This is a cycle. The new consoles are announced and everyone is upset at the prices and the fact that they already have the older versions and the newer ones make them obsolete. Everyone vows not to buy anything, which is pretty much like vowing to abstain from sex -- just not possible.
Eventually the consoles keep hitting and finally everyone starts giving in and starts buying... that's when the new consoles are announced. :D
And Scary, GSpot gave Perfect Dark Zero a 9.0, and Dead or Alive 4 got an 8.8. Maybe you don't like fighting games, but that's two more in my book (despite my complete lack of interest in PDZ).I got PD0 for my brother for his birthday and we played quite a bit of the co-op mode. I thought the game sucked. It was not up to today's standards in graphics. They also chose some of the worst texture combinations or lighting ever, because half of the time you couldn't tell there was a path in some wall you had to go down. It also felt barely evolved from the original PD. The story was ridiculously stupid, almost like something some 10 year old would come up with.
Alain Tascan, general manager for EA Montreal, has revealed that he thinks Xbox 360 title Gears of War has been overrated by reviewers - with one or two exceptions.
Speaking in a panel discussion at the Montréal Games Summit, Tascan said, "What is Gears of War? I mean Gears of War brings nothing in terms of innovation to the shooter... Like, zero.
"Only two very brave UK-based journalists said, 'You know what, Gears of War is a great game but it's like what Quake was a few years ago.
"Why are people loving it so much? It's like added production value, incredible cutscenes and the best ever graphics ever. I'm sure it's going to be a great success, I can't wait to play it, but let's face that graphics are still number one," Tascan continued.
He then used the comparison of a nice looking girl you might see in a bar and go up and talk to, "And if she's smart enough, that's the gameplay.
"I'm not talking about my tastes, I'm just saying, when you go to metacritic and you see a 96 for Gears of War, then you read the critics saying, 'Okay, storyline - there's none, gameplay is not innovative...' Then I say, why did they give this 96? They were blown away by the high quality of the graphics... Myself, I prefer something more creative," Tascan concluded.
Its amazing he thinks a game needs to be innovative and have some epic story to get high scores. The game just has to be fun! They polished the hell out of the gameplay as well as the graphics (so I hear). Look at Okami as another example. Pure Zelda rip-off. Outside of the brush stroke thing, it didnt really do anything new. Typical fight the big bad evil story. But the game was polished and everything was so well done that it was just an awesome game to play. Bam, high scores.To be honest, Oblivion was nothing truly innovative. Morrowind was the innovative one, if you ask me. What Oblivion did do was took all of the laundry list of issues players had w/ Morrowind -- and believe me, there was a bunch (steep leveling curve until level 10, AI issues, repetitive/generic NPC's, performance issues) -- and pretty much squashed the hell out of all of them.
So if Gears can make me feel like a cover-seeking, bad guy blasting badass, and have fun the whole time then it deserves the scores it gets.Agreed. I ain't played Gears, but damn -- does it look like a blast, hehe.
Dunno', I don't have Xbox Live. =T
Why don't you get a cheap limited Xbox Live subscription, and find out how the multiplayer is? Since this game is made by Epic, I expect the multiplayer to be nothing short of stellar.
I'd love to try out some of the competitive team stuph online, but I hate playing games with random people. That's never been any fun to me and to this day I have absolutely no idea why people enjoy it. What's the difference from playing against a nameless computer?Your answer is that people play smarter than the computer, and you can actually have some sort of teamwork (yes, even with random people) vs. a computer that follows you around and just shoots at things that it sees.
I wonder why. It is pretty standard to have DM. 1 v 1 sounds pretty cool though.Sure DM is standard, but it's also really lame. The only time I ever liked DM was in Goldeneye.
Gears of War trilogy confirmed?
Source: A GameDaily interview with Jeff Bell, Microsoft's corporate vice president of global marketing.
What we heard: Though it might not be Halo 3, there's little question that Gears of War is a monster hit for the Xbox 360. Less than two weeks after its release, the game surpassed Halo 2 as the most-played title on Xbox Live. It has topped charts in the UK, and was second only to The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on Bestbuy.com's sales rankings for the week of November 13-19. As of November 21, two weeks after its release, over 1 million units of the game had sold worldwide.
In addition to its popular success, Gears of War is also arguably the best-reviewed game of the year. Besides earning a 9.6 from GameSpot--tying the Xbox 360 Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as the highest-rated game of 2006--Epic Games' shooter enjoys a sparkling 95 metascore on Metacritic, which averages dozens of game-review Web sites' ratings.
Given Gears of War's ability to tickle critics and mint money, a sequel is a near-certainty. However, the GameDaily interview with Bell appears to reveal Microsoft has even grander plans for the game. When outlining his company's holiday ad blitz, the marketing guru gushed about Gears' burgeoning popularity. "Gears of War is a popular culture phenomenon in the making," he said, referencing a semi-controversial television advertisement. "The goal of this ad is to establish Marcus Fenix as the hero of the Gears of War trilogy. The intention is to create emotional connection with him that is lacking in typical third-person action title marketing." (Emphasis added.)
The official story: Microsoft representatives had not responded to requests for comment as of press time.
Bogus or not bogus?: Looking not bogus. Though it might be a ways off--the original took over two years to develop--Gears of War 2 is pretty much a lock, particularly given its (SPOILER ALERT) cliffhanger ending (END SPOILER). As for a third, Bell appear to unofficially confirm comments made by Epic's meteoric lead designer Cliff Bleszinski, who has said on numerous occasions he wants to make Gears a trilogy along the lines of Halo. Now, it would appear Microsoft does too.
'Gears of War' Map Pack Free Today
[Uros "2Lions" Jojic] 02:15 am EDT @ September 03rd, 2007
As 1UP reports: "The Gears of War "Hidden Fronts" map pack, which sold for 800 Microsoft points ($10) when first released in May, will be made available for free starting Monday, September 3rd at 2am (PDT)."
Hidden Fronts -- which includes the Bullet Marsh, Garden, Process, and Subway multiplayer maps -- has been downloaded by nearly 500,000 gamers to date, and will follow the original map pack and the Annex gametype into the realm of free content for Epic's system-selling shooter.