Gearheads of War

These guys have tons of glitches on video..

I like this one since I'm such a Brumak fiend:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNOAPS0Vrlo

I think I was most disappointed in the campaign the first time through because, I thought it would be better. And I was sure the jaw dropping, most awesome moment of the game would be fighting Brumak. And I was playing co-op with my brother when we beat General Raam, and I was stunned, and for days I just couldn't believe that was the end.

But taking the flaws in stride, I am now rediscovering the game's great points. The graphics are really what makes this game so enjoyable. The gameplay is solid but it is just enhanced by how beautiful everything is, and specifically the size and animation on you and your enemies that is a high point for gaming to date.

I still hate Susan Conner's dialogue, in fact I read a post on another board where someone found out she is doing the dialogue on Bioshock. They were bummed because they hated Gears writing too. I was just happy to see I wasn't the only one who hated Gears incredibly cliched dialogue.

I had a lot of problems with the weapons at first too, and the lack of.."standouts", but again on a second playthrough and without expectations so high, I can see some qaulity there too. It's not necessarily how I would have handled the weapons, but anyway.

Some of the mechanics are awkward, specifically the whole weapon mechanism and how you switch them and the grenade system is very cumbersome, but the core hide and shoot mechanic is rock solid.

Another thing that makes the game great is the whole brute strength and size of all the characters, I harken back to this interview where Cliffy said originally the character was a skinny splinter cell type guy, and they realized it was just stupid and unrealistic for him to be throwing around these 400lb locust. So they made the playable character the hulking monsters you see today. The game has a strong cohesive dark overarching theme that works well.

I have been getting a lot of replay out of this game, and really I dont really even game that much so that says something.

Now MS is talking like it will be a halo-like franchise, and perhaps even alternate years with Halo, while Cliffy has announced a trilogy.

Epic will make hundreds of millions of dollars from this franchise..I bet they're glad they didn't make it PC exclusive instead :)

Or on PS3, for that matter..

This kind of experience, with stupendous graphics, is something I can see selling a ton of 360's over the long haul. I can see it drawing players away from the Wii experience and choosing it instead. It's that good. It will sell 360's perhaps more than any single experience I've yet seen on the box.

And the mic, made standard on Live, really once again shows microsoft's genius. The fact they were so ahead of the game and now Sony is trying to catch up years later. I mean, a standard frickin mic, trashtalking, bullshitting, strategizing, it's so brilliant.

So unless it's going to be about Gears 2 and so forth, there's never going to be enough content to keep it going (assuming you want to keep it going).

So why not make it just an all things Xbox blog??

I'm not quitting gaming, probably. But the fact is, I can honestly now see a future where I do.  I've said for years, I follow gaming for the message boards, the business side, the fanboy wars, the technical side of things, but I dont actually enjoy gaming that much anymore. I'm 31, so I sort of say that gladly as some sort of defense for being too old to game, but it's also very true.

I dont know what the problem is. I sort of wish for the great old Nintendo days but you know what? I hate the wii for being so weak too. I hate the PS3 because it's the same as the Xbox360. Boring. I hate the PC because, well, only one big game a year or less comes out for PC anymore. The PC games scene is dead for all practical purposes. When will we get Half Life 3? 2020? Probably.

I dunno, I'm too old for this shit. I yearn for the old days again, but they wont come back.

I still like Halo, even though Halo 2 sucked, but Halo 3 will probably be a letdown if Gears was (then again, not as much I bet, simply because it's a true FPS with clean graphics).

The game I'm most looking forward to, hell maybe the only one, now is mass effect. Probably because that game looks to combine a huge quest with RPG elements. Something for the more mature me rather than yet another shooter I guess.

I'm tired of waiting years at a time for the good games. I bought a Xbox 360 and waited a YEAR for Gears. Nothing worth a crap came out till then. Oh sure, we tried to convince ourselves GRAW and the likes of that was good. Now I'll wait again for Mass Effect. Wait wait wait. It's not limited to 360, all I did with N64 was wait. Wait wait wait. If I had a PS3 all I would be doing was waiting. If 360 was any indication it will be a YEAR before the good stuff on PS3 hits. Do you know how long a year is? Too long.

I mean, there's not even any platformers any more! I miss platformers. There's nothing but FPS. And the Wii, has no FPS but mostly all garbage like Wii sports.

Well, I will probably buy COD3. It's that or Rainbow Six, and I far prefer mindless blasting to the boring tactical stuff. COD games are up my alley. But, I bet it'll be "ok". It wont be worth 60 bucks.

Gaming is not exciting any more..I need to quit. I probably wont, because I need something to waste money on.. I dont think Gears is a bad game. It's not Gears fault. I'm not going to come on the lead designers brothers blog and troll. Gears is an 8 game. It's good, it's not great. The problem is me, not Gears.

The faceplates were 19.99 though, for ten bucks I probably woulda bought one.

I didn't pre-order though, because I just wasn't sure. They had a Gears cutout in the front with a counter, it said the 12th. It also said 13 days left so they weren't updating it. I didn't pre-order because I started wondering what if I could get it ten bucks cheaper at Wal Mart or something? Since I barely come up for air during the next three days of work, I'm probably done till tuesday I guess. I will get up Tuesday and go Gears hunting most likely. Hopefully a pre-order was not required..I may call tomorrow and ask the status as well. No point to this post, just final plans!

Outdoor daylight grassy areas: In the original Unreal 3.0 pics that surfaced some 2 years ago and became the basis for Gears, pics like this were shown http://www.unrealtechnology.com/screens/TerrainShot.jpg
And cooler ones than that that I cant find online any more. I really hope such a level exists in Gears, or if not in Gears2. It would be so nice to get a break from gray cityscapes.

Female human playable in multi-player (could have single player role as well)? This was brought up in the epic forum and I liked the idea. I dont think for Gears 1, but I think it should be explored as a possibility for Gears 2. I'm still kind of torn on this idea though. But anyway, just be sure to make her feminine and hot LOL. The trick is fitting her into that muscular Gears universe in a way that works..

For Gears2:

More of the same, but more color, variety, levels,  weapons, just more ya know? I think that is what Gears 2 will be. Better graphics hopefully as well.

http://media.xbox360.ign.com/articles/741/741987/img_4025462.html

WHATS UP WITH THAT CLIFFY?

It's a bit of a pain with all the megauploads, but worth it. Download all 7 parts and extract. You'll get an iso, which you then must burn as an image to a DVD (not CD). Then stick that in your X360, it is the gamestop video, controllable (as far as play, rewind etc) by your 360 controller. Basically someone directly ripped the gamestop event DVD, that you can now have in your home.

It's very high quality, and is basically the closest we'll get to what playing Gears will look like before it comes out. Instead of a small video on PC, it will fill your whole TV screen, in basically direct feed quality. It's the same gamestop video mind you, just very large quality and on your TV.

A better question might even be "in the first 3 months" or "6 months" or first month, anything like that.

I went through the math and various guesstimates for world wide sales and a fairly conservative prediction is 7.4 Xbox 360's million sold through worldwide by Jan 1. My prediction is based on solid sales knowledge and assumptions, so I didn't pull it out of air. Yes I know MS says 10m by Jan, I'm not sure about why they say that but it seems unlikely. Perhaps they mean shipped.

Lets just call it 7-8 million 360's then.

So I have no clue..2-4 million copies of Gears in the first three months shipped? And no telling how long of legs for what could be the new Halo.