All Geared Up

It’s been a long time since I really have  had a thought for my Xbox 360, it’s only until I received a rather odd phone call from my father, who by the way never plays games. He rang to tell me whether I knew about the new 360 slim, trying not to laugh out loud, or LOL in his face, I let him continue. It seemed that he wanted to trade in the Elite for the newer version and ultimately make an upgrade. Of course I had nothing negative to say towards the decision. After all he was paying for it.

So anyway, to the point. I’ve started playing my 360 even more so now that WiFi is included, so at least even if i don’t have the luxury and benefits of Gold Membership I can still chat to my friends whilst playing which was good enough for me. I was looking at what games really interested me on the 360 and only naturally came to the decision of Gears of War franchise. Trading in Assassins Creed 2 and Prince of Persia I treated myself to this acclaimed game and household name for the 360. Both Gears of War and it’s successor.

To be honest it’s a great, if not one of the best 3rd person shooters out there, no doubt. But everything else was generic which let it down indefinitely.

I thought that action sequences could of been produced with a bit more imagination; the sequences when the buildings collapses whilst you’re inside – you can’t move, you are stuck behind cover? There is only one section where you can move whilst something else in the environment is going on like that, I think it was when you were about to fall off a waterfall down near Nexus. I was thinking that “wow this could of been done so much more interestingly that would of pushed this game further just that little bit“.

The game needs more interactivity with the environment, like uncharted 2 has. Heck if that means changing Engine to work with or an updated version of Unreal Engine then they should definitely go for it if they want to create those ‘WTF’ moments like uncharted 2 has. Or hire better people?

For example when you’re rushing the mountain to Kadar, you jump over a gap, a large gap and the way they visioned it was meager and dull, not very exciting.

Although I really did enjoy the game, just not that epic as I thought it would be.