As Stan mentioned, the two of us played the first two Gears of War games on co-op just before we started the Back-Blog, and never once have we taken it all that seriously. It's huge muscular dudes with mostly familiar voices (Bender! Terry Tate! Vince from Friday Night Lights!) shooting hordes of aliens and ducking for cover now and then- there's not much else to say. Stan made a good point that the games would probably have been serviced better by going a little more over-the-top- every time a character got mopey or serious, we were making fun of the situation, but moments like Terry Tate's touchdown, or main character Marcus Fenix shouting out "That's ONE! That's TWO!" as he snipes aliens from afar made for laughs and memorable gameplay. Emotional cut-scenes can work when it's one person sitting down and willing to be quiet and experience the story, but when two dudes get together to bro out over a third person shooter, I just want the game to be really fun to play. And the Gears of War series mostly is! It may not be the most memorable campaign or anything, but I was never hoping it would just finish up already or anything. That alone makes it much, much better than any campaign Halo has had. Still though, I saw nothing in Gears of War 3 to really distinguish it from the first two aside from some slightly prettier graphics, and never in the entire series were Stan and I even sure who were fighting against- I think the only game that had an actual, named final boss was the first one, and we still laugh about how random and pointless he was. So if you're really interested in playing the Gears of War series, go for it. If not, don't worry, you're not missing much.
Alright, May was slow for me as predicted, but I did most of what I wanted to. Gears 3 and Link's Awakening were beaten and posted, and Pushmo was beaten as well, just requiring a post to be made still. I didn't finish off Boardwalk Empire Season 2, but replace that with the novel It and we'll call it a wash. I added more to my backlog over the past month than ever before, so there's no time to slow down, but June should be dominated by 2 huge items in FF13 and A Game of Thrones in book form. Add to that one quick PC game (Little Inferno, probably), Boardwalk Empire Season 2, and the Pushmo post, and that will give me five for the month.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I need to finish Under the Dome this month if I'm going to do it before the miniseries starts. Also, throw "The Killer Angels" on that list, potentially. It's one of the oldest books in my backlog, a famous fictionalized account of the Battle of Gettysburg, which turns 150 years old very early in July. On the video game front I'm close to done with Paper Mario: Sticker Star. On the TV front I'm speeding through the fourth season of Six Feet Under and can't imagine I'll stop for long before jumping into the fifth. I'm also looking to plow through some console games, particularly on the Wii. Harry Potter? Kirby's Epic Yarn? Sin and Punishment? All are possible. As are several other games on multiple systems, I'm sure. And, as always, I bet I'll watch a movie or two.
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