Gears of War CO-OP Impressions

Submitted by James Munn on November 7, 2006 – 10:37 pm16 Comments

I arrived at home this evening around 9pm and fired up my 360. Everyone, and I mean everyone online was playing Gears of War. With my copy in the mail somewhere, I was absolutely disgusted that I couldn’t join in. Luckily, Sammael lives in town so I grabbed a six of Heineken and broke up the party.

Sammael and I fired up a split-screen co-op campaign, playing through the first chapter and coming close to the end of the second chapter. We ended the evening on the first vehicle scenario, which I believe comes near the end of the second chapter. The light truck, I’ll leave it at that, to avoid spoilers.

I have to be honest: Gears of War is polished as hell but we both agreed that the single player experience, even in a co-op campaign, doesn’t warrant a 10. Of course that doesn’t mean the game is bad in any way, it’s just hard to consider it a killer app. I can’t compare this to Halo 2, it doesn’t seem fair.

I’ve scanned through a collection of reviews online to see if anyone can explain what exactly is underwhelming about the title. Neither of us could really put our finger on it. It looks great, plays great and sounds great (although in split-screen, the audio frequently had trouble keeping up in heavy gunfights), why don’t we love it so far?

Then I read through this Eurogamer review and it hit home for me.

“But, let’s face it, looks aren’t everything. Cutting through the bullshit, on a purely gaming level Gears of War is not doing anything extraordinary or new on any level. A few novel camera and control tweaks aside, we’re in pretty familiar territory with a broadly well-established load-out of weapons, fighting a familiar battle against enemies that for all their gloriously elaborate alien exterior might as well be humans for all the differences they represent in reality. These are AI routines we’re well versed in, and familiar duck and cover tactics that we’re used to from other games, and, yes, they work to good effect in Gears of War, but let’s not pretend that we’re wallowing in the future of entertainment. What we have here is an extremely competent action game that’s as polished and refined as it could be, and is therefore very enjoyable. But if Epic had applied the same widescreen scope and ambition to the gameplay as it did to the engine we’d be much more excited than we are.”

Richard

Sorry but I could not disagree more. Its worth at least a 9.5 and is definetly a killer app overall. I am at the same point as you and so far the game is insanely fun. I just got done playing the MP for the last 5 hours straight and even though I am a die hard Halo fanboy Gears multiplayer rivals it in pure fun, not something easy to do.

What should a 10 rating be reserved for anyways, You have a great action game that has a MP worth hundreds of hours of playtime. The MP just puts this game over the top.
Ugh

I’m sick of everyone’s boner for Gears of War. The West is too obsessed with shooters and the East is too obsessed with RPG’s. I like it here in the middle where the “crazy” is limited to cult status games. Gears is all anyone is talking about now on any gaming blog or site. Literally, nearly ALL of GT.TV’s videos up right now are of Gears of War. And the one’s that aren’t Gears are Call of Duty 3, another shooter. Maybe great games like Ico and Okami would’ve done a bit better if they were hyped up to “Jesus Returns” status like Gears of War has been. I blame shallow ‘tards like Cliffy B who think they’re “hardcore” but really just lust after virtual blood. Really, how can anyone be hardcore with an name like “Cliffy B”.
Billza

Haha, well said “Ugh”…well said.
Sean

I’m playing (i suck a lot at this play style) but I say its a 9.0 not a 10. The constant cutscenes are bit daunting even though they introduce story but in this game I really don’t care this fairly linear campaign is fun and challenging. I wish it didn’t force you in to the “walking” moments. Other than that its top notch the cover system is damn fun. Though the running mechnism should be a different button. The problem exist if you set your sight on a distant target you can get fucked by even slightly approaching another wall. Most annoying, but after getting used to it, its not so bad. it takes time learning how to fight in GOW. Such as avoiding the gunners which there seems to be a fair amount. And co-op is no joke. You have to work together if you’re going to get through this game. Much fun
Sammael

Ok, first thing’s first. I met Cliffy B. years ago when I was in LA and I thought he was a dick. (I may have been drunk at the time, but I’m pretty sure that had nothing to do with it)

Now that we got that out of the way, it never effected my enjoyment of Unreal. I loved Unreal and Unreal Tournament in all of it’s incarnations. GoW I like, but so far I don’t see the reason for the hype to have snowballed to the level that it has, and I also don’t see how this game deserves a “perfect 10″. I think that is what is bothering me the most in this whole situation.

Lets look at 10 out of 10 as a rating. I really don’t recall a situation in school where I got a test with 50 questions on it, I got a few wrong and ended up with a perfect score. Maybe partial credit, but the score wasn’t “perfect”. It was very good, but not flawless. It bothers me that this could get perfect review ratings and be flawed. Why even have a perfect rating? This reminds me of PSM(?) giving MGS3 Snake Eater a perfect 10, then giving the re-release Subsistance a perfect 10… why even have a rating system if there are no rules, nothing to govern it by? A 10 should mean “No room for improvement”. If this isn’t going to be the standard that games are held by, it’s pointless to use numbers.

“Gears of War – 27 bananas out of 14 dingleberries”

If I rambled on a bit, here’s the point to the story. Game review scores are meaningless. They always have been, but every year they get a little bit worse.
Jack

Gee, Cliffy B a dick? Shocker of the century
that guy

Shipments were delayed here, so I get my copy today.
I’m probably in the minority, but I don’t think much of Halo 2, so it’s not going to be hard to beat it.

Halo 2 was tedious, repetitive, and had an inane plot. What was the point of playing both Master Chief and the Arbiter? They are identical in practice. I would forget all the time which one I was playing, and had to look down at my feet to find out. “Huh, boots. I must be Master Chief now.”
Kyle

James, I knew you would try shit like this. Typical Sony fanboyism, trying to demean a game that 98 % of all people agree is amazing. So please, SUCK ON THAT SONY.
James

@Kyle: I’m flattered you were looking forward to my opinion. I’m not really a Sony fanboy, I’m a PSP fanboy.

Why not give us your opinion of the game as well? Did you pick it up yet?
Bill

Gamestop is killing people by not getting this game in in a timely fashion. Maybe by Thursday they say. Luckily I found it at Walmart and had the pleasure of cancelling my preorder and getting my 5 dollars back which pissed them off.

I feel that if EB/Gamestop is going to take all that money early, they should have an obligation to be amoung the first to receive a game. Pay a little extra for shipping. Get it there overnight. You know you’ve got a problem when the Walmarts and Sears of the world are beating you to the punch with the hottest game of the season.
Subnet6

I totally agree with Ugh.

Its like everyone was told to love this game so buying it and playing it was just a formality.

It seems to me like a lot of people were just waiting for it to come out so they could insert it in their 360s and then immediately scream, “KILLER APP!!!”. Just because so many people were out their claiming the 360 didn’t have a killer app, the masses were dying for one to arrive to shut people up.

This games looks good but I think the 360 fanboys were so starved for a good game besides dead rising that anything that is even pretty good seems like a life saver.

And yes the rating system is completely broken.
When the average game is a 7 then what exactly is a 10?

Tell me whats the difference between a game that gets a 1 and one that gets a 3? Why even have those numbers? its all meaningless. They should use a 4 star system like movies.
James

Spoke with Sammael a short time ago and he’s reporting very good news on the multiplayer front. He says it’s excellent.

Good thing, eventually my copy will arrive by mail.
http://youtube.com 8bucks

My tips for enjoying Gears single player campaign (or Co-op as well): Have a whole damn screen to yourself.
Sammael

OK, so I sat down with GoW again yesterday (after my left hand cramped from completing “Killing in the Name” on Hard) and started off playing some Solo Campaign on Hardcore. Now that I had played some of the game, Hardcore is much more manageable… The blind-fire kind of sucks in this game and seems it should only be used in specific situations. Plus I’m pretty comfortable at this point with the cover system, and how all the weapons work. Definitley felt better than before with a little experience with the gameplay now.

So after playing that for a little bit, I saw that my friend Charpunk was playing some multi. I jumped in to an open spot and found myself in a Penny-Arcade room. I now know why everyone tries to play with these people. Everyone plays fair, has fun and there is no over abundance of the typical rude harrasment inbetween matches that I usually happen across on Live. Thanks to the guys I ran into, it was a lot of fun. The multi ran VERY well. No instances of lagg, and the 4 on 4 felt pretty comfortable. It’s reminiscent of SWAT4′s team multiplayer. You don’t always get a kill right away. Most times, you incapacitate and opponent (who is revivable, either over time or by a teammate) and you need to get close enough to kill them at that point. It’s a lot of fun having to confirm your kills. That’s a basic synopsis of it, but very cool.

The one thing that surprised me more than the lack of lagg, was that the multi looks as nice as the single player. Very rare for a game that looks that good both ways(Ghost Recon is a good example of this not being the case). Very breathtaking. The animations work in selling it the whole package.

After all that, I will say that I still feel the game isn’t a 10, but it is still a very good game. The multi is surprisingly good. Now I just want to see if it has legs.
Sammael

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3155087

But this is killing me. Absolutley stupid. M$ could really be killing right now, and they seem to be tripping over their own feet.
Kyle

I did pick the game up, asshole. Its great man. The single player may be a little but short, but the amazing multiplayer makes up for it.

Btw, the PS3 wouldn’t be able to run it because it doesn’t have enough RAM.
SUCK ON IT AGAIN.