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dkirschner's Gears of War 3 (360)
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| [April 23, 2015 08:22:35 PM]
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On Sunday, my old friend P came over. He and his wife are in town from the Air Force life of living all over the world. I get to see him once every year or two. We used to game together back in high school and college, and I mail him my old Xbox games sometimes for him to play, but we never play together anymore.
It was especially awesome to sit on the couch next to him and plow through Locusts and Lambent because this is also the first time I've touched a game, aside from Hearthstone, for 3 months. This first semester of having a proper university teaching job has been intense, and on top of that, A and I have been moving the last few weeks, I've been out of town to one conference after another, I've been working steadily at my editing job, and I've gotten some sweet suit acting gigs, including being a featured white walker at local HBO Game of Thrones season premiere events in April here in Georgia. It's been a whirlwind of a semester that's left no time for gaming!
What made P and I's Gears experience even better is that we were killing it on Hardcore. We only had some serious trouble once, and that was on the boss fight where you split up to defend that one place from the lambent berzerker. I was outside the fort walls and P was up top providing cover. I kept on getting killed by the Hammer of Dawn, and as we restarted over and over again, we figured out that I could trigger the stalk spawns in order, that I needed to handle each stalk spawn one at a time and so that P could help out, that I needed to just avoid the berzerker when it spawned, and finally that I needed to run in through the gates as soon as the Hammer of Dawn cleared them the first time. My main problem was I kept waiting while trying to avoid the berzerker, and the Hammer of Dawn's second shot would kill me every time.
We made it through 3 acts (of 5) on Sunday, and I cut us off just as we got to Char, which I remember as being an intense place with Ash Man leaving traps for you, and also with the nuke victims frozen in ash in their moment of death. It was cool to re-experience the game for the first time again in years. It holds up well--not that I've played many AAA shooters since. My favorite part of that game is still Cole Train's sequence in the stadium. It's such a neat way to tell his history.
Finally, it was nice to play Gears with P because the last co-op game I'd been playing was Gauntlet with a different P (the usual co-op buddy P). I wasn't that impressed with Gauntlet, though I did just download it again today. You can see I'm gearing up for gaming soon...2 weeks til this semester is over.
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| [January 14, 2012 07:53:05 PM]
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...Or I could just finish the last three chapters in one night. What a great series. Gears 3 is the best of them, and the ending is real satisfying. I love how Gears 3 has so many emotional scenes. Gears 1 wasn't too focused on story, but Gears 2 and 3 started fleshing out the COGs -- Dom's wife in Gears 2, Dom himself, Marcus's father, and Cole's past in Gears 3 -- I'll probably never forget these moments. There is also just some real heavy stuff they present in Gears 3, like actually going to Char, the city that the COGs themselves nuked in their fight against the Locust, and talking about Jacinto in the same way. Char was eerie with all the ashen corpses frozen in their moments of death, the sunlight beaming through the buildings like it would at sundown, made especially more unsettling with "Ash Man" triggering traps as you search for a group of survivors. And to know that it was Marcus's father and the COGs that did this on purpose to everyone. Anyway, great end to the series. I was glad to see a real boss fight at the end, unlike the lame one at the end of Gears 2, easily one of the most disappointing boss fights everrrr.
Onto the multiplayer!
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| [January 13, 2012 09:50:15 PM]
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I started playing Gears again. It had been so long since I played last time that I just started over. I played Chapter 1 with M on hardcore. After playing Vanquish, and several other easier games, I totally forgot how hard Gears of War could be, especially on hardcore. We did fine together mostly because we could resurrect each other--well, not resurrect, but help each other up before dying. So we played chapter 1, or act one, or whatever. I turned it on the other day and finished chapter 1 on hardcore alone, but it was ridiculously difficult for me. I was dying left and right and would get killed in like three shots. Those Globbers that lob giant balls of imulsion would get me back into a corner and just kill me over and over. I'm really glad the friendly AI does its job well and revives me when I need it. Since hardcore was beating me up so badly, as soon as I beat act one I changed the difficulty to normal and I'm glad I did. I'm through act 2 and will probably play Act III today. One act per day is only 3 more days to beat!
The real reason for the Gears update is the multiplayer. A couple weeks ago, H and I took my Xbox over to N's house and we played Horde mode and Beast mode. It was my first time playing online either of these modes. There were four of us spread out among 2 Xboxes and 2 HD TVs. Beast mode was neat. You play as the Locust, and you select which one you want to be each round. If I remember (this was a few weeks ago), you get money for killing cogs, who have laid traps for you. The more cogs you kill, the bigger & badder Locust you can purchase to control. They all have their uses, sort of. Like wild tickers are good for eating barbed wire and other cog defenses. Of course the bigger Locust are good for just crushing and destroying. Then we played Horde mode, which I liked way better. In Horde mode you switch roles from Beast mode, so you're the cogs defending against waves of Locust. Locust come in waves for 9 rounds, getting increasingly more difficult, and the 10th round is a boss. This goes on for 50 rounds, spiking difficulty on the boss battles, but getting harder all the time. We split up me and N on the left side of this particular map, and H and W on the right side. The object is basically not to have the entire team die. N said we were supposed to defend this energy generator or something, which, if we controlled, we could build defenses spread out from it. I told M, who is a Gears fanatic, about N's strategy later, and she said "What? No, the goal isn't to necessarily defend that initial generator, but to stay alive. You need to go capture more generators." Because N told us NOT to go capture more generators because then we'd have to defend them. Two different ways of playing? N's instructions worked fine though -- we made it to wave 28 on our very first try, with W having never played the game, H being merely okay at shooters, me being decent, and N kicking ass. I actually DID end up kicking ass right alongside N (we dominated our left side) after I got the hang of the game again, and H and W improved a lot too. I want to play it more.
There's my Gears update. I also played some random Halo 2 co-op with H, speaking of team-based play. I bought the entire Halo series over Christmas. Halo 1 doesn't work on my Xbox, but 2 does. I didn't want to play 2 without playing 1, but H did, so we played for an hour and a half or so through the story, and I had no idea what was going on. I'm shelving it though until I get a chance to play Halo 1. Must play in order!
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| [November 6, 2011 12:35:06 PM]
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I actually bought a new game, whoa. I haven't bought a brand new newly released game since the last WoW expansion, and before that the previous WoW expansion, and before that the previous WoW expansion...and before that I don't remember. But this Gears of War series is an incredible experience. It's only gotten better through the series. J and I played the first chapter of Gears 3 today and we were both just blown away in any area you could name.
From the very beginning, we could tell a difference in visuals. It looks phenomenal, way bigger a jump between 1 & 2. There are new visual flares. The very first mission reminded me of the Sandman fight in Arkham Asylum. The environment builds itself and comes into form in this dreamscape flashback as Marcus & Co. defend his father.
Another difference is that weapons now have tooltips. It's real handy. In Gears 2 they introduced multiple types of many of the weapons. This time around I can finally see what the gun is before I pick it up. It'll say "Lancer" instead of just have a picture. Big improvement.
The storytelling is a really strong point as this series progresses. G1 didn't have a whole lot, but the characters were good. G2 really started fleshing out a couple of the characters, Dom especially, and their relationships to family members. G3 is phenomenal and really creative in its dealing with Cole Train's past. It's kind of an odd segment, very unique. I really liked it. It involves football. And the larger story revolves around Marcus and his father.
Chapter 1 is told from two perspectives. They intertwine. You lead one squad doing one thing, and the other squad doing another thing. Very cool.
The enemies are cooler. You're no longer fighting only the Locust, but also the Lambent, who most importantly explode when they die. The explosions are very nice to watch. My favorite enemy thus far is the...Globber or something. He throws these giant glowing blobs that explode, kind of like a catapult. He is tough to kill! Then there are other enemies that do like a Resident Evil thing. You kill them and they just sprout heads and become more deadly, then kill those, and they sprout legs and run around, and take a while to die. They're fun to fight for sure.
That's all I have to say so far. Just a giant WOW. Oh yeah, and the environments and cover are all somewhat destructible now. Looking forward to continuing on with J on hardcore difficulty, and jumping into some multiplayer, buying a headset and playing with M. Yay new game!
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dkirschner's Gears of War 3 (360)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Sunday 6 November, 2011
GameLog closed on: Saturday 14 January, 2012 |
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