Tuesday 9 January, 2007

I'm in the middle of Act 4-3 "Hazing" on single player. This is a somewhat straight forward segment after the "Bad to Worse" chapter which was and intense standoff against 2 boomers followed by a fight against the invulnerable berserker in the conservatory. The first area you enter is an open garden. A troika gunner is placed at the opposite end at a pretty far distance, which is bad news since they are much more deadly on hardcore difficulty. One small problem with Gears is that the default "casual" difficulty is far to easy for most experienced gamers and the hardcore difficulty is a bit to unforgiving (especially in the final chapters). Anyway, it took me 2 or 3 tries to clean out the wretches (think ghouls from WarCraft 3 except they're speedy and latch onto to your face) and get behind the troika to take out the drones protecting it.
The next area was a little tougher since their were mostly drones, but the enviornment provided much better cover. However its easy to die instantly when entering this area since a Theron guard fires a torque arrow from the roof across . Torque bows are the deadliest weapon in the hands of enemy since, if an arrow hits you, your body explodes and they are VERY accurate from range. Thankfully he scatters when fired upon just leaving the drones to your left. Cover helped greatly leaving a clear path for a few lancer (chainsaw) KO's which is always a brilliant technical display unto itself. Watching a locust's body rip apart as blood splatters the screen to a grinding symphony never gets old. So the usual shoot from cover, grenade, blind fire, shotgun to face took place. Unfortunately, I found my first glitch in the game. A boomer was supposed to break down a a door after the area was cleared but he never blew it down :(.
He showed up after I reloaded the last checkpoint and went through the firefight again. After defeating the boomer I hit the next checkpoint and stopped playing.

Some notes:
Dom (my AI squadmate) was more suicidal than usual in the last firefight, he rarely used cover.
I feel the nemycst, which are large floating balls of flesh (or something) do not make very fun enemies.
Dirty language makes this game great. It just does.

While I wish the weapon selection was a little more varied, I realize a chainsaw-bayonet is all that matters in this world.


My next log should be more exciting since I'm nearing the end of Act 4 and something awesome always awaits.
LATER

Gears of War rules, we need to get some online player action in!!!

CLee55, Hit me up, ill probably be on. I am still in the course of the game on hardcore. Do I need to beat that inorder to play co-op insane?? I told Jim that I am going to demonstrate this game and he was pretty stoked about it. He wanted to see it!

Wow, I just read I have to beat it in hardcore for the insane-ness to begin