General Gaming So is Gears of War just... bad?

[heydude93]

The idea that anyone wouldn't think Gears meets criteria of enjoyable digital junk food but still likes most other AAA action games is baffling to me, I gotta say.

 

To hell with the story - its mechanics/controls are arguably the best thing going for it.  Simple and almost perfect from get-go like RE4, Mario or Tetris. It might be underwhelming now because so many games feature similar mechanics, but regardless, the intuitiveness and influence of its gameplay really can't be overstated. 

[crispy4000]

3 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

HUH? I rerember Gears being heralded as one of the best looking games for its's time when it came out... and that type of cover based gameplay hadn't really been done at that point yet. So there really wasn't much to compare it to from that standpoint.

Gears streamlined and popularized a lot of things, but to say there were no comparative cover-based games is kind of off.

 

 

Cover system - Wikipedia

EN.M.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

 

[skillzdadirecta]

2 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Gears streamlined and popularized a lot of things, but to say there were no comparative games is...

 

Cover system - Wikipedia

EN.M.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

 

Dude, do you understand what the words "there really were not comparative games at that point" means? It doesn't mean there were NO other games that employed the cover mechanic, just that there weren't many at the time and very few that employed it the way Gears did. Yes i am aware of Winback and Kill Switch... neither of those games were really "Gears like" at all. Gears was more than just it's cover system... and none of the other games mentioned in that article were fast paced, twitch games like Gears was. So if your argument is that Gears wasn't unique for what it was at the time, we can agree to disagree and leave it at that... I really don't feel like going back and forth on this.

[crispy4000]

Being a bit too touchy there.
 

Gears was an evolution of what other games already worked out.  Games like Kill Switch established most all of its fundamentals, but Gears ran with it, as you said, in a more action oriented direction.  Especially with things like dashing to cover and the over the shoulder RE4 style perspective.

 

I don’t think we disagree over anything major.  Just splitting hairs on how distinct something has to be to “hadn’t really been done before.”  Reasonable people could disagree on that.

 

Gears significance was also what it popularized.  It’s one of the reasons why a game like Vanquish isn’t lauded similarly.  It dialed the action way up and layered mechanics on even further, but never inspired other games.

[skillzdadirecta]

14 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Being a bit too touchy there.
 

Gears was an evolution of what other games already worked out.  Games like Kill Switch established most all of its fundamentals, but Gears ran with it, as you said, in a more action oriented direction.  Especially with things like dashing to cover, and the over the shoulder RE4 style perspective. WHICH IS ALL I WAS SAYING. 

 

I don’t think we disagree over anything major.  Just splitting hairs on how distinct something has to be to “hadn’t really been done before.” YOU'RE splitting hairs. I'm not. I was clear on what I think Gears role was and based on you typing this, you knew what I meant.

 

Gears significance was also what it popularized.  It’s one of the reasons why a game like Vanquish isn’t lauded similarly for dialing the action up and layering on even further.  It never inspired other games.

So yeah... That's why I got annoyed because I was never implying that Gears "Invented" anything. Only that it combined a bunch of existing mechanics and systems in a way that hadn't been done before and definitely it didn't have a lot of comparative games at the time.I really had no interest in "Splitting hairs:.

[crispy4000]

When I think of “that type of cover based gameplay” I think of Kill Switch as the archetypal example, not Gears.  Because it set the governing rules that even other 3rd person cover-shooters that later strayed from Gears (even when inspired by it) didn’t break.  That’s why I responded in the first place.

 

We probably won’t be coming to any further consensus here.

[Bacon]

Never even heard of Kill.Shit  Just like I've never heard of Antonio Meucci. 

[heydude93]

35 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Touchy.
 

Gears was an evolution of what other games already worked out.  Other games established most all of its fundamentals, but Gears ran with it, as you said, in a more action oriented direction.  Especially with things like dashing to cover, and the over the shoulder RE4 style perspective.

 

I don’t think we disagree over anything major.  Just splitting hairs on how distinct something has to be to “hadn’t really been done before.”

 

 

Tbf isn't the same true of RE4? The most original thing about it was maybe the contextual action button (not sure or not if another game had it first) but the over the shoulder camera was already done in Splinter Cell, the aiming was kinda lifted from MGS2, the QTEs from Shenmue, etc.

[crispy4000]

11 minutes ago, heydude93 said:

 

Tbf isn't the same true of RE4? The most original thing about it was maybe the contextual action button (not sure or not if another game had it first) but the over the shoulder camera was already done in Splinter Cell, the aiming was kinda lifted from MGS2, the QTEs from Shenmue, etc.

Absolutely.  It was more methodical than other 3rd person shooters at the time because of stopping to shoot and its contextual melee system.  But I’d classify RE4 more as a new type of Resident Evil game than a new type of (horror) shooter.

[Keyser_Soze]

26 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Never even heard of Kill.Shit  Just like I've never heard of Antonio Meucci. 

 

I have, I think I played a demo of it back in the day. And Winback was awesome.

[crispy4000]

31 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Never even heard of Kill.Shit  Just like I've never heard of Antonio Meucci. 

 

Epic actually hired Kill Switch’s lead to work on Gears 1.  And Naughty Dog cited it as an inspiration for Uncharted.

 

I think it was a commercial bomb though.

[Bloodporne]

I recently replayed Gears 1 actually and still really dig it. I like how laser-focused it is on doing exactly one thing well. 

 

I remember it being jaw-dropping in terms of graphics at the time and I always really liked the heavy, violent feel of the whole thing. I mean the way the weapons feel, movement and all. The weapon impacts were nasty.

 

Also Gears 1 still had a great, dark B-movie atmosphere going, something the others I tried totally lost.

[Bloodporne]

And whoever packages everything cool in the best overall product first is always the winner. It's funny because I actually played Kill Switch and it didn't even register because Gears was something 'totally new' to me, I remember thinking that distinctly. 

 

There was Punk Rock-y shit before it but then there was the first Ramones album.

[gamer.tv]

I haven’t touched the series in a good 10 years...but it’s definitely in my top 5. Gears 2 still remains my favourite action game to this day.

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, Bloodporne said:

And whoever packages everything cool in the best overall product first is always the winner. It's funny because I actually played Kill Switch and it didn't even register because Gears was something 'totally new' to me, I remember thinking that distinctly. 

 

There was Punk Rock-y shit before it but then there was the first Ramones album.

EXACTLY. Resident Evil 4 wasn;t the first game to use QTE's or Over the shoulder shooting. It just used them better than other games had at that point. Same with Gears... I remember Killswitch but don't think I played it much... I'm sure I must have because a game like that would have been right up my alley. I DEFINITELY played Winback though and niether of those games did what Gears did despite both predating it with cover mechanics. That's the only point I was trying to make.

[Paperclyp]

It’s important to remember context like marketing and budget and all of that. Gears was marketed as hard as any game ever at that time - it wasn’t going to fail unless it was trash. Cliffy may have coined the term “stop and pop” or some shit like that… like I just remember the lead up to that game better than most games of the past. 
 

That’s not to say it wasn’t the best cover-based game that had come out at that time, but I guess what I’m getting at is that the game that is highest in perceived quality probably isn’t always the game remembered as the game that started trend A or trend B. 
 

Hell, if you ask me what started cover based stuff I would have said Kill.switch without a second thought, but if someone had said gears I wouldn’t have been like oh no no no it was actually kill.switch. 

[Paperclyp]

It’s probably micro-generational too. If you ask people what game popularized survival horror games many will say RE but many will say Alone in the Dark.

[Xbob42]

It's the first in a genre built around actively not doing anything. I have despised every second of every Gears game I've played. Hide and seek bullshit just isn't for me. It's so tedious. It's a shooter with extra steps and crippled movement. God I think the concept as a whole is just boring from the ground up. Hide behind thing, pop out, shoot other people hiding behind thing. Ohhh no these ones rush your cover! These ones asplode! Just so not for me.

[GameDadGrant]

Just (re)play Resident Evil 4 instead. 
 

That’ll clear your Gears problem.

[SaysWho?]

I played 2 coop for a while and never finished. 

[JPDunks4]

Playing older games can be difficult though, as so many genres have been copied and refined so much since then, that these older titles just feel bad in comparison.

 

I never owed the older Playstation consoles until late into their life cycles, and really only owned like Gran Turismo, Maddens, and GTA's on them.  I went back to play the Uncharted Trilogy with the Nathan Drake Collection, and more recently God of War series on PS Now.  Uncharted 1 and God of War both felt pretty horrible to me.  Uncharted looked good due to the remaster, but the gameplay felt pretty bad after playing the more recent Tomb Raider games.  God of War 1/2/ and I just started 3 all felt pretty bad, and is by far my least favorite of all the PS franchises thus far, when I expected it to be my favorite.  As bad as some of these felt though, I had to remind myself, these games are back from 10-15 years ago, and how their look and gameplay was probably revolutionary at the time.

[skillzdadirecta]

 

6 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

It’s probably micro-generational too. If you ask people what game popularized survival horror games many will say RE but many will say Alone in the Dark.

 

The disconnect here seems to be this word right here and what that means to different people. "Popularized" doesn't mean "Started" or "Invented". It means that while there may have been other games that were first in a particular genre the one that really caught on with audiences is the one that "Popularized" that genre. So while Alone in The Dark may have predated Resident Evil and had a passionate fan base and may have even influenced Resident Evil, it would be HARD to honestly argue that Resident Evil wasn't the game that popularized the genre. When you talk about O.G. Survival horror games from that era, TWO titles will come up. Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Alone in the Dark will probably be a distant third , fair or not. It may have been first but it was FAR from being the game that popularized the genre. @Bloodporne gave what I thought was the best example with his punk rock analogy and The Ramones. Unfortunately what's first often isn't what's remembered. I would say the same about Killswitch vs Gears of War 

[Keyser_Soze]

Alone in the Dark wouldn't be a distant 3rd it would be forgotten from the equation. Heck I would mention Clock Tower before I even remembered Alone in the Dark was a video game series.

[BloodyHell]

The answer to the OP is no.

[Paperclyp]

46 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

Alone in the Dark wouldn't be a distant 3rd it would be forgotten from the equation. Heck I would mention Clock Tower before I even remembered Alone in the Dark was a video game series.

See I think this is what I’m talking about, I think many people of a certain age would ABSOLUTELY cite Alone in the Dark as the first big survival horror series even over RE. To them, RE was an alone in the dark clone. 
 

It was a critical and commercial success, it’s not an obscure game. 
 

I wanna say there’s a Japanese NES game that influenced them all, and I think that is where it starts to get more in the weeds.  

[Paperclyp]

1 hour ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

 

The disconnect here seems to be this word right here and what that means to different people. "Popularized" doesn't mean "Started" or "Invented". It means that while there may have been other games that were first in a particular genre the one that really caught on with audiences is the one that "Popularized" that genre. So while Alone in The Dark may have predated Resident Evil and had a passionate fan base and may have even influenced Resident Evil, it would be HARD to honestly argue that Resident Evil wasn't the game that popularized the genre. When you talk about O.G. Survival horror games from that era, TWO titles will come up. Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Alone in the Dark will probably be a distant third , fair or not. It may have been first but it was FAR from being the game that popularized the genre. @Bloodporne gave what I thought was the best example with his punk rock analogy and The Ramones. Unfortunately what's first often isn't what's remembered. I would say the same about Killswitch vs Gears of War 

Just to be clear - Alone in the Dark didn’t maybe influence RE, it definitely did, Mikami himself asserting so flatly. 

 

It’s all scale though. Popularized is a vague term even in the way you’re using it. PUBG popularized the Battle Royale, but not like Fortnite. 
 

Generally I don’t really disagree with anything you’re saying though, I am just a little more into the idea that there’s a significant (micro) generational aspect to it.  

[skillzdadirecta]

1 hour ago, Paperclyp said:

Just to be clear - Alone in the Dark didn’t maybe influence RE, it definitely did, Mikami himself asserting so flatly. 

 

It’s all scale though. Popularized is a vague term even in the way you’re using it. PUBG popularized the Battle Royale, but not like Fortnite. 
 

Generally I don’t really disagree with anything you’re saying though, I am just a little more into the idea that there’s a significant (micro) generational aspect to it.  

PUBG was much more of a success in its own right than Alone in the Dark was comparatively. So much so that PUBG still exists and thrives right along with Fortnite. Maybe not as huge, but still a pretty big and successful game in its own right. Alone in the Dark? Where is it? It's an influentuial game but its still very niche. It''s a footnote. The term Survival Horror was coined by Resident Evil, not Alone in the Dark. Fortnite didn't coin the phrase Battlle Royal... neither did PUBG for that matter. That honor goes to King of Kill mode in H1N1, I think? 

 

So yes, Alone in the Dark was the first "Survival horror game" technically, even though that term was invented later, and even influenced Resident Evil. But I personally think it's a stretch to say it popularized a genre that wasn't even invented until well after that game debuted. Same with Killswitch. These are niche games that pioneered genres that other games came along and popularized. PUBG was and still is a very popular game but Fortinite is a freaking PHENONMENON. Two different metrics. Again, in my humble opinion.

[best3444]

Gears of War 1 on the 360 was revolutionary visually and a step up with the combat system. The cover and pop style was extremely well done and the entire game was terrific. Not sure what game you're playing. 

 

Or just jump to part 5 and play that. It's an awesome action game with beautiful visuals.

[Paperclyp]

45 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

PUBG was much more of a success in its own right than Alone in the Dark was comparatively. So much so that PUBG still exists and thrives right along with Fortnite. Maybe not as huge, but still a pretty big and successful game in its own right. Alone in the Dark? Where is it? It's an influentuial game but its still very niche. It''s a footnote. The term Survival Horror was coined by Resident Evil, not Alone in the Dark. Fortnite didn't coin the phrase Battlle Royal... neither did PUBG for that matter. That honor goes to King of Kill mode in H1N1, I think? 

 

So yes, Alone in the Dark was the first "Survival horror game" technically, even though that term was invented later, and even influenced Resident Evil. But I personally think it's a stretch to say it popularized a genre that wasn't even invented until well after that game debuted. Same with Killswitch. These are niche games that pioneered genres that other games came along and popularized. PUBG was and still is a very popular game but Fortinite is a freaking PHENONMENON. Two different metrics. Again, in my humble opinion.

Again I don’t disagree with what you’re saying - I’m not trying to directly compare the influence of PUBG vs AITD, just making the point of scale and generation. The older brother of a close friend of mine was all about AITD and that was my introduction to the format, but I very much think RE “popularized” the genre, yet he would disagree. I don’t think either is wrong. 
 

Ancillarily (is that a word?), I believe Gears would have come out looking largely the same had kill.switch not existed, but I think RE would look a lot different. Which is just to say their influence was different and not really relevant to our discussion lol. 

[crispy4000]

34 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

Ancillarily (is that a word?), I believe Gears would have come out looking largely the same had kill.switch not existed...

 

Considering that Chris Esaki worked on both games’ cover systems, I kind of doubt that.  The lineage is pretty direct, and it was an opportunity to improve on previous work.

[Paperclyp]

8 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Considering that Chris Esaki worked on both games’ cover systems, I kind of doubt that.  The lineage is pretty direct, and it was an opportunity to improve on previous work.

Interesting, I did not know that. 

[The def star]

19 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

The answer to the OP is no.

 

[Greatoneshere]

Gears of War is the opposite of bad. Games slap hard. The only Gears game I have yet to play is Gears Tactics, which I'll get to at some point. I hear it's good though.