We Live in a branded world...good or bad?

Why Gears of War 2 runied itself

Gears of War 2,

What more can a person say of how a game lost its feeling from the original. When a game is amazing in the first place, and then they add a whole bunch of flair to the sequel, almost always the sequel will suck. It did that in Halo 2 and now for Gears of War 2.

1. They added too much characters to the locust horde. It bogged down with too much variety and lost the feeling of fighting the horde and complicated things way too much.

2. The ending sucked! it made the story more complicated and more unanswered questions from the first Gears of War. There wasn't even a final boss, lame. I do give Gears of War 2 credit of how well visually the first couple of levels were. But besides that, all good games have to have substance in how you feel while you play it.

3.the multiplayer system, while nice it was easier to team up with friends, still lacked the raw feeling of Gears. Hell even the camera didn't shake while you ran, which completely changed the feeling of the game entirely.

In conclusion, they simply added to much and left out what made Gears of War 1 good. Hopefully in Gears of War 3 they correct that mistake, just like what Bungie did with Halo 3 after Halo 2.

By the way, check out the links on occation to the right, they tend to have great deals on games and what not, just FYI

Peace Out,
Burson

My Wishlist for Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect was a tremendous success in next-gen gaming as far as I'm concerned. The game not only showcases some of the most realistic facial animations, lip syncing, and model animations in the video game world, but is also tremendous fun to play. This is due in large part to the absolutely perfect balance between the many elements that Mass Effect encompasses: it's the old meets the new, sci-fi fun meets dramatic overtones, FPS meets RPG, classic meets post-modern, light meets dark, and on and on. There are many reasons to love playing Mass Effect, but this set of perfect mixture of elements is a large part of it. And this will lead me into my wish list for Mass Effect 2.

1. Mass Effect, as I've said was a perfect mixture of contrasting story elements and environmental characteristics. However, a common result of the Curse of the Sequels is that the makers of a game franchise will screw up this otherwise good or perfect balance of elements. See the difference between Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel for a clear example of this. As far as Mass Effect 2 goes, however, I'm hoping this won't happen. By now, you might have seen the E3 trailer from someplace like IGN. Based upon what I've seen in that trailer myself, I worry that Mass Effect 2, despite improving on many other elements, may be going too much into a dark, melancholic pursuit of the reapers, favoring doom and gloom more often than the bright, wondrous, almost too perfect future that Mass Effect often portrayed. This is important, one, because it prevents the game from becoming like KoTOR 2: a constantly depressing quest through a semi-post disaster galaxy. But it's also important because when the darker elements of the game DO happen, they're that much more striking and contrasting to the otherwise beautiful and pristine order of the galaxy.
   Don't overly mess with the mood of the game that made Mass Effect successful.
2. Of course one of the biggest wishes that I have for Mass Effect 2 probably mirrors what most people complained about in Mass Effect: the repetitive nature of side-quests and extra worlds. Now, while I can understand the logic behind it that might have created these mirror image world and building designs (limited memory available, time constraints, money constraints) and even understand how the repetitive nature of the buildings might make sense in the game itself (it's out on the frontier, so standard practice is to create mass produced pre-fab structures), this doesn't change how repetitive it made exploring unexplored worlds sometimes. Granted, the game makers did an excellent job using a limited number of environmental elements, objects, and building designs to hide the fact they were using the exact same structures and set-up each time. Granted, you didn't have to explore EVERY extra world and side-quest, and in matter of fact, the game feels less restrictive and more open and non-linear if you don't. However, this is still very much an element that could be improved in Mass Effect 2.
   Make more original and less repetitive unexplored worlds and side-quests.
3. Going along with this is a small bit of grievance I had with the unexplored worlds. Absolutely none of them looked the least bit alive or capable of supporting life. Sure, you had a few here and there with grass, blue skies, gentle rolling planes and slopes, and even a few animals wondering around. But even the most alive looking unexplored planet, the one with the monkeys where you're trying to retrieve the data module before the geth show up, still has NO TREES OR BUSHES. I found this very odd, and a very clear missing element from the game. Once again, they might have done this to reduce loading time, memory usage, and/or prevent frame-rate drop. But all I'm asking for is a bit of realism in having a few groves of trees and bushes or some other alien plant life here and there. You don't have to have a nearly impassable forest between you and your goal, but at least something that breaks up the monotonous scene of rock and grass.
   Have more display of fauna in the environment.
4. One of the biggest things I felt was missing, and a greatly missed opportunity, was urbanized environments. Other than the Citadel and Noveria, you never actually explore any urban, populated civilization centers. The game consists of exploring a bunch of uncharted worlds for the most part, even when doing the main story missions on Virmire, Ilos, and the Artemis Tau Cluster (technically, you could argue Feros was "urban" and had a "civilization", but a few dozen colonists among 50,000 year old ruins doesn't count in my book). This creates a sense of emptiness to the galaxy in Mass Effect, which is ironic considering that there are supposed to be so many large alien civilizations sharing the galaxy with humans. Now, all of this is a strong contrast to Bioware's other madly successful RPG, Knights of the Old Republic. Among other reasons, KoTOR was fun to play because of the variety of urban or population centers you could explore. Everywhere you went had to have a landing spot for the Ebon Hawk, which in the case of the game, meant a space port, which meant some kind of colony or city. This helped to create a sense of wonder and community in KoTOR, yet the feral nature of some of the ports (Tatooine, Kashyyyk) helped to contrast with the other, more urban ports and create a variety of environments to explore. Mass Effect 2 could take a lesson from KoTOR in this. Rather than having a few outstanding community centers like Mass Effect had, have the majority of landing locations, at least when dealing with the main story, be in urban or community centers. So far, based upon the E3 trailer, this looks and sounds like what they're doing with Mass Effect 2, but looks can be deceiving, so let's hope they stick with it and create a fuller galaxy this time around.
   Have more urbanized or at least colonized environments.
5. Another element that was rather simplistic and under-achieved was weapon selection. Sure, technically there were hundreds of guns in Mass Effect, and probably tens of thousands if you count upgrades as making a unique weapon, but conceptually, there were only ever four guns you could use: the shotgun, the pistol, the assault rifle, and the sniper rifle. Now, granted, with the huge variety of upgrades, and the unique combinations you could create with these upgrades, it helped to keep things fresh and new as far as your weaponry went, but this only lasts for so long. Eventually you realize that you're just using the same small group of guns continuously. And the fact that the different models of guns for each type of weapon looked largely the same except for color and surface details didn't help. It's not that I think all of this was a failure or lack of foresight, as certainly this is probably not something you'll begin to notice until you've played through the game a half-dozen or more times, but it does become noticeable. Luckily, it looks like Bioware will address this as well, according to the E3 trailer, in which they show at least one new type of gun (however, it's purpose or method of destruction is yet unknown; only a model of the gun was shown on-screen). And certainly the four types of weapons from Mass Effect should remain in the game as well, but for variety, the appearance of different models should be changed up significantly. Once again, I think that Mass Effect 2 could take a lesson from KoTOR in this regard, where even though many blaster rifles and similiar weapons did largely the same thing, they looked and operated in different ways, creating a larger palette of destruction from which to choose.
   Have a larger variety of diverse weaponry to choose from.

That about covers the gist of my wish list for Mass Effect 2. While there's other little elements I could pick at and specify for improvement in Mass Effect 2, they mostly tend to be things that can easily be overlooked or passed off as the natural mechanics of the game. In any case, Mass Effect 2 still has some time to go before release (supposedly holiday season of this year), so improvements to the game can still be made. Let's hope that they've paid attention to what people have said about the game, but also worry just as much about keeping the best elements of Mass Effect.

Halo 3 : what kind of cool game mode do you guys play

I like hearing about different game modes that people play that are original. Heck it doesn't even have to be a set game. My friends and i would play demo derby with the warthogs and can only get points by running somebody over by a warthog. Its fun as hell. Tell me what you guys like to play or any specific game modes. Don't restrict yourself to just Halo 3, the other two are just as cool to hear about what we as Halo players did in the past.

Reply and let me know.

Mass Effect 2

Feel Free to respond

The biggest draw back that i had from the first Mass Effect was the repetitive worlds, where many things became repetitive without too much variety. So something that i strongly believe they need to do away with is the repetitiveness of the worlds and maps. That alone would make a huge difference in making Mass Effect 2 better.

I do however like the idea of loading up from Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2. That is a very good idea and should do well for Mass Effect 2 in how many people like it.

They have to avoid the Gears of War 2 let down. They have to keep original elements while adding onto in Mass Effect 2. It is very hard to do, however Bioware cannot pull a Gears of War 2 and make it not feel like Gears of War. (which by the way ruined Gears of War 2, Halo 2,etc.)