Posts Tagged ‘Epic’

Hordes, Agility Orbs and Booty Calls

Monday, July 19th, 2010

I haven’t updated my blog in over a month, which is strange given I’ve been playing my Xbox a fair bit.

I finally got into Gears of War 2, in particular the multiplayer mode, Horde. My friend and I are (very) slowly co-oping our way through the campaign thanks to intermittent connection problems, and the fact Horde is so damn fun the temptation to play it overrides that of the campaign itself.

I happened to buy Gears of War 2 during one of the crazy Anniversary weekends (or something), so the Epic developers had decided to multiply XP by 8, which saw me level up stupidly fast, and change every 9 waves from being a mixed bag of enemies to simply Tickers. Having never played Horde I didn’t know that 9 rounds of Tickers was unusual, and it certainly wasn’t as fun as it is when you have Boomers, Maulers and Bloodmounts attacking you from every angle.

Yes, I like a challenge.

With that said, by the time we had reached Wave 40-odd the Anniversary weekend was over and Horde returned to its normal formula. There’s a good tactic for facing the higher level waves on a map called Stasis, where you kill a couple of Maulers and block the steps with their shields. We managed to complete Wave 50 on Normal using this tactic.

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Re-equipping My Lancer

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Gears of War. Who could argue that those three words have become synonymous with Xbox 360? It’s ‘our’ exclusive, the one that truly demonstrated what the 360 was capable of, and it certainly deserved the praise both critics and gamers alike showered it with. Like many others, I let myself get caught up in the hype and put my pre-order down for the game’s release in 2006, and while it has become a game I never publicly fault, it’s one that no one ever hears me talk about.

Although I appreciated the game for what it was, and even now I find it difficult to fault the gameplay, I never fell in love with the game like many others did. There were only a couple of reasons why, but I think the main reason was simply a case of characters; big, beefy, over-emasculated, meatheads. Although I enjoyed my playthrough and the occasional dabbling of MultiPlayer (though I failed to master the ‘shotgun and roll’ tactic that success seemed to hinge on), I gave the sequel a miss because the characters pissed me off so much.

Okay, so Cole was pretty awesome. There aren’t many fine details I recall about the characters, but I did enjoy Cole’s quips. And Carmine. You never really know much about him, but I know I like him. However, I just found it difficult to relate to any of the characters, especially physically.

I know, I know, it’s lame, right? I don’t exactly relate to Lara Croft with my modest B cup (and that’s probably wishful thinking), yet I love Tomb Raider mainly because of her. I don’t particularly relate to a 16 year old boy who, despite his age, hasn’t appeared to have hit puberty, yet I still love Blue Dragon. You get my point. It’s pretty illogical, yet it’s just the way it always has been.

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The Future Of Shooters Is RPGs

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

O RLY?

So says Cliffy B (and you can call me Rocky D for the duration of this post), design director at Epic, the studio responsible for… Wait, what’s that game? The one with chunky men equipped with meaty artillery. Uh… Gears of War! Yeah, Gears of War. Looks like Epic could possibly be making a shift in direction in regards to future shooters. What an interesting, albeit questionable, concept.

I think I speak for everyone when I say Epic can always be trusted as far as delivering action packed, brainless, run and gun shooters go. Therefore the mantra “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” springs to mind. However, are gamers becoming complacent with the linear concept of run, cover and shoot the likes of Gears supplies?

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Posted in General Gaming | 6 Comments »