On Why Gears Of War Sucks.....

cos it's just a way too good damn fine game!

Yesterday I loaded Lost Planet, the new Capcom IP that I had played the demo for ages ago on Xbox Live!, heck I'd even played the online multiplayer demo which I thought was good fun.
Problem is, as I was playing the first level I couldn't help trying to HOLD "A" to run to cover, or trying to time my reloads so that I get an "active reload" that makes me temporarily stronger. Of course, all these things are Gears of Wars...

GoW is so stupidly easy to control and great to play that I couldn't help but compare poor old Lost Planet to it. Now don't get me wrong, LP is a great game... proper Capcom action (in the vein of a cold and icy Resident Evil 4, which anyone will tell you is one of the greatest games and surely GameCube's finest moment) with lots of nice graphics, good gameplay and, if we're honest, it controls rather well. Just GoW does it all better :)

Oh and don't start me on GoW multiplayer, which has finally taken over Halo 2 as the most played game on live. The matches are not your typical FPS deathmatches (thank God for that, they would've sucked as the game isn't really built like that), what you get is 2 teams of 4 trying to outwit each other in cleverly designed maps with lots of cover and things to hide behind... once you're dead you have to wait for the round to finish... thing is though, the living can't speak to the dead and vice versa, so if you do get popped early you'll be sat there watching a hopeless team member about to be sawn in half (ah!! the chainsaw attached to the machine gun is another GoW innovation, totally awesome!) and you'll be shouting unheard warnings down the mic, until the poor sod joins you in the "dead lobby"...

Pair that with the awesome graphics and sound, and it's a killer solo and online app.... I'm currently in the middle of a disabling GoW online addiction, I played it till 4am on Sunday morning, and each day I play 1-2 hours after Kelly goes to sleep (she likes to watch but together we're playing Wii Zelda and Wario Ware, which are both worth a post later!)...

So, Get an Xbox 360 and GoW if you can..... if not you'll be missing out on one of the best games of the last 20 years. Seriously.

And Lost Planet is a great game too, but being Capcom you can trust them to make it rock hard, the first boss took me a good 15 minutes to beat, and I was in a BIG ASS mech at the time... I just hope they don't pull a cheap "repeat of all the bosses you just beat" level like the one I'm still stuck in in Viewtiful Joe..

SoB - off to work