Hiphopgamer26

COPIED AND PASTED

As many of you know last night was the launch party of Gears of War in Hollywood. I know Douggy said they'd have something up this morning so they'll probably share the same experiences I did with you guys (hopefully with better media) but here's what a non-industry persona thought about the party.

It was about 9:15 when I arrived at the Hollywood Forever cemetary last night. The only way I could find the place was by the set of 8 huge lights they had firing straight into the sky. I had to ask the Paramount Studios security guard where the freaking entrance was cause it was so hard to find but anyway.

Upon arrival there were many men dressed in army attire carrying m16s with laser attachments they kept on pointing at us. They loaded us all up into army transpor trucks and slowly drove trough the cemetary. The cemetary had been decked out in red lights and foggers everywhere. They had obviously recorded the sounds of locusts and were playing those from multiple grave sites. We finally arrived to the party site which was the cemetary's mausoleum. Usually, this sort of thing would freak me out but unless you concentrated on all the dead people on the wall, you'd think it was just another party.

I quickly dashed down the red carpet and spotted my first celeb, K-Fed in the flesh!!! Popozao! But I'll get to celebs later. Let me talk about Gears before I bore you.

Let me start off by saying I played Gears of War multi and single player for a grand total between 90 minutes and 2 hours. By this time, I feel like I have a very firm grasp on what the game is about and how it plays. Cliffy B (very awesome guy by the way I talked to him for like ten minutes) even let me know the build they brought to the party was not even the final build we will be getting come the 7th.

The first thing I did was hop into the multiplayer. It was pretty fun playing the people I did because they weren't that familiar with the map so I would go around and chainsaw entire teams. The first thing I noticed is how much more fluid the game runs than what I saw at E3 framerate wise. The graphics are about the same but just the atmosphere of it all seems to have gotten that much more polish since then. They also fixed the control issues that cost me some games at E3. Moving around from cover to cover has become a lot smoother than it once was and it just makes everything that much better.

I played two multiplayer levels that I can remember well. The first was from the level I talked about at E3. So I won't spend too much time on that here. The second and new mp level I got to play was at a creek with a hallway between the two bases and some bridges. If you play counter strike, think of Aztec except modified. One side can either try to sneak around the opposing force using the hallways or if they have a sharp shooter, station him on the bridge to pick people off. Here are some pics from my crappy ass camera that will be replaced in approximately two days :
1
2
3
4
5
6
The gameplay is relatively unchanged, though responsed much, much better than before. I dashed from cover to cover using A and when ready to finish my opponents just stepped away from the cover and ran up to him enemies and chainsawed them. This time around I found the game to be more accessible and not so much about strategy but that may be a side product of who I was playing with back at E3 and who I was playing last night. Against regular folks it's important to use cover but not as important. Always hold down L when shooting for more accuracy. The machine gun you start with is pretty inaccurate at anything but short to short-medium range. You also have a pistol? that works wonders and is very accurate and medium to long range.

One aspect of the gameplay I would really like to highlight because a lot of other games just get it wrong is grenade throwing. The boys at epic have put forth the de facto method of implementing tactical grenade throws into a game. You can quick switch to any weapon using the d-pad you only have slots for 4 weapons but I don't think you'll ever encouner a situation in the game where you will wish you had more. So you can switch to grenades by tapping up on the d pad, a little menu pops up with the four directions and what is assigned to them allowing you to switch. Once armed, you can press the L button to bring a purple set of boxes that display the trajectory of your grenade with NO b.s. Once you have what you want, hit R and off it goes for an accurate toss every time.

I guess I can cap it off by saying, this is the only game where the graphics are incredible, the in game cut scenes are in engine, and there is absolutely no discernable difference in graphical fidelity between multiplayer and single player.
1
2
With all the attention the multiplayer and graphics have gotten in this game, the single player experience has been sort of lost in the shuffle. I know I was concerned about that because I want like a "robust single player experience" in the words of my man SFLU.

I spent significant time with the first two levels of the game last night. The game starts by offering you the options to train or go into the fight. But we're serious gamers right? Who the hell needs training? So I chose to jump in to the fight. This is something that occured more than once during the game, you will come up to a path that diverts in two directions and you must choose which way you want to go. Adds a nice bit of variety to the game, I'll get to the in game choice later.

The single player opens up with you walking into a courtyard as locusts start pouring out of a door. I played on casual difficulty and the locusts all went down without much fuss. But cover is key, if you get to close to the locusts the AI is smart enough to concentrate all their fire on you and you're dead quick. But using tactics and flanking you can easily put the locusts away. I did try both tactics, going Halo guns blazing doesn't work. The opening level is very short if you choose to fight, once you've cleared one or two waves of locusts you go to extraction.
1

The second level is where the single player really shines and the action gets going . All the stuff I have seen online and you have seen online probably from single player is from the first two levels by the way. I recognized pretty much everything. The second level starts you at here:
1
2
3
You then approach a similar courtyard that you've seen in videos on IGN and you fight off the locusts there again. Things got murderous though as you are forced to make a decision to go through a right path and a left path and one of them has the Gears equivalent of an MG 42. You better hoped to have saved your grenades for this part as I found it's sort of the only way to get past it but I am sure there are other ways. Another point is the emergence holes. You can close them early by lobbing a grenade but the ones I played only released 2 or 3 waves before closing on their own. I am pretty sure later in the game if you don't close those holes the locusts will just keep pouring out till you do.

All in all, Gears of War will live up the hype for all and will most deffinately be the most played live game till Halo 3. I don't want to sound like I am hyping and gushing too much but this one is one of those special games that you're not going to put down for a long long time to come.

The atmosphere is wonderful, I couldn't really get a feel for the sound cause it was so loud in there last night but I am sure it is quality 5.1 like most every xbox 360 title. My only complain is that maybe down the road the lack of atmospheric variety may get stale. Everything is kinda gritty stoned locations over and over again.

When I spoke with Cliffy B I asked him THE question people have been worried about, "What's going on with ranked matches and not being able to play with friends". He replied " Ask Microsoft". Take that for what it's worth.

If you guys have any questions at all, please post em and I will reply as best I can. Here's a short movie I got with my camera.

I ran into Fieldy and Jonathan from that one small band you may heard of called Korn. Justin Chambers was there and so was JC Chavez from Nsync. Did I mention K fed? I didn't recognize Mikael Pfifer and I didn't Lindsey Lohan. Oh well.

Getting out of cover sometime was sort of annoying cause you're in a panic due to the AI moving up on you when they feel it's the right time. So you have to break cover, fire, and fall back or engage. I found myself jumping from cover point to cover point a few times when I wanted just to back pedal. But after the initial learning curve it's not much of an issue to freak out about.

Other than that the controls are pretty tight, nothing stands out and makes me think ya know, they should have done this differently.

__________________

Whistlerman

wow, have not learned what I do? I give the link to everybody....

__________________

Ricochet

__________________

Darkstar

Long read indeed, who cares, it was nice reading about the experience of playing the game, and who was it that wrote that? I wish i got to play this game earlier.

__________________

Hitzel

I wish he had asked cliffy more questions, like can you customize starting weapons, form parties for player matches,update a party system for later, etc...

__________________

Hiphopgamer26

i couldnt link it, u have to be an "insider" at the ign 360 gb board to view the thread

__________________