My Gears of War story

[Boom]

Helloo all of you GOW fans,

I just joined up here and thought that I would give a brief background on my experience wiht the game and give some hope out there to those who are frustrated with the game or just want to laugh at an old man new to gaming.

Anyway.

I bought an Xbox 360 for my son in early April 07. He is a young guy and likes to play Burnout and Cars. I was really not interested in playing anything since the last game I had played was (no kidding) Pong. My few forays into these things were always a quick virtual death and a "how the hell do they do that?" mentality.

I am pushing 50, so I have not grown up playing these games. It does appear that there is a pattern to how these games are played, but getting used to the controller was a challenge. Kind of like typing I suppose.

I read a few reviews about GOW and bought it. It looked to be violent, senseless, and possibly a great escape. The game stayed on my shelf for a few months. I tried it on Casual and got wiped out each time during the prison breakout where the grubs cut though the door. (This confession is pathetic to those veteran gamers out there I am sure) I also had to play it very late at night so that my kids would not see it. Too violent and too many tasty words for them. So, I put it back on the shelf.

In early September of 07, I was really bored one night and tried it again. For some reason, I made it by that damn door. Over the next few weeks, I learned how to play the game and beat it on casual. When I beat RAAM, i have to say that I did a dance in my living room in front of my bigscreen.

I just finished playing the game on Hardcore and getting RAAM again. (Stayed in the sme spot and did numerous Torgue Bows, Lancer clips, and then a final Torque Bow in his ass) There were a few checkpoints that I had to repeat fairly often, the most difficult of which was that damn pumping station with the Theron guards. I also hate those glowing wretches. Hitting them is easy; it those after death explosions that get me all of the time.

So, now I am playing through Act 1 on Insane. Just curious. Is it my imagination or are my AI teamates helping me more at this level of difficulty? I am using my weapons with more variety and am also moving around alot more and my reloads are pretty good, though not great. However, it seems easier than hardcore because my squad mates are more aggressive.

Thoughts? I realize that the firefights get more intense in the later acts. but I am surprised at how easy it has been so far. Those four emergence holes at that first fountain were pretty easy to close. Maybe I am getting the hang of tossing those frags but it went by rather quickly this time.

So, I really enjoy playing this game. Am I any good at it? I suppose when you have played it as much as I have, you start to see the patterns and nothing is a surprise anymore. The controls become more intuitive and sometimes you even get a "You're learning grasshopper" from Dom.

When I have those rare moments when I can crank up the surround and play the game by myself wihtout fear of my kids seeing it, it literally shakes the house and is a pretty intense experience. The music adds drama and intensifies the battles as the bullets whiz by my head.

I have tried a few co-ops on Casual and it was really fun. Playing Dom while helping out Marcus is a very cool thing indeed.

So, are people still playing much online? I am not really into this match thing. Appears to be too much posturing and bragging. I do this for fun and would rather work with someone that try to kill them. Killing the Horde is the real point of the game, is is not?

Finally, what are all of these acheivements good for? Is it just a virtual thing? Don't really understand it, but I see that green thing go off whenever I finish a chapter or whatever.

I welcome your comments and experiences.

Go Gears!

Boom

[Quo]

Nice, Boom! Thanks for your thoughts.

Gears is a great game. It is tough to play around the kids, and it can be really tough to play online, especially when the majority playing it now have figured out all the little tricks, etc. and want to make your online life miserable.

If you play with people you know, though, it makes it a lot more fun. It's one of the reasons PGL is around. We hang with each other and play with the people on our friends lists almost exclusively to avoid that general public nastiness. Not that we're not competitive, but we're competitive and friendly.

While Gears isn't one of the games that's getting a ton of play right now, there are plenty of other games out there. Hopefully you'll jump in with some of the other games and give them a try. Halo 3 can be intense online, but it's worth a try. Playing co-operatively on H3 is just plain awesome.

A better fit might be COD4, which is slightly less "twitchy" and is a ton of fun to play online, but will also have an awesome singleplayer component. It will released around November 10th I think.

Anyway, glad to have you here! Thanks for contributing! Stick around and get to know some of us. I hope you've found a home here.

[pickleL7]

Nice Boom,I love GOW I think you would enjoy more online play if you found the right people to play with.Do you have A gamertag?.Like Quo said H3 is A great game to play and its not as violent as GOW so you can play it with the little rug rats are around

[Boom]

I had a rather rude awakening as to the level of stealth capable by my son (age 5). We were outside throwing the football a few weeks ago. it went beheind a hedge and he went to retreive it. When he got to a low wall, my son crouched and did a "roadie run" up to to wall and over. I knew exactly what he was doing because it was a perfect imitation of Marcus doing his thing.

I found out that he had watched a few minutes of me playing the game by doing a late night commando crawl up our hallway and peeking into the roon from long range.

I can just hear him telling his kindergarten teacher all about how he plays GOW with his Daddy. Great.

Now I wait utill he is really asleep and not faking.

I have H3 but am still figuring out how it works. Quite a difference in scenery from GOW.

Boom

[Lord Sam]

Welcome to the site!

From what I've heard playing solo on GOW on Insane Dom get's really dumb, and by dumb I mean gets himself killed a lot. So I played co-op on Insane with Lord Geoff. He is slightly smarter than Dom. Oh, who am I kidding, Geoff had to revive me like 80 times a chapter.

In fact, the day we finished it on Insane we joined PGL. Coincidence?

Anyways, welcome again!

[Peench]

at the post about your son! My son does the same thing. He's usually in bed before I start, but every once in a while he wakes up in the middle of the night (midnight or so) and I'll be playing. He'll come into the room and say "hi dad, um..." and try to make something up to say while he's staring at the TV. It's the funniest thing. So long as the game isn't something with cussing, I'll let him stay and watch for a bit before I put him back down to bed. He's 6 and loves gaming!

GOW is a blast. There's a large crew here who play GOW almost every night. Pickle is their leader I think. I jump in every now and again, but I have so many games I want to finish its tough! I still enjoy it though - so long as I can get in a kill or two I'm happy!

Definitely shoot out some friend requests and play with fellow PGL members. We're all about having fun while playing. If we aren't having fun, what's the point of gaming?!

[KingAndyXVII]

Gears online will never die !
I still play this online from time to time so shoot me a friend request on live if you wanna play sometime.

As for campaign on insane, once you've done it once you'l be wondering why you ever struggled through it......seriously a friend asked me to help them out with the last part of Act 5 not to long ago, starting from where the berserker appears on the train...anyway a bit later we make it very easily to general Raam.
So we're in the middle of the fight and my co-op partner decides to die...and just to make matters worse my phone starts ringing, which forced me to play one-handed...with my partner still down.
Raam then proceded to get completely owned by the torque bow that i was using one-handed...while on the phone haha!

Pointless story i thought i'd share with you all

[Boom]

I just remembered. I had a very weird thing happen to the Beserker on the train in Act 5. I was near th ebutton to uncouple the car and lured her so that I cold jump aside and leave her behind. I screwed it up and she remained on the car.

I ran back towards Dom and got her to follow and then ran back to the end of the now uncoupled car. I jumped aside as she charged hoping to get her to run off the car. Instead, she just fell down and well, she died. She lay there.

I know that you can kill her in this scene by detonating the nearby flammable tank. And I assume that is what the game was trying to do when she died. But I did not detonate the tank.

Anti-climatic death to be sure.

[Boom]

Hello Again!

Perhaps motivated by the recent announcement of GOW2, I dove back into the game on Insane and just finished it. I needed to co-opt to defeat RAAM but did everything else solo.

I actually thought that the game was a bit easier on Insane than it was on Hardcore. Perhaps I am just more familiar with the patterns of the scenes or just played that much more cautiously.

It just seemed to go more quickly. And, once i figured out that the Torque bows re-spawn after they are picked up and thus can provide that critical extra ammo in the more difficult scenes, the game flowed like a well poured beer.

So, what the heck do I do now?

Boom

[Stewii Griffin]

Originally Posted by Boom

So, what the heck do I do now?

Boom

MULTIPLAYER!!!

Hey whats up boom i just sent you a friend request through the account i set up for friends of pgl. Anyway anytime your on xbox live just look at the friends of A PGL FRIEND's list and you can see if any of us are playing gow. So just send us a request to play all you have to do is ask and im sure we can at least boot pickle to make room for ya. And I'm sure who ever you play with will be happy to show you the ropes.

[The Milk Man 09]

Welcome to the site.

Gears is a Great game if you like shooters branch out to games like halo and call of duty I would say those two and GOW have the best Single player out of all the FPS's on xbox.

[Boom]

Thanks for the invites!

I think it is about time that I shed my nerves and jumped into the fray. Might be another few weeks or so. We are heavily into T-Ball practices with my son and my daughter is on a swim team. So, the time that I sneak away and fire up the Xbox is hard to find.

But I am looking forward to it.

Shambola