On originality (and cover based shooting)

[migo]

Gears of War 2 was the first game I played that emphasised cover mechanics (the Uncharted demo had them too, but I felt it was more of a Tomb Raider type game and I didn't actually make much use of cover), and it blew my mind. Particularly on more difficult settings where you die pretty quickly it made more sense than regenerating health. Of course Gears is a bit weird there in that you can recover just by having a team mate walk up to you and help you up.

So cover mechanics are a great idea, and I'm sure along with the graphics they're a big reason Gears of War is such a massive franchise. So it strikes me as a bit odd, given how good of an idea it is, that games get panned for adopting cover based shooting, while Gears gets praised for it.

I just played the demo for Wanted: Weapons of Fate, a game that got fairly low review scores, and it emphasises cover based shooting as much as Gears of War does. I haven't seen the movie it's based on, but I have seen the commercials and cover based shooting makes a lot of sense for a guy with the ability to curve the flight path of bullets. So as far as premise goes it doesn't seem like it's really just cashing in on the movie or the popularity of cover based shooting, as it really fits.

The gameplay is just way better than Gears of War. There's no other way of saying it. Everything moves a lot faster, coming up from cover to shoot works more seamlessly, moving from cover to cover is also a lot better - it even has some of the action flair you get with Stranglehold but doesn't seem as kitschy as continuously diving through the air does. Suppressive fire is also a really neat feature. All around it does things better than Gears of War and doesn't have some of the annoying bugs like only slow walking and being unable to shoot while on the com (despite being shot at), and the rather annoying input lag for using a chainsaw (or even worse, exchanging it for another weapon and finding a barrier you need to cut through that none of your teammates seem smart enough to take care of).

Yet somehow Gears is universally praised, while Wanted gets nary a mention. Since when did having an original idea become more important than well refined gameplay (not to mention, Gears didn't invent cover shooting), and given that notion, why the hell doesn't Mirror's Edge get more love?

 

[aPod]

Well, I never played Wanted but the short end of the stick is that it's your opinion. Plus we do this, as a society, with all kinds of things. It's like God of War or he's the next Michael Jordan. The old is always revered by those who came up with it, and will always have a leg up for those reasons.

However, i doubt gameplay was the only reason Wanted got low scores. I did see the movie and it was pretty blah.

 

[MeputthecaninthebininHL2]

What about Rainbow-six Vegas, eh eh!

 

[kalt_13]

you say that wanted doesnt have the bugs that gears has, but you have only played the demo. Did you play the proper version of gears? Purhaps you should play the full game before you praise it too much, you might find out the reasons it was so panned.

As for it getting a good review because it was original, I dont belive thats the case. Gears 1 (never played the 2nd) was a pretty solid and fun game, if they improved on the story and good game play it would of gotten the good scores for that.

 

[migo]

you say that wanted doesnt have the bugs that gears has, but you have only played the demo. Did you play the proper version of gears? Purhaps you should play the full game before you praise it too much, you might find out the reasons it was so panned.

Main reasons it was panned was being derivative and short. Short's better than too long though, and derivative isn't a valid complaint at all. I have played the full version of Gears. Completed the story once and started a second run at a higher difficulty.

As for it getting a good review because it was original, I dont belive thats the case. Gears 1 (never played the 2nd) was a pretty solid and fun game, if they improved on the story and good game play it would of gotten the good scores for that.

By that logic Wanted should have good scores based on improved gameplay.

Don't be jumping on no guns good sir, a demo is created for hype.

It demonstrates gameplay quite well, and I've read enough reviews and synopses of it to know that largely the rest of the game is more of the same.

 

[Netrigan]

So cover mechanics are a great idea, and I'm sure along with the graphics they're a big reason Gears of War is such a massive franchise. So it strikes me as a bit odd, given how good of an idea it is, that games get panned for adopting cover based shooting, while Gears gets praised for it.

Yet somehow Gears is universally praised, while Wanted gets nary a mention. Since when did having an original idea become more important than well refined gameplay (not to mention, Gears didn't invent cover shooting), and given that notion, why the hell doesn't Mirror's Edge get more love?

Haven't played Wanted, but Gears is the only one I played so far which looks like they put a whole lot of thought into it. It gets a bit silly in Gears 2 where there's an entire alien technology based on raising waist-high walls out of the ground to hide behind... but the game did a much better job of varying up the combat so you weren't only fighting guys hiding behind walls.

Looking at the reviews for the Wanted game. Many praise the fast-paced cover-based combat, but the common complaints are being too short, having extremely linear levels, being easy, not enough depth to the single player campaign, and being repetitive (which is kind of damning in a game many said took four or five hours). Most of the reviews (even a couple of the negative ones) mention it is fun... while it lasts or before it gets repetitive.

 

[mindlesspuppet]

Yet somehow Gears is universally praised, while Wanted gets nary a mention. Since when did having an original idea become more important than well refined gameplay (not to mention, Gears didn't invent cover shooting), and given that notion, why the hell doesn't Mirror's Edge get more love?

I'm sorry, but since when does Mirror's Edge not get plenty of love? I'd argue it gets far more than it deserves.

 

[BlastedTheWorm]

If it wasn't for Gears of War, cover-based combat wouldn't be nearly as common as it is now.

 

[Netrigan]

Main reasons it was panned was being derivative and short. Short's better than too long though, and derivative isn't a valid complaint at all. I have played the full version of Gears. Completed the story once and started a second run at a higher difficulty.

The four or five hours sites by a few reviewers would make that excessive even by short game standards, especially since just about all of them say there's no replay value... and no multiplayer. A lot of games get a walk on being short by having multiplayer. Even if you never play it, you at least know there's more game there to justify the $60 price tag. Wanted sounds like it could be the poster child for offering up certain new releases at a lower price point.

Mostly it sounds like the reviewers enjoyed the game without respecting the game. Just think of all the movies you've seen that were actually pretty good, but you mute your reaction because you thought it was kind of stupid, or derivative, or obvious, or didn't come close to taking advantage of its premise.

Watching the gameplay video upthread, I was at once impressed by the new game play mechanics... and disappointed that everything else in the game just looked so ordinary. You have a seriously cool game play mechanic like that and you don't take the effort to put your character in similarly cool environments, that's bad enough. Shoving them in the same grey warehouse environments and that comes across as willful lack of imagination.

 

[migo]

Haven't played Wanted, but Gears is the only one I played so far which looks like they put a whole lot of thought into it. It gets a bit silly in Gears 2 where there's an entire alien technology based on raising waist-high walls out of the ground to hide behind... but the game did a much better job of varying up the combat so you weren't only fighting guys hiding behind walls.

Why do you need to vary combat? In Unreal Tournament all you're doing is fighting other humanoid opponents in an arena. It's damn repetetive, nothing really changes up, but that's what makes it awesome. It takes one good thing and makes that the whole game. Cover based combat makes sense, if you don't take cover, you're going to die very quickly, so it's actually logical to be taking cover the entire time. The notion that you should come out from behind cover and just fight guns blazing is pretty silly.

Looking at the reviews for the Wanted game. Many praise the fast-paced cover-based combat, but the common complaints are being too short, having extremely linear levels, being easy, not enough depth to the single player campaign, and being repetitive (which is kind of damning in a game many said took four or five hours). Most of the reviews (even a couple of the negative ones) mention it is fun... while it lasts or before it gets repetitive.

Too short, sure, but someone can make a decision to just rent the game instead of buy it, so the low scores don't make sense. Gears of War has very linear levels, and on easy mode it's easy. If you play Wanted in Pussy mode yeah it's not going to be that hard. Why does the campaign need depth? It's a shooter, if you're just spending time shooting at people in a shooter game rather than fucking around with puzzles I think it's a good thing.

Yet somehow Gears is universally praised, while Wanted gets nary a mention. Since when did having an original idea become more important than well refined gameplay (not to mention, Gears didn't invent cover shooting), and given that notion, why the hell doesn't Mirror's Edge get more love?

I'm sorry, but since when does Mirror's Edge not get plenty of love? I'd argue it gets far more than it deserves.

If originality is what is praised, it doesn't get nearly enough love.

Main reasons it was panned was being derivative and short. Short's better than too long though, and derivative isn't a valid complaint at all. I have played the full version of Gears. Completed the story once and started a second run at a higher difficulty.

The four or five hours sites by a few reviewers would make that excessive even by short game standards, especially since just about all of them say there's no replay value... and no multiplayer. A lot of games get a walk on being short by having multiplayer. Even if you never play it, you at least know there's more game there to justify the $60 price tag. Wanted sounds like it could be the poster child for offering up certain new releases at a lower price point.

And why should short games get a walk simply for having multiplayer? While I agree some games should be released at a lower price point, you can always just wait for the game to come down in price.

Mostly it sounds like the reviewers enjoyed the game without respecting the game. Just think of all the movies you've seen that were actually pretty good, but you mute your reaction because you thought it was kind of stupid, or derivative, or obvious, or didn't come close to taking advantage of its premise.

But those are stupid reasons to criticise it. That's like saying X-Men is bad because choosing Patrick Stewart for Professor X was obvious. Nothing wrong with having a game be derivative of good gameplay, particularly when it massively improves the gameplay. How Wanted handles transitioning between cover actually makes it possible to spend almost the entire game protected by cover, while Gears has that stupid thing that while you're out in the open and taking shots you need to have your teammate pat you on the head to get you back up. Yeah, doing a cover based shooter for a game based on a movie/comic about a guy who can curve the path of bullets to go around cover is obvious, but that's exactly why it should be done and it takes excellent advantage of the premise.

Watching the gameplay video upthread, I was at once impressed by the new game play mechanics... and disappointed that everything else in the game just looked so ordinary. You have a seriously cool game play mechanic like that and you don't take the effort to put your character in similarly cool environments, that's bad enough. Shoving them in the same grey warehouse environments and that comes across as willful lack of imagination.

While it might seem like lack of imagination, everyone brings up how contrived it seems that there's just waist high barriers everywhere in Gears of War. If I'm an accurate shooter who can bend bullets to go around objects, but am otherwise completely mortal (one of the things I really enjoyed about Wanted is that if you were hit with a few bullets you'd go down, just as quickly as anybody else you're shooting, but you could keep yourself from being scratched by making good use of cover, suppressive fire and melee attacks), you'd better expect that I'm always going to be trying to go somewhere that has lots of cover, and spend the rest of the time running. Sure, mixing in some Mirror's Edge style parkour would actually be pretty awesome, but not having seen the movie I'm unsure if that would even be true to the source material.

Everyone's bringing up reasons that on the surface appear decent for criticising the game, but if you look at it a bit more deeply, they're just excuses for criticising a game that didn't come up with an idea first.

 

[Fishyash]

Personally, I don't think originality is meant to be that big of a deal. A good game will usually use said mechanics better than the 'original'.

However, most people are likely to take away points from a game for unoriginality if the thing they 'ripped off' is miles better than their version.

 

[Netrigan]

Haven't played Wanted, but Gears is the only one I played so far which looks like they put a whole lot of thought into it. It gets a bit silly in Gears 2 where there's an entire alien technology based on raising waist-high walls out of the ground to hide behind... but the game did a much better job of varying up the combat so you weren't only fighting guys hiding behind walls.

Why do you need to vary combat? In Unreal Tournament all you're doing is fighting other humanoid opponents in an arena. It's damn repetetive, nothing really changes up, but that's what makes it awesome. It takes one good thing and makes that the whole game. Cover based combat makes sense, if you don't take cover, you're going to die very quickly, so it's actually logical to be taking cover the entire time. The notion that you should come out from behind cover and just fight guns blazing is pretty silly.

Looking at the reviews for the Wanted game. Many praise the fast-paced cover-based combat, but the common complaints are being too short, having extremely linear levels, being easy, not enough depth to the single player campaign, and being repetitive (which is kind of damning in a game many said took four or five hours). Most of the reviews (even a couple of the negative ones) mention it is fun... while it lasts or before it gets repetitive.

Too short, sure, but someone can make a decision to just rent the game instead of buy it, so the low scores don't make sense. Gears of War has very linear levels, and on easy mode it's easy. If you play Wanted in Pussy mode yeah it's not going to be that hard. Why does the campaign need depth? It's a shooter, if you're just spending time shooting at people in a shooter game rather than fucking around with puzzles I think it's a good thing.

Yet somehow Gears is universally praised, while Wanted gets nary a mention. Since when did having an original idea become more important than well refined gameplay (not to mention, Gears didn't invent cover shooting), and given that notion, why the hell doesn't Mirror's Edge get more love?

I'm sorry, but since when does Mirror's Edge not get plenty of love? I'd argue it gets far more than it deserves.

If originality is what is praised, it doesn't get nearly enough love.

Main reasons it was panned was being derivative and short. Short's better than too long though, and derivative isn't a valid complaint at all. I have played the full version of Gears. Completed the story once and started a second run at a higher difficulty.

The four or five hours sites by a few reviewers would make that excessive even by short game standards, especially since just about all of them say there's no replay value... and no multiplayer. A lot of games get a walk on being short by having multiplayer. Even if you never play it, you at least know there's more game there to justify the $60 price tag. Wanted sounds like it could be the poster child for offering up certain new releases at a lower price point.

And why should short games get a walk simply for having multiplayer? While I agree some games should be released at a lower price point, you can always just wait for the game to come down in price.

Mostly it sounds like the reviewers enjoyed the game without respecting the game. Just think of all the movies you've seen that were actually pretty good, but you mute your reaction because you thought it was kind of stupid, or derivative, or obvious, or didn't come close to taking advantage of its premise.

But those are stupid reasons to criticise it. That's like saying X-Men is bad because choosing Patrick Stewart for Professor X was obvious. Nothing wrong with having a game be derivative of good gameplay, particularly when it massively improves the gameplay. How Wanted handles transitioning between cover actually makes it possible to spend almost the entire game protected by cover, while Gears has that stupid thing that while you're out in the open and taking shots you need to have your teammate pat you on the head to get you back up. Yeah, doing a cover based shooter for a game based on a movie/comic about a guy who can curve the path of bullets to go around cover is obvious, but that's exactly why it should be done and it takes excellent advantage of the premise.

Watching the gameplay video upthread, I was at once impressed by the new game play mechanics... and disappointed that everything else in the game just looked so ordinary. You have a seriously cool game play mechanic like that and you don't take the effort to put your character in similarly cool environments, that's bad enough. Shoving them in the same grey warehouse environments and that comes across as willful lack of imagination.

While it might seem like lack of imagination, everyone brings up how contrived it seems that there's just waist high barriers everywhere in Gears of War. If I'm an accurate shooter who can bend bullets to go around objects, but am otherwise completely mortal (one of the things I really enjoyed about Wanted is that if you were hit with a few bullets you'd go down, just as quickly as anybody else you're shooting, but you could keep yourself from being scratched by making good use of cover, suppressive fire and melee attacks), you'd better expect that I'm always going to be trying to go somewhere that has lots of cover, and spend the rest of the time running. Sure, mixing in some Mirror's Edge style parkour would actually be pretty awesome, but not having seen the movie I'm unsure if that would even be true to the source material.

Everyone's bringing up reasons that on the surface appear decent for criticising the game, but if you look at it a bit more deeply, they're just excuses for criticising a game that didn't come up with an idea first.

Played the demo of it... and it was kind of eh. Maybe it was just the demo level, but way too much cover cluttering it up. And, like way too many cover-based game, feels like you're glued to the cover far too often.

It's a good game play mechanic deserving of a much better game. It just comes across as uninspired, unoriginal, and unpolished. I might pick up the game because it's super-cheap, but if the demo is in any way representative of the full game, it's not a $60 purchase, which is how all those reviewers were rating it. I see the same sort of reaction on Amazon.com, with lots of users giving it rave reviews... as a $15 game.

I get the same vibe off of John Woo's Stranglehold, which has gameplay that's ten types of awesome... but the level design is so horribly uninspired. Some of the levels shown off in the gameplay trailer at the end seem to promise some more creative locations, like running up a dinosaur in a museum.

As for grading on a curve with games with multiplayer. It happens. Call Of Duty gets away with some criminally short campaigns, but they absolutely nailed it with their 6 or so hour CoD 4 campaign. Haven't played MW2 yet, but the demo made me want to go out and get it, even knowing what I know about its flaws. I personally wouldn't spend $60 on a six hour campaign, but I was over-joyed with CoD 4 at about half that price. And that's a game with a much slicker presentation than what I saw in the Wanted demo. Got pretty much the same feeling from Gears. It just nailed its presentation, even if the game play mechanic wasn't nearly as fun.

 

[migo]

Played the demo of it... and it was kind of eh. Maybe it was just the demo level, but way too much cover cluttering it up. And, like way too many cover-based game, feels like you're glued to the cover far too often.

That's realistic. Incredibly so. If I'm in a gun fight for whatever bizarre reason, I'll be glued to cover the whole time too! That's like saying you spend too much time with your seatbelt on in Gran Turismo.

It's a good game play mechanic deserving of a much better game. It just comes across as uninspired, unoriginal, and unpolished.

Who cares if it's inspired? Unreal Tournament is uninspired and it's a great game. Who cares if it's original, that's a stupid criticism. I disagree with it being unpolished, quite the opposite in fact, it has far more polish than Gears of War, so it's pretty obvious that those three Us you're bringing to bear are just cliché reasons for criticising a game that have no validity and don't even describe the game accurately.

I might pick up the game because it's super-cheap, but if the demo is in any way representative of the full game, it's not a $60 purchase, which is how all those reviewers were rating it. I see the same sort of reaction on Amazon.com, with lots of users giving it rave reviews... as a $15 game.

Thing is, I don't ever pay $60 for a game. Ever. Well, once I pre-ordered the special edition of KISS Psycho Circus The Nightmare Child, but I'm sure you can figure out why I did that. For a reviewer to be taking price into consideration is silly. My ex-roommate bought a Mercedes AMG just because he could, $60 is a drop in the bucket for him, so it doesn't matter. For me, no matter how good a game is, regardless of replay value and quality I wouldn't pay $60. It's a moot point. I just wait for the price to come down.

I get the same vibe off of John Woo's Stranglehold, which has gameplay that's ten types of awesome... but the level design is so horribly uninspired. Some of the levels shown off in the gameplay trailer at the end seem to promise some more creative locations, like running up a dinosaur in a museum.

I'm not sure you even know what uninspired means. You're just throwing that out there. The level design was actually quite good, it's the limited tequila time that was the problem with the game.

As for grading on a curve with games with multiplayer. It happens. Call Of Duty gets away with some criminally short campaigns, but they absolutely nailed it with their 6 or so hour CoD 4 campaign. Haven't played MW2 yet, but the demo made me want to go out and get it, even knowing what I know about its flaws. I personally wouldn't spend $60 on a six hour campaign, but I was over-joyed with CoD 4 at about half that price. And that's a game with a much slicker presentation than what I saw in the Wanted demo. Got pretty much the same feeling from Gears. It just nailed its presentation, even if the game play mechanic wasn't nearly as fun.

Since when is presentation more important than gameplay?

 

[Netrigan]

Played the demo of it... and it was kind of eh. Maybe it was just the demo level, but way too much cover cluttering it up. And, like way too many cover-based game, feels like you're glued to the cover far too often.

That's realistic. Incredibly so. If I'm in a gun fight for whatever bizarre reason, I'll be glued to cover the whole time too! That's like saying you spend too much time with your seatbelt on in Gran Turismo.

As in stuck to cover when you're trying not to be stuck to cover. Like walking across a movie theater floor stuck. This happens in virtually ever cover-based combat game, although I think I had the least problems with Gears.

It's a good game play mechanic deserving of a much better game. It just comes across as uninspired, unoriginal, and unpolished.

Who cares if it's inspired? Unreal Tournament is uninspired and it's a great game. Who cares if it's original, that's a stupid criticism. I disagree with it being unpolished, quite the opposite in fact, it has far more polish than Gears of War, so it's pretty obvious that those three Us you're bringing to bear are just cliché reasons for criticising a game that have no validity and don't even describe the game accurately.

I was constantly getting hung up, even when not sticking to cover. Maybe it was the level, since it was taking place on an airplane and it was all narrow aisles. Also the basic level advancement never really varied. I took cover behind a movable cart, picked some folks off, pushed the cart forward, moved to the other aisle. Rinse, lather, repeat.

It really wasn't a great level to show off the game play either. The tutorial had me primed for some cool curving of bullets and flanking maneuvers... then puts me in a really tight environment where it's hard to pull off any of the tricks.

The game play video at the end had this cool bit where you're hanging on to the seats, but that didn't happen while I was playing. That might have been the difficulty setting though. I wanted to try it on a higher difficulty, but the demo had me locked in on pussy even after I finished it.

I've never understood the trend toward locking harder difficulties. First time I experienced it was with the far-too-easy Doom III, which was so easy on Hard I had absolutely no desire to try it on Nightmare once it unlocked.

I might pick up the game because it's super-cheap, but if the demo is in any way representative of the full game, it's not a $60 purchase, which is how all those reviewers were rating it. I see the same sort of reaction on Amazon.com, with lots of users giving it rave reviews... as a $15 game.

Thing is, I don't ever pay $60 for a game. Ever. Well, once I pre-ordered the special edition of KISS Psycho Circus The Nightmare Child, but I'm sure you can figure out why I did that. For a reviewer to be taking price into consideration is silly. My ex-roommate bought a Mercedes AMG just because he could, $60 is a drop in the bucket for him, so it doesn't matter. For me, no matter how good a game is, regardless of replay value and quality I wouldn't pay $60. It's a moot point. I just wait for the price to come down.

Critics are commenting on games on release. That's reflected in the score. If a reviewer doesn't think it's worth the asking price, the score reflects it. Especially when dealing with short games, critics often recommend that people check it out when the price drops or tells them to rent it.

I get the same vibe off of John Woo's Stranglehold, which has gameplay that's ten types of awesome... but the level design is so horribly uninspired. Some of the levels shown off in the gameplay trailer at the end seem to promise some more creative locations, like running up a dinosaur in a museum.

I'm not sure you even know what uninspired means. You're just throwing that out there. The level design was actually quite good, it's the limited tequila time that was the problem with the game.

The demo level was extremely linear and not a whole lot of variation (nearly identical street scenes separated by nearly identical interior locations). I don't say this as someone who dislikes linear shooters. I'm a pretty big fan of them, but I do expect to be rewarded for exploring my environment. And I think good level design knows how to mix things up and show you something you didn't quite expect. It's sort of like that gag image that gets tossed up every so often where they show a Doom level (which is a good linear level with all sorts of nooks and cranies to explore), versus a winding linear corridor with cutscenes every couple of turns. Stranglehold is a winding corridor with cutscenes. There is no deviation allowed from the path you must follow. No way to approach a battle from a different angle for a tactical advantage. No cul-de-sacs with bonus items. It's level design 101 without an ounce of panache.

As for grading on a curve with games with multiplayer. It happens. Call Of Duty gets away with some criminally short campaigns, but they absolutely nailed it with their 6 or so hour CoD 4 campaign. Haven't played MW2 yet, but the demo made me want to go out and get it, even knowing what I know about its flaws. I personally wouldn't spend $60 on a six hour campaign, but I was over-joyed with CoD 4 at about half that price. And that's a game with a much slicker presentation than what I saw in the Wanted demo. Got pretty much the same feeling from Gears. It just nailed its presentation, even if the game play mechanic wasn't nearly as fun.

Since when is presentation more important than gameplay?

Presentation is part of the package. Game play, level design, enemy placement, weapons, story, and just simple presentation are all important to the over-all game. Call Of Duty 4 grabs you by the balls early on and never lets up. Few games have that sort of presentation. Gears Of War could be just another macho gun-fest, but there's a sly sense of humor that gently reminds you that they're not taking this nearly as seriously as the game characters seem to be. Like them doing a variation on the ever-popular sewer level, but instead of dumping you in a sewer, they dump the other squad in the sewer while you crack wise. The cheese is part of the presentation. To me, presentation is the attitude the game designers are asking you to approach the game. Like Doom's soundtrack went hand in hand with how you approached the level. When the music was tense, you tended to move forward more cautiously. If the music was lively, it was going to be a frag-fest. It's the hook, it's that's nearly undefinable thing that makes you go FUCK YEAH! two minutes into a game.

Presentation is often the difference between a good game and a great game.

 

[I-Con]

See this chick, you see this woman right here?

Pretty. Fucking. Sweet. I know right.
But it just feels like it's missing something.

So, without further ado, I present to you, Lona Misa

Pretty awesomer, right?

The Mona Lisa had the right idea, with that whole smiling thing, but I thought I could make a couple improvements. First, I made the smile a little more obvious. It helps since there's so much more going on here. I mean, look at those laser eyes, and that explosion!

This is like the greatest idea I ever had.

Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to work on it, had to a meet a deadline you see.

 

[Programmed_For_Damage]

I've played many games that involve cover based shooting, including Wanted, but I still reckon Gears executes that mechanic better than any of its direct or indirect competition. I can't quite put my finger on what makes it better but I think it boils down to the fact it is so smooth in transitioning that I don't have to think about what I'm doing or what buttons I'm pressing. Uncharted 2 and Mass Effect 2 were competant but they still were a little more clunky.

 

[Wertbag]

Sounds like I'm in the minority in actually hating cover based gameplay. Rainbow 6 Vegas was terrible for it, where your character would be completely hiding and yet due to rotating the camera around you could still see and aim while not exposing yourself. It could also feel quite jarring switching from 1st person to 3rd person, but maybe it works better in games which are 3rd person shooters only?
I perfer the duck/prone with lean mechanics that make you look through your characters eyes to pick your targets and thereby expose yourself to potential danger.

 

[migo]

As in stuck to cover when you're trying not to be stuck to cover. Like walking across a movie theater floor stuck. This happens in virtually ever cover-based combat game, although I think I had the least problems with Gears.

You press A to leave cover. Gears had issues with it too, but would sometimes have you leaving cover when you desperately needed to be covered.

I was constantly getting hung up, even when not sticking to cover. Maybe it was the level, since it was taking place on an airplane and it was all narrow aisles. Also the basic level advancement never really varied. I took cover behind a movable cart, picked some folks off, pushed the cart forward, moved to the other aisle. Rinse, lather, repeat.

You're going from one end of an airplane to another. How much level variance do you expect really? Once I got the hang of selecting which path to take to move from one cover to another I had very little trouble progressing and was able to move forward very quickly.

It really wasn't a great level to show off the game play either. The tutorial had me primed for some cool curving of bullets and flanking maneuvers... then puts me in a really tight environment where it's hard to pull off any of the tricks.

There was plenty of opportunity to flank, whenever there were two aisles to go down and shooters were on both aisles, you take out all of them on one end, send out some suppressive fire, move around behind them and take them out with a melee attack. That's what I was doing a lot of.

The game play video at the end had this cool bit where you're hanging on to the seats, but that didn't happen while I was playing. That might have been the difficulty setting though. I wanted to try it on a higher difficulty, but the demo had me locked in on pussy even after I finished it.

Yeah, I agree it would have been nice to showcase higher difficulties as well. Although I played through Gears first on Easy, so comparing the two easy difficulties is pretty reasonable, and I found that in Gears you ended up pretty much invincible on easy, you could still die if you didn't pull things off right, and the AI was still smart enough to notice you and once they knew you were there they never stopped being alert (unlike, say, MGS3 or Splinter Cell: Conviction).

I've never understood the trend toward locking harder difficulties. First time I experienced it was with the far-too-easy Doom III, which was so easy on Hard I had absolutely no desire to try it on Nightmare once it unlocked.

Artificial replay value? I know Bayonetta has that as well, with only Normal, Easy and Very Easy available at start, but I'm thinking the full version probably would only have the hardest difficulty locked, if anything at all. Forcing everyone to play Pussy would be a pretty stupid move IMO, although the limitation isn't out of the ordinary for a demo.

Critics are commenting on games on release. That's reflected in the score. If a reviewer doesn't think it's worth the asking price, the score reflects it. Especially when dealing with short games, critics often recommend that people check it out when the price drops or tells them to rent it.

But that's silly, they're assuming I have the same budget. A game at release might be so awesome they think it's worth $60, but for me it wouldn't be worth it at all, and if price is a factor I'd rate every new release game at 20% or less simply because it's too expensive. That goes in with the equally silly assumption reviewers have on reviewing sequels to say that there isn't enough new content therefore the game gets a lower score than the previous one even though gameplay is refined.

The demo level was extremely linear and not a whole lot of variation (nearly identical street scenes separated by nearly identical interior locations).

Are you expecting things to really be that different if you're going into a low-income, seedy neighborhood in Hong Kong?

I don't say this as someone who dislikes linear shooters. I'm a pretty big fan of them, but I do expect to be rewarded for exploring my environment. And I think good level design knows how to mix things up and show you something you didn't quite expect. It's sort of like that gag image that gets tossed up every so often where they show a Doom level (which is a good linear level with all sorts of nooks and cranies to explore), versus a winding linear corridor with cutscenes every couple of turns. Stranglehold is a winding corridor with cutscenes. There is no deviation allowed from the path you must follow. No way to approach a battle from a different angle for a tactical advantage. No cul-de-sacs with bonus items. It's level design 101 without an ounce of panache.

Given it comes from a cinematic director who wants to present you with a somewhat cinematic experience by presenting events in a certain order, that makes sense. Stranglehold is supposed to be a movie-like game. Wet is also supposed to be movie like and has a similar progression, and ends up feeling a lot better for actually allowing slow motion as much as you want. Half Life had a very linear, no choice level design as well, and that's one of the things that made it so well received, because it allowed the devs to have certainty about how you would progress and could take extra steps in immersion. That isn't to say that Deus Ex was far more awesome the way it handled things, but linearity isn't a bad thing. If it were, Super Mario Bros would be one of the crappiest games ever since you couldn't even backtrack.

Presentation is part of the package. Game play, level design, enemy placement, weapons, story, and just simple presentation are all important to the over-all game. Call Of Duty 4 grabs you by the balls early on and never lets up. Few games have that sort of presentation. Gears Of War could be just another macho gun-fest, but there's a sly sense of humor that gently reminds you that they're not taking this nearly as seriously as the game characters seem to be. Like them doing a variation on the ever-popular sewer level, but instead of dumping you in a sewer, they dump the other squad in the sewer while you crack wise. The cheese is part of the presentation. To me, presentation is the attitude the game designers are asking you to approach the game. Like Doom's soundtrack went hand in hand with how you approached the level. When the music was tense, you tended to move forward more cautiously. If the music was lively, it was going to be a frag-fest. It's the hook, it's that's nearly undefinable thing that makes you go FUCK YEAH! two minutes into a game.

I agree presentation is important, but it wears off quickly if the gameplay isn't good. Yeah Gears grabbed me right away, but towards the end I was more just interested in completing it for achievements and I didn't consider it nearly as awesome as before. By contrast, while Mirror's Edge had some similar problems in presentation and herding that Gears had, I still enjoy it simply because the core gameplay (running around, particularly if there aren't any cops shooting at you) was so fun. If the presentation is bland, and the core gameplay is good I think there's far more value than if the presentation is great but the core gameplay is bland.

Presentation is often the difference between a good game and a great game.

Only if it was a good game to begin with. Gears was just an OK game with some pretty nice presentation.