Gearheads of War

I'll admit flat out that I'm a graphics whore.  If things don't look beautiful and make my mouth drop on the floor, I'm not as interested in playing it as I once was.  It's one of the reasons I sold my Wii.  The thing looked like crap on my HDTV.

The first video is a countdown that Jason Bertrand produced. He counts down his top 5 weapons from Gears of War 2.

http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/22690

Feel free to add your thoughts on his choices.

The second is a cool animation that one of our users did. What would happen if Marcus Fenix became a rock star?

http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/22736

Enjoy!

Gears of War popularized several things that games have imitated.  The cover system is the most obvious, but games like Dark Sector also borrowed Gears aesthetic and art style.  

One thing that I think should be borrowed a lot more frequently is the active reload.  I was thinking about this while playing Far Cry 2.  There are times when the gun jams and you have to simply press X to get it to fix.  It's so much less satisfying because there is no interaction.  There's just a random punishment feeling to the guns because if you pick up someone else's gun it's usually a POS.

Gears nailed that active reload (outside of the cheap sniper down for it).  I wish more shooting games would adopt this from Gears and not just the obvious elements like the cover system and roadie run.  

What do you guys think?  Do you like the active reload in Gears?  Would you like to see that element more popularized?

We just put up part one of the interview we shot with Cliff Bleszinki a few weeks ago. This video focuses on Cliff's background in the industry, and how he got where he is today.

http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/22363

Bonus: I also just put up my video walk through of the New Xbox Experience. I'll give you a hint, I think it's awesome.

http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/22359

I figured hot on the heels of the Gearheads' Cliff podcast, you guys might want to check out this extremely long look at Cliff and his views.

I found the piece to be fairly accurate in capturing my bro and what he's all about, course I would've loudly objected to this:

Mostly I would object to anyone ever calling Cliff shy.  Yes, he might have been shy with the ladies, but I can't count the number of times I had to fight other, older, much larger kids because my brother was mouthing off to them (often while playing ice or street hockey).  My role was definitely being the heavy as a child.  I bloodied many a kid's nose over Cliff's loud mouth.

This is going to be a bit of a rant, but the article also got me to thinking.  I do find it incredibly fascinating that shows like The Daily Show often bring on movie and TV actors, but don't often bring on game designers or even voice actors when they do parts in games.  I mean The Daily Show runs ads for video games all the time so it's their demographic.  It would be interesting to see someone like Cliff on The Daily Show to talk Gears of War 2.  Course, being that many of us see and hear from Cliff all the time, it's not like those interviews would really do much for us, but I do think that it's high time that late night shows and other television media begin to acknowledge the dramatic impact that this medium is having on our entertainment landscape.  I believe that's when we'll really see gaming cross over into the mainstream and not something just for the nerds amongst us.  I live to see the day when David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Jon Stewart might welcome my brother to the stage.  Not that gaming needs that kind of validation, but it certainly would be damn nice for some of these shows like Conan and The Daily Show to actually interview some folks who are speaking to their demographic, don't you think?

I just wanted to show this... can't really say much at this point... Don't Hate... THis is what I was trying to add to my signature...

Looks just like me!

In other news, I had a blast playing with a few of you the other night, was nice to not only get back online with my fellow gearheads but to also bust out the Gears for the first time in a long time.