Gearheads of War

Decided to come back just for this occasion, because on Februrary 20th, I need to make a hard decision, and that is whether or not to buy Crackdown.  When it was first announced, I had no interest in it what-so-ever, seemed like a GTA wanna-be.  But my freind got me addicted to this idea of crackdown, and after playing the demo, I "seem" to like it.  Now in saying I "seem" to like it, its fun jumping around shooting gansters, being superhuman.  But the missions, well thats another story.  It was so bad to my freind in fact that got me addicted was going cold turkey on it, and started to claim it sucks.  So, what say you Gearheads?  Is this game actually worth buying as it looks so far, or should I just pass the chance and continue to save for Mass Effect, Assassins Creed, and Halo 3?

Its been a while since I wrote a diary, heck, probably most of you new guys haven't even seen my name seeing as it has been so long since I have wrote one.  Been a long wait for Gears, and been playing it for a while now, and well, I never seem to have interest any more to visit this site.  I just dont see it anymore like I used to.  Nobody's fault, guess I just get bored of stuff easily.  So as others have done, this will probably be the last thing that I write for a while.  Just gotta move on to new things.  And I will be back when there is talk of Gears 2, you can count on that.  But right now, Gears to me is, well, old news, and even with new maps and things, just cant keep to the hype.  Papi, Zoso, Starborne, and the others that have been there since the beginning, was fun being nerds (sorry), hyping about Gears and how awsome it would be.  Cheers.  O and, last time I was here, you were on vacation Papi, hope you had a nice one.

Just to start off, the game is still great, but I am starting to hit the point were Gears is just starting to get to the point were its something that is not entertaining me every time I play it.  It might be me, but I really think its the game if anything else.  Maps are great, but were we not promised more?  I remember only that, no details, nothing.  Just "more maps", well, yea, eventually it had to happen eventually.  And also, (I hate to make comparisons, but this is the only way I can think to explain it), its really not like Halo with 14 jillion options for multiplayer to keep everything fresh, the game types in Gears are bland.  They are basically all the same with little tiny changes.  I wanna play some objective games, maybe make my own gametypes, things like that.  Playing Warzone/Exection (cause Assassination just is not fun), 7000 times has kind of lost it.  and Co-Op was amazing, it really was, but, well, you can only go through the same exact thing so many times before boring of that.  I still play the game, all the time, its my really only good Live game, and I still play it.  But I know I am soon gonna want more, I need some room to move around, keep things fresh  I am not burning Epic for making a crappy game, its great, but I can only play the same thing so many times.  

Dang, I really screwed up.  I missed so much time out of this website, I forgot all about it,(sorry).  I guess I was just too busy playing multiplayer on Gears that I just never tried.  Now that I just came back after about 2 weeks, I am seeing scheduled games, new reviews, diaries, and so I will just ask 1 question, can someone sum up all the important stuff?  I just missed way too much, and it will take me way too long to catch up all by myself.  O yea, I also propose a Gearheads game this Friday night, have to say I am addicted to the Shotty, only thing I use, if you wanna, just tell me before on XBL (gamertag CaptainAlex24), just send me a message, and I am sure I can at least attempt to having a fun game.  O yea, and happy holidays.

After completing the Single Player on Hardcore, and half way through Insane and having a good deal of time on multiplayer, I think I am finally ready to write a review of this game, and to make everyone happy, I will start with the positives.

I guess I will start with the graphics, because that is what drew most people in.  Like everybody knows on this website, they are amazing, never seen anything better, and they continue to amaze me that a game can look this good.  Now more importantly, how it plays.  The cover system is absouletly genius.  It works perfectly for the game with the awsome A.I. and taking cover is a synch.  Cover works, nothing cannot be taken cover behind as long as it is realisticly possible, and it actually acts like cover.  Next up is the weapons, for the most part a great balance of weapons that all do their job agianst the Locust Horde, and do a great job in multiplayer of keeping everything balanced.  Finally, I will add on that the A.I. in this game actually dosent suck for once, they know how to fight, and it suprised me when a enemy flanked and chainsawed me in single player, usually the A.I. just kinda stands there waiting to die.  Now, for my complaints

I am a firm believer in the notion that nothing is perfect, and even though this game is great, its not perfect.  I will start off with the most noticable problem, they story.  I have to just break off right now and say it totally sucks, it really dosent follow anything but your Marcus, you have a big gun, and you shoot bad guys.  I wanted history of Emergence day, flash backs, people that you could actually make connections to and feel bad when they died. (I could care less when Carmine and Kim died, played with them for about a level, no connection).  Heck, just a cut scene seeing what the guys are like would be nice.  Next on the list is music, it really dosent incite fear or a sense of epic in me, really dident hear any of it, I wanted epic music blasting into my ears as I took down hordes of enemies, but instead I get some generic music.  Lastly, the multiplayer is lacking.  All 3 games are basically minute differences of eachother.  I was hoping for some objective type games, maybe being able to make a clan, but thats just not possible.  Dont get me wrong, multi rocks, but I wish it just had more.

Don't get me wrong from the huge complaints list, easier to complain then compliment.  This game is great and I play it everyday, and all of the greviances are pretty minor (except the story, only the end gave me hope for more story in the sequel if they make one).  And for these reasons, I am gonna go tough on Cliffy and give this game a 9.3 out of 10.  Nothing is perfect in this world, not even the best of games, and this is by far a must-buy this year, forget PS3, get this.

I wish I was there, but I had to work on Sunday(really shoulda took it off), but I might as well ask cause I really wanted to do this, did anyone get to play with the cool dudes at Epic?  Just felt like I should ask, and if you did, did they say anything interesting like about map designs or something?

I know everybody loves going online and playing a few rounds of halo of COD2.  I know I love it myself, and after I got XBL, I dont know how I ever lived without it.  But it just seems today that everybody thinks EVERY game should have online capability to play with other people.  I know that games are becoming more and more online capable, but the other side of that sword is that it is becoming harder and harder to play a game without the online capability.  I know how it feels, I really just got XBL about 4 months ago with my upgrade to high speed, and I even back then felt as if games just were not as fun without XBL.  Is this a bad thing?  Are we going too fast into the future of broadband and DSL were eventually one day, you need it to actually just play games?  I still know alot of people without high speed internet, who still play games that are fun without it, but at the same time you are slowely cutting out a bigger and bigger piece of something that you do with the same Xbox and going into the new age of High Speed.  Even Cliffy said it, Split Screen multi is just the last option you have when you are bored (if you want to know were, sorry, that just sticks out in my head).  If we grow completely relaint on online capability for games, well, I think games are going to take one huge step back.

After all this time, I cannot believe I never made the connection between the two.  I LOVE Band of Brothers, seen it about 12 times and if any of you have not seen it, I totally recommend it.  After watching it agian over the course of this week, I finally see what I think Gears will be like, except in movie form.  The story starts as a group of guys just bent on killing krauts because thats what they were expected to do from training.  When they finally got into war, they saw what all the hell was about, saw freinds die in horrible ways, and questioned why the world was as it is.  And this, I believe, is the prime example of what Gears is going to be.  I hope not to see that Marcus may be some marine-badass who just likes killing stuff.  I wanna see Marcus break, see what he has missed out in prison, see what this war has done.  This is what makes Games stories legendary, and I think this is exactly how its gonna turn out.  

Wow, six days and counting, can't believe we are so close to getting it.  After watching the MP movies, I dunno if I am gonna give that a try first or not, but thats besides the point.  My real point is who is gonna get it first?  I know Zoso Fan was talking about it is shipping near his home, but I want some sort of article saying were its gonna ship from, and who really will get it first.  I guess I will finish this off for whoever thinks they got it first to find a way to rip your eyes of the tv and type up a diary telling us how amazing it is.

We are getting closer and closer to emergence day, and my anticipation keeps going up and up.  I cant stand it anymore, feel like I need to be diagnosed with OCD.  As the clock clicks down though, Microsoft or Epic seems not to want to release any more info towards the game, and I want some more than ever, bad.  Is this normal, should I be wrong?  Should they really be spending more time trying to make the game instead of feeding my craves of new trailers or just some plain info?  Or is Microsoft and Epic making a mistake, by having casual gamers(It saddens me to know how many people have never heard of Gears)see what it is all about with a massive advertising blitz to rev up some Hype?

  As we near the eve of Emergence Day, I have been thinking, after emergence day, will this site continue to exist?  Will we still come together to talk about Gears or will this just slowely fade away from view? Personally, I really hope this website keeps up, but I am not sure if people will find incentive to keep coming back because, well, you have Gears now.  So I might as well make this two seperate questions for us and Papi.  Papi, will you keep running this site or just slowely close it down?  And for everybody else, heres once again another poll to see who will keep coming to this website after Emergence Day, I know I will be, as all things adapt.

After reading Papi's awsome diary on XBL, I had a long thought on why people are such jerks on XBL.  Why spend ur time frustrating people because "you were taking their kills"?  Why bother de-leveling so you can kill some new people.  How is this fun?  I enjoy playing the game just the way it was supposed to be played.  Yet, I still cannot grasp how running around acting like a immature little moron brings excitment to ones life.  So, if anybody has an idea of why people do this, please tell me, maybe it will make me that much less frustrated while I am getting team-killed next time I am playing.