So as I’m sure most of you know by this point I went out and purchased a Xbox 360 just over a year ago now.
Much to my surprise it hasn’t blown up on me yet as most of the media reports in the gaming press would have believe at this time last year.
The main reason for the Xbox was I wanted to expand my menu of games on their native platform, outside of Valve FPS and alot of RTS and RPG games there isn’t much that comes out directly for the P.C. these days. Most of what does come out is ported from our friends in the console realm and most of that tends to be of the craptastic level for quality. It doesn’t help that I have this thing for if I’m going to play a game I don’t want to play it on a ported platform I want to play it on the platform it was developed for.
The Wii being the major exception for this rule most all of the games that came out for it that I wanted to play showed up in 2007 so I still have it and does very well sitting there just like the Gamecube did before that and the N64 before that… hmmm I’m starting to see a patern with the Nintendo stuff.
Anyway…
I’ve bought a few games over the course of the last year for the old Xbox… GTA IV (Awesome story, gun play and driving need work but the physics model is top notch so I won’t get that down on it) Rock Band 2 (also awesome and a game that is popular enough that everyone under 30 can play it) Fallout 3 (I don’t RPG’s that often.. I will get back to you on this one once I get into it some more) And of course the two games that everyone and their brother who owns and Xbox and considers themselves a “real gamer” as…. Halo 3 and Gears of War / Gears of War 2
Lets talk about Halo 3 first… up until I bought this game I was a Halo virgin. I honestly don’t get what the big deal is with Halo? I know it was a launch title for the first Xbox way back when but honestly I don’t get it. I don’t know if it my lack of understanding of the entire Halo universe and the overall story of Halo 3 and not understanding the various interactions of some of the main characters. I honestly didn’t get it. I think Curtis summed it up best when he said “You know if your going to play Halo 3, you may want to check out the first two before you do that”… I don’t know if it would have made a difference. Also beating the thing in a afternoon didn’t help it’s cause.
Don’t get me wrong I had fun with Halo and I do enjoy occasionally popping on to Xbox Live and wasting someone but honestly I don’t get what the big deal is.
Now lets talk about the Gears of War games…. obstinately the original Gears of War was the tent pole title for the Xbox 360 in 2006. Thing of it as the big blockbuster summer movie of video games that year. Think of it like “Independence Day” good enough the first time through, a passable way to kill a couple of hours of time every time you watched it after that. That is what Gears of War aspires to be… Honestly this is the first game that it felt like a chore to get around to finishing it, seriously on my to do list for the last 3 months for weekend would be something like;
Laundry
Clean kitchen / bathrooms
Yard work
Beat Gears of War
I think it was made all the worse that I knew I was only about 45 minutes of game time from the final boss, but would have to depend on my skill to beat the game since there are no cheat codes (yes I know I shouldn’t use cheat codes but some of us play games just to play games and not to improve our overall skill). I knew the Gears was really a chore when Curtis and I had a choice we could either play a 6 hour game of “Sins of a Solar Empire” and we knew it would last that long with the both of us working together or play Gears of war CO-Op for 3 hours and beat the thing from start to finish. We chose the 6 hour RTS game and loved every minute of it.
Which brings me to tonight’s reason for posting, the 45 minute save point to the end took me about an hour to get through it to the final boss. The final boss took me probably 2.5 hours of trying to finally kill. And in the end it was a lucky shot that did it (which pisses me off more then you will ever know). Now why was I so obsessed with beating Gears of War? Simple I already had Gears of War 2 and I wanted to have the full experience of beating Gears of War when I got into Gears of War 2.
Imagine my surprise when I get into Gears of War 2 and it’s basically a stand alone game! And the more I think about it the more it pisses me off.
What is the payoff you ask? Other then a few Xbox live achievements? Not a whole hell of a lot it would seem.