Analysing the hype: Gears Of War 3

Analysing the hype: Gears of War 3

By Cyraxis

So the buzz in the Xbox world at the moment seems to be the release of the third and final part to what must now be Epic Games' flagship series, Gears Of War, and you would think that it was the third coming of the hippy guy Christians seem to love so much with all the hype it has. I understand that this is a big title and all for the console but the amount it is forced on us seems entirely undeserved so I sat down too take a look at the reviews and build up and also a retrospective of the series to decided whether it might be worth checking out. Bear in mind this is not a review as I have not played the game, this will probably just be another way for me to vent frustration at the cretins that are today's gamers...that was a long opening, this ones gonna be a doozy.

To start with a retrospective, you can say what you like about the first Gears game, and I intend to, but you can never argue that it wasn't fun. The gratuitous gore and homoerotic masculinity drips thick from your television screen when you play it and your body count by the end is so high that you start to get turned on by the thought of bursting heads, now that's a metaphor to think about. And while Gears was not the first game to implement a cover based shooting system it was the first to use it well and when that joins the rest of the game play elements you have a solid basis for a game that only need a story to cover it and you could have a work of art...and there was the problem. So some aliens are attacking earth only its not earth, its some other planet and their not aliens cos they were there first. So basically its a bunch of humans running around being dicks and acting like their in the right. Who are most the characters? Couldn't tell you and don't really care because we are never given a reason to care, there was no development on them. And the game finishes with you blowing up the enemy's home in dramatic fashion. Roll on Gears 2 and I thought sequels were supposed to add stuff to a game not just drag it out longer unless your taking the Friday The 13^th approach to sequels. Basically when you won the war at the end of the last game you didn't really win because the locust (that's the enemy) used a cheat code or something. So again you have to find another way to win the war and it ends with you doing THE SAME FUCKING THING AS IN THE LAST GAME!?!? well I guess this one does try to get you more involved with the characters anyway, well two of them, the ones with the thickest necks. Basically the main character is Marcus and he has daddy issues and the other guy is Dom and he's a whining douche bag who lost his pet mutant thing in a locust attack. I know that its supposed to be sad when Dom has to shoot his mutant in the head but we knew it wasn't going to end well for them and after several hour of running up and slicing things to bits with chainsaws you can't turn around and try to tug on our heart strings, that's not how juxtaposition works. Oh I guess they add hoard mode but that's just the campaign without pretending to have a story.

So Gears Of War 3 promising us an end to a story that you have finished twice already only you didn't because Epic wants to milk all they can from it. You know if you failed to kill the locust twice before I don't hold high hopes for this game ending anything but badly, I'd put money on everyone dying at the end. You know what IGN said in their review that Gears 3 is repetitive and that nothing has changed in the campaign other than it getting a bit of a tune up, yet they still gave it a 9 how do you work that one out? If it doesn't add something new in a sequel then it doesn't get a better score than previous games. Other reviews have said that the development of the characters is engaging enough to make you play the game but I cant see how uncovering more of Marcus' daddy issues can be engaging. I bet that Baird, the only character blessed with a brain that allows him to walk and talk at the same time, has nothing added to him, they probably focused on Cole the big black guy a racial stereotype in the same leagues of racism as the twin robots in transformers 2 but a curious thing happens when you stereotype someone but do it in a positive light, everybody suddenly thinks he's the best and all the black guys aspire to be him like its some new fashion, I know because I have a big black friend (and I don't mean muscled) and he wants to be Cole so bad that he can probably feel it squirming inside him causing him to cry himself to sleep at night...oops I'm being racist again aren't I.

This segment hasn't really turned into much so I'll summarise now, Gears 3 is going to sell well regardless of what I say, you can put a label on shit and someone will buy it, George Lucas is proof of that. I just think people should consider things before they get sucked in by pretentious trailers (and it is fucking pretentious) and just buy what will turn out to be the same game with a new layer of paint on it. I don't deny that the series is fun but you have to really add something to freshen up a game before you can charge £40 for it, I will probably pick up Gears 3 when it gets cheap but for now if I have the urge to chainsaw something I'll go buy a chainsaw for the same price and find myself a club full of chavs.