Be Excellent To Each Other

Stop that.

Sorry...

You were being an utter belm there.

Has this got any DLC/Play Online code, that I'd miss out on if I got the game second hand?

I've got £42 quid for CEX and nothing I want to spend it on.

Don't fink so.

I had trouble with Tesco too, the first one I went to didn't even acknowledge the existence of the game... fortunately my route back to work (I was out delivering stuff) took me past a second one which did have it, although baffling it devoted twice as much display space to "games coming soon pre-order NOW!" as it did to games that existed and you could buy. Coupled with my sour experience in Morrisons yesterday, I've remembered now why supermarkets are best ignored for this kind of thing, whatever their prices.

Why can't I remember any of these yellow exploding monsters from Gears 1 or 2?

Because these are lambent, you haven't fought many of them before (although there were a few towards the end of 2)... they are the mutant Locust caused by the Imulsion, and essentially seem to be a third separate faction in the war.

This is fun an' all, but it's just 15 seconds of gameplay sandwiched between 45-second cutscenes every fucking time. There's absolutely no flow. None.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this... Maybe it'll pick up?

press the back button and voila, cut scene gone.

Lambent wretches were in the last one, and tickers.

The rest of them were locusts.

They've varied the enemies, but not the gameplay in my opinion. It plays the same as 1 and 2, no real differences to speak of, variable enemies and a few new weapons so far.

... ....

FINISHED!

That's not really the point. The cutscenes tell the story, but an awful lot of them could have been done in-game. And skipping them doesn't solve the problem of ‘right, cutscene over; where the fuck has the game placed me now?’ Getting your bearings every ten seconds is infuriatingly jarring.

Also, it annoys me when he's talking on his radio with his finger in his ear yet you can still move.... just... really ..... slowly.

You can hold down A to jog at the sames speed you move normally.

Tickers aren't Lambent.

General impression :not as good as the first two campaign wise.

I knew Dimrill rummaging around in bins would be offputting.

He did that in the first two too.

Combat just seemed less tight. Probably about consequence of the difficulty of coordinating 4 people rather than 2,and that it wasn't needed to at that difficulty

Combat seems fine to me. But I am playing mostly with the AI (with being Billy No-Mates and all) and they are probably much more effective than Myp.

I wasn't the one rummaging in bins.

You can probably measure how good a shooter is by how much fun you're having: I played for a good hour or so before I thought 'I've had enough now' after I'd got off the ship. It was a nice time to stop anyway, but I'd had enough Gears by then.

So, first impressions are wavering so far for me. The boat level was nice but too 'bitty' as mentioned above. I couldn't remember anything of the Lambent or imulsion for that matter and the "Previously on..." didn't refresh my memory enough. The opener was alright but somehow lacked excitement for me. I 'sploded some monster from behind cover and poured tens of bullets into enemies with exploding liver disease (apparently). The combat is identical to both other Gears in that it sounds good enough and looks good enough but doesn't have shooting that's weighty enough like, say, CoD and the like has perfected. Baddies take bullets while walking towards you or between cover without much as a look over their shoulder as bullets soak into them, only occassionally stumbling backward from twenty or so rounds. The handguns are piss poor again and utterly useless ('cept that Gorgon one that is like a submachine gun and suitably aces). Even the magnum is a waste of time as bullet after bullet fails to cause any substantial damage.

It feels old school in the way in which bosses simply require a ludicious amount of bullets fired into them. Which isn't too bad anyway. It's reasonably enjoyable...just not exciting enough.

And the banter and the characters? Alright but endless. There's too much of it - for example, when entering a deserted town where an ambush is only a cut scene away, someone HAS to say something witty. It's draining. I just want them to shut the fuck up and let something happen and react. Did I miss that bit in Aliens where they entered the hive and Weaver said "smells like yo' momma's pussy died down here" cracking joke after joke? No, cause it never fucking happened. Tension is allowed to escalate during the quiet moments rather than being perpetually punctuated by some nonsense blathering.

And then when I got to the bridge and wanted to execute some downed locust the feckin' AI team mates kept nicking the kills. And not just once either: five fucking times! Now tell me that that's not just a coincidence. I didn't waste all those bullets on their knees for nowt.

So more of the same so far but in MUCH better environments that are chopped into bite sized pieces which aren't fulfilling enough.I can't be arsed to play tonight but I'll start Chapter 2 tomorrow.

Oh one last thing: Horde - groovy as ususal, better even, with the defences and stuff but because of the downtime mean it took over an hour to reach level 17. Lord knows how long it'll take to get to 50 at that rate. Beast - tedious Dead Space clone and just as shit (actually that's not fair cause it's better than DS2's but it's still tiresome)

You probably need to use the spoiler tag in there somewhere.

I don't think I gave anything away, did I? I'm on the phone but if any mod feels it needs a spoiler could they do it please?

I'm just starting the second act I think and really enjoying it. It's more of the same really. Going back to a game we can play splitscreen is a bit weird, I might buy another copy come payday because the game suffers slightly from having such a narrow viewing angle. I don't mind the cutscenes because my main criticism of Gears 2 was the ridiculous attempt at telling a story and they have addressed this a bit with the cutscenes. It is the final one after all so you would expect they would want to explain things. The thing that does annoy me though is when they talk on the radio. I'm trying to wander about looking for ammo or cog tags or whatever and suddenly I'm walking at snails pace with a my arm up at my ear bloccking half the screen which is already small because it's split horizontally for coop. Very frustrating.
Overall very good though, will play more tonight.

Anyone wanna co-op with me from 5pm tomorrow?

I'm on now for a bit.

I played Beast mode earlier for the first time. Interesting mix up on the usual game... its still just killing the enemy though isn't it?

Also, I had a major part of the story line spoiled on twitter earlier. Great!

You were expecting to make them cookies, perhaps?

I've just finished this and I thought it was disappointingly easy. I played it on Normal and I think I only died twice in the whole campaign... but then again, who buys Gears for the campaign mode?

Also...

Finished this also, and thoroughly enjoyed it despite the number of cutscenes.

The end boss was an arse, not fun, but actually reasonably difficult on Hardcore.

Got up to wave 47 in one sitting with Miss Malabar, Pundy, Wullie and a mate of mine. Shit be difficult at that level, not helped by Miss Malabar ditching us but being unable to drop out while splitscreening with me. Great fun, either way.

Is that Ice-T I hear doing a voice over? I think so.

Yep, Ice-T plays

Well I completed it on Normal (thought I'd save the harder settings for any co-op). It was entertaining enough. Being forced to sit through the end(less) credits was eased by the ridiculous GoW themed metal track (apparently written by Ice-T).

I must be nearing the end now on Chapter IV. I hope they've saved something awesome up cause that Anvil Gate bit was great and will need some topping. Also, this is probably the best looking 360 game I've played (I think). That sun bleaching through the fog effect looked The Shit and don't think I've seen that before.

I've also tried skipping the door animation but no joy. No big deal though.

So far, I've played about half an hour of campaggen which didn't grip me (I went back to Deus Ex instead, but then I often do this when I play two games at once). I'll save it for co-oppery goodness I think because co-op makes all things better. However, I've also played an hour of Horde with Dimrill last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. The new money system brings some interesting small-scale strategy choices, the boss rounds are tough, the new weapons are cool, and the visual makeover of the level we were playing (I forgot the name... the one with the crashed cars up and down a street where we usually hide in a small building on one side) was impressive. I was surprised how much nicer it looks than Gears 2.

Oh, and I got to keep my gold Lancer from GoW2, which was nice. However, the weapons skins are an incredible ripoff. I think I'll get the Season Pass DLC because I'll doubtless end up buying all the map packs anyway.

Finished Horde on Normal last night with the help of Pundy, ending in Miss Malabar's little brother on his own against a Grunker on wave 50. Bloody great fun. Hardcore is going to be fun!

Beast mode is alright, but it's piss easy and way, way too short. Only 12 waves? Rubbish.

Are you free today? Let's play it on Insane.

I'll probably be on later, at about 8PM or so. Insane will be a better challenge, I'm sure! And hopefully the AI will know how to use explosives then, as I was almost completely invincible as an Armored Kantus last night.

Best thing about Beast mode: "being" a Berserker.

I'd beast it insanely tonight if you do it.

I would like to be beastly also.

Lordy that annoyed me:

Finished now - that was pretty excellent in the end wasn't it? Nicely varied levels and much better than Gears 2. It held my attention all the way to the end and only dipping towards the final act. Shame about that last bit really because it suddenly becomes Call of Duty 1-3: destroy 5 gas barges, press 4 buttons, etc. It just seems like they'd ran out of steam.

And they'd ran out of interesting things to wait for too. The times the Lambent popped up while the team was waiting for a lift or for someone to open a door.

The last Act should have been stellar but, by then, the combat had become tired. I'm surprised piling bullets into sponges could be so much fun for so long but in the last 2 hours of the story it wasn't fun - there were too many fights in corridors, no vertical levels to play with and little change to flank. And the default difficulty made it a walk in the park too. No, that's not true, the three other players made it a walk in the park. Everytime I fell over someone would come and pick me up: not once was I left out in the open having charged a Boomer (the best sounding enemy perhaps in any game ever) with a retro lancer which apparently doesn't work (who knew) and yet someone still went on a suicide mission to fetch me (and succeeded too) (each and every time). It was akin to having infinite lives and no battle could be lost if one person was still standing. Four players reviving each other is just no good on Normal difficulty.

The last boss attack animation was great but it was improbably shit. At least the fight was certainly finished at the end, aye! Now that was how to end a series (albeit in a tedious sci-fi way)!

Overal, it was very good. Not as good as Resistence 3 (which also did this style of LOTR road trip) for pure thrills but a rock solid campaign nonetheless.

Hello everybody. Where is the cheapest place to buy this on the high street so I can grab a copy while Mrs Z is clothes shopping tomorrow? I don't want points or any other shite. Just the game please.

Theres a couple of weird things in the story:

Cheapest game only is £39.99 at game / argos and just about anywhere else - online its only a few quid less - that is one of the real pains with the current 'offer' thing that you get at launch - if you want the game a few weeks later it tends to jump back up to full price :-(

If your set on picking it up the only 'offer' I can see right now is that argos will throw in 800 points when you buy it (its not that you buy the points as well - its just a freebie)

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/p ... OF+WAR.htm

otherwise if Tesco's offer is still on it would only be £5 more to get 2100 points + the game

Can't help you with the first one but...

Ta Zaphod.

Hmm, might wait for the first proper price drop then, I still have Halo Reach to finish anyway.

Just get it bought, you poof.