Recently I was given the “green light” to review two video games for my blog: Gears of War 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I want to give a background blog so that my readers understand my bias and my opinions. I also will not be giving a numerical score for either game. I am a firm believer that you cannot quantify a complex human opinion numerically. This also prevents the reader from just skipping to the bottom for a number score. I have a history with both of these game franchises and video game companies so without further delay.
Gears of War 3 is the conclusion to Microsoft’s other franchise, that doesn’t begin with an “H” and ends with an “-alo,” that began in 2006, it was the definitive killer-app for the Xbox 360 at that time. Gears of War was the story of a small squad battling subterranean monsters that overwhelmed the fictional planet, Sera, aptly named Locust. The game ended with the squad shooting a missile underground and devastating the Locust. Bizarre? Yes. But was the game play there to back up the game? Yes. The game focuses on a cover mechanic and a game play motto of “stop and pop,” in which you slap your character against a wall and pick your shots carefully. Just like most everyone who bought the game, I was hooked. I can recall late nights where my friend and I stayed up, ate pizza and tore through our competitors online, literally.
Naturally when a sequel was to be released in 2008, I was ecstatic. I patiently waited for the next chapter of the series. I went to the midnight launch and even skipped school to play through the entire campaign, which I did in a solid weekend. This is where things started to go very wrong. First, the story in Gears of War 2 started off good, humanity was taking the offensive and there was actually some real human drama that was absent in the first game. However there were things in it that had no credence or relevance to the larger conflict of humanity’s survival. Anyone who remembers the random segway of creatures in test tubes knows what I am talking about. In addition to that, a third faction of monsters that are created from the “oil” of the fictional planet start attacking everything. If that sounds like it came out of left field, that’s because it did. The whole story felt like a mess. The innovative Horde mode, which pits up to four friends against 50 waves of monsters, was a lot of fun though. The Horde Mode has been adapted for other game series like Call of Duty and Halo.
But the biggest problem with Gears of War 2 was the multiplayer. The matches suffered from latency, making the game unplayable and it took several minutes to get into a game, maybe even more. Epic Games, the developer of the Gears franchise, even stripped the online ranking system in favor of a brand new numerical one effectively stripping down all the effort you put into your previous ranking. This was through several patches and fixes to Gears of War 2’s multiplayer. Eventually, about several months later, the game was mildly functional but the damage was done. So Gears of War 3 has a lot to make up for Gears of War 2’s shortcomings but luckily I played the beta earlier this year and the multiplayer was running smooth with barely any latency.
Check back next week for my full Gears of War 3 review.
