all fairly equal, and or specialized for certain situations.
I have experienced a occasional of slowdown and stutters, split-second freezes, at times, but to this day I think my 360 is defective so I dont know if that's just me (especially since I'm avoiding reviews til I finish it).
There are some truly brilliant graphical showcases/gameplay showcases though. Yeah, the berserker. Tense as all hell.
Anyway those are just some problems I'm having. It's still a fun good game, and I hope/expect it to pick up again in the last third.
Hell yeah, that was pretty gripping stuff, I mean for a game. I actually started thinking like, "what am I so scared for, obviously this enemy cant be impossible to beat, there has to be a way to progress in the game" and rationalizing it out like that. Because it does grip you in an almost irrational way.
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Terrible cliched dialogue, getting annoying.
I'm not sure why they insist on subtitling every last drop of dialogue either. I'm not sure but I suspect the dialogue might be less annoying if every crappy b-movie line wasn't printed on the screen for you to see as well as spoken.
Lack of variety in some levels.
Lack of enemy variety. Too many wretches.
Not really enough weapon variety. All the weapons are fairly the same in power, which is always one of those, damned if you do damned if you dont things. But I kind of tend to like, a progression of better weapons I guess. Instead this game just has four or five, that are all fairly equal, and or specialized for certain situations.
I have experienced a occasional of slowdown and stutters, split-second freezes, at times, but to this day I think my 360 is defective so I dont know if that's just me (especially since I'm avoiding reviews til I finish it).
There are some truly brilliant graphical showcases/gameplay showcases though. Yeah, the berserker. Tense as all hell.
Anyway those are just some problems I'm having. It's still a fun good game, and I hope/expect it to pick up again in the last third.
Hell yeah, that was pretty gripping stuff, I mean for a game. I actually started thinking like, "what am I so scared for, obviously this enemy cant be impossible to beat, there has to be a way to progress in the game" and rationalizing it out like that. Because it does grip you in an almost irrational way.
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Arctic Permafrost
Banned
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your impressions (thx Rangers, RobertR1....) of the game and all of that you've experienced, since I find them helpful to shed my doubts and get a general idea of what the game plays like.
I say this because I want to run a "double" check on the game given the fact that CoD3 is already out for XTS and the game is astounding, so I am confused.
I say this because I want to run a "double" check on the game given the fact that CoD3 is already out for XTS and the game is astounding, so I am confused.
I ended up picking this up yesterday...
Quick impressions from a couple hours last night:
The combat is pretty fun -- it feels kind of clunky at first, but once you get used to it, it's pretty solid (didn't take long to get used to it). I liked having buddies around, but the revival thing seemed a bit weird (how does touching your buddy revive him?) -- overall no real complaints gameplay wise. Still learning all the little nuances.
The environments and models do look rather good (have to agree with Qroach on this one) -- no complaints about low polys (they were suitably high that I felt that having higher poly models wouldn't necessarily add much -- environment looked good too). The only complaint graphics wise (and maybe it's just my copy/x360 being whacky!) is with the lighting: it seems like it fails to make any validity check as to whether or not light can actually hit parts of the character model (the poly edges light up like crazy and it looks pretty bad -- I'll take a pic tonight, maybe others have seen it?). Didn't think I'd be criticizing lighting in an UE3 game, but it looks ridiculous (I'm willing to consider that it may be my copy/360 causing it, that's why I'll post a pic). Outside of that, the game does look good -- not as good as I was thinking from the hype, but certainly one of the prettiest games around ... although I haven't seen all that much of the game, so that may be part of it.
It isn't really my type of game, but it is pretty enjoyable and certainly looks pretty. Gonna try some co-op tonight I think.
Quick impressions from a couple hours last night:
The combat is pretty fun -- it feels kind of clunky at first, but once you get used to it, it's pretty solid (didn't take long to get used to it). I liked having buddies around, but the revival thing seemed a bit weird (how does touching your buddy revive him?) -- overall no real complaints gameplay wise. Still learning all the little nuances.
The environments and models do look rather good (have to agree with Qroach on this one) -- no complaints about low polys (they were suitably high that I felt that having higher poly models wouldn't necessarily add much -- environment looked good too). The only complaint graphics wise (and maybe it's just my copy/x360 being whacky!) is with the lighting: it seems like it fails to make any validity check as to whether or not light can actually hit parts of the character model (the poly edges light up like crazy and it looks pretty bad -- I'll take a pic tonight, maybe others have seen it?). Didn't think I'd be criticizing lighting in an UE3 game, but it looks ridiculous (I'm willing to consider that it may be my copy/360 causing it, that's why I'll post a pic). Outside of that, the game does look good -- not as good as I was thinking from the hype, but certainly one of the prettiest games around ... although I haven't seen all that much of the game, so that may be part of it.
It isn't really my type of game, but it is pretty enjoyable and certainly looks pretty. Gonna try some co-op tonight I think.
scooby_dooby
Legend
Well this sure is one hell of a game, I bought it yesterday and played through the first few levels on co-op with a buddy, then got home and played them again SP.
I don't what to say that hasn't already been said, it's a very savage game and really intense on the hardcore difficulty. ON my second playthrough I was much much better though, dying fairly rarely. This is a game that really rewards patience, and going slow, it's almost shades of GRAW at times.
The difficulty is realy starting to pick up though, I just got to the powerplant area where all you fight are those little glowing grub bastards, and fuck are they crazy. Like a dozen of em all come at me at once, Dom gets absolutely shredded and I can only last about 20 seconds longer, worst thing is the little bastards blow up when they die. Thats where I quit last night at around 3, it's a very addictive game.
If I have any complaints it's probably the melee in close, especially with the chainsaw, it seems very sketchy. Also, AA would do a world of good in this game, but whatever, can't be perfect I guess. The music could also be better, it's good, but not Halo good.
I don't think it's quite on the level of Halo, but damn close, about a 9/10 for me so far.
I don't what to say that hasn't already been said, it's a very savage game and really intense on the hardcore difficulty. ON my second playthrough I was much much better though, dying fairly rarely. This is a game that really rewards patience, and going slow, it's almost shades of GRAW at times.
The difficulty is realy starting to pick up though, I just got to the powerplant area where all you fight are those little glowing grub bastards, and fuck are they crazy. Like a dozen of em all come at me at once, Dom gets absolutely shredded and I can only last about 20 seconds longer, worst thing is the little bastards blow up when they die. Thats where I quit last night at around 3, it's a very addictive game.
If I have any complaints it's probably the melee in close, especially with the chainsaw, it seems very sketchy. Also, AA would do a world of good in this game, but whatever, can't be perfect I guess. The music could also be better, it's good, but not Halo good.
I don't think it's quite on the level of Halo, but damn close, about a 9/10 for me so far.
I just realized how important the gamer cards are when taking ones opinion these days. Since the gamer card actually shows that you played the game, man that's a cool feature or what
And via achievements, roughly how much of it you've played...
Well, I'll be buggered if I could get past act 1 lat night myself!
Yeah, I turned the subtitles off almost right away.
I was also disappointed to see the game loose vsync on occasion, and the aforementioned texture LOD pop-in when reloading parts was a bit goofy as well. And I'm glad the made the option to use southpaw controls, but how the hell are you supposed to steer with the right stick while holding the 'A' button? That last part isn't bugging me though, as I've made a point to stick to standard controls since Double Agent doesn't support southpaw and someday I'd like to be able to snipe moving spies in that game.
Also, I'm not normally one to complain about a game's lenght but expessially with the abrupt ending this one does feel rather short. Regardless, I'm sure I will be replaying it in coop many times as it was a blast the whole way though and I put a few hours into multiplayer last night as well and get the feeling I will be doing a whole lot more of that over the years too.
And Dave, feel free to send me an invite and I'd be happy to help you though it. My gamertag is 'kylebisme'.
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it's 2 players split screen maximum.
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