A GOW dating sim, a man can dream, a man can dream.

Haha. I bet what happened was, the guy who said it was a 'triliogy' didn't know what the word meant. I bet he got the word 'triliogy' mixed up with the word 'saga'.

btw I bought this game based on the commercial I saw about it..... with the song "Mad world" from donnie Darko.... and so far its one of my favorite games, glad it won't stop at 3

Call me crazy, but i thought the GOW story+universe was complete ballsack, to the point where it offended me. The vocabulary is shit, the characters are one dimensional nothings, the enemies are generic and make no real sense in terms of the storyline. Gears of war is a series of decent visual concepts strung together by some pretty kickass gameplay, but it certainly isn't an epic story that DEMANDS TO BE TOLD. I mean come on. I wish i had the guts to drop spoilers here, but there are points to Gears of war's narrative when i felt like they'd stepped on me. Nothing worse than a narrative that thinks it's smarter than it is, and tries to justify itself with made-up words. It's just so freaking stupid!

Much the same with Halo 3. Boy did they drop the ball on that one, about when the flood appeared in the first game. All downhill from there. Unless they're adding some serious gunpowder to the mix, why even bother with a sequel when the plot is comparable to a Sci-fi channel original about some kind of big fish that eats people offscreen, and is finally killed by a perky journalist and a suspicious ex-con that turns out to be a decent guy at the very end, making a moral 180 to save the day.

If they want to put out sequels to Gears', expand the multiplayer suite to da max, and make it 8vs8 on bigger maps with freaking clan support. Honestly though, most of that should be mendable with patching, so what the hell.

Whoooo! Bring it on baby! That's my kind of sh**!

Sunjammer wins.

Twisted Metal had many games, it shouldn't have.

I hope they don't take Gears of War down the same road.

Final Fantasy offers compelling entertainment? Don't let the endless grinding and cinematics hit your ass on the way out.

Wait! Gears of War had a story? I've played through it three times and I have not seen any sign of story or compelling characters, did all of that come with the Limited Edition?

"Wait! Gears of War had a story? I've played through it three times and I have not seen any sign of story or compelling characters, did all of that come with the Limited Edition?"

lol

sunjammer: you're crazy. on gears, and on halo. although, to be fair, there are some things that the materials in the collectors edition fill in (on both games, actually) that you might not actually have picked up on otherwise, but really. unless you absolutely require your story to be spoonfed to you, then there is indeed story to be found.

Dance Dance Revolution with Gears.

Can't wait.

It's nice to see developers praising other peoples' work - it's very professional! It's much better than the regular catfights between the Sony and Microsoft CEOs.

Havaing said that, though, Gears of War's storyline looks very poor from what I've seen on the trailers - very generic and underdeveloped. I'm sure no one buys it for the plot, though!

I love the game but the story really sux and is non existent. Its no metal gear or FF. The gameplay pretty much kicks ass though and in the end, isn't that all that matters. Sure in the sequels they'll expand the story and hopefully it doesn't suck. THey got the gameplay right so the hard part is out of the way. Heres hoping for more Gears of War.

Twisted Metal had many games, it shouldn't have.

3 and 4 were made by 989 Studios, not Singletrac. That's why they sucked. Twisted metal Black/Head on was made by Incog inc, who are made up of ex Singletrac employees.

The comments about Halo are just plain wrong. Gears is weak storywise, but it has potential. Halo, on the other hand, is exceptionally intricate and well-written for a sci-fi FPS. If you think it's not, then you need to look harder. If it's not your cup of tea, then fine, but don't call it shit when it's really a well-put-together universe that Bungie's created.

I didn't found the Halo storyline much good either, it had some nice potential, but as soon as the flood started it just feld like a cheap Resident Evil/generic-monster-movie rip-off.

anyone up for some Gears of War?

The story or lack of one in Gears reminds me of the first act in an action movie. You know what I mean. Start off with a whole lot of exciting action that gets you intrigued about what's going on. Then bam! you hit 'em with story. My guess is it starts getting fleshed out in the next installment.

I played Gears for about 45mins at a friends house (the lucky bastard) and thought is was a straight on go "kill'em all" type of game. Story line? eh, i always think the alien vs. human storylines are cool. That includes Halo. The thing that makes Halo a great storyline are not just the games, but the books too. Based just on the game, Halo has a good storyline. With the books, you get background info and everthing.

However, look at the Metal Gear saga. what an amazing story and game. I am waiting for the game to come out just to buy MGS4 (stupid, i know) and hell i might buy a PSP to play Portable ops (thats a big maybe). Personally, MGS has the best storyline i know.

Lastly, do we buy games for the storyline or to blow shit up? Me: Gears - blow shit up, Halo - kick the crap outta aliens and good story, MGS - for its the story, but gameplay is sweet, FF - i hate the game for all its worth, but the story is friggen awesome. So, yea, thats all me right there.

sry for double post, but sunjammer was friggen hilarious

"Gears of war is a series of decent visual concepts strung together by some pretty kickass gameplay"

Decent visual concepts? From that statement I already find your arguement ridiculous. If there is one thing everyone can agree on, is that the visuals in Gears are some of the best in videogames, ever.

Ok, moving on, Gears didn't have a lot of story, but it does have potential. There are so many unexplored aspects of that game. From each characters back story (especially Fenix,) to where the horde came from, and to who the hell is that lady that talks when the horde wins in multiplayer. There is a lot to be told here, and I hope EPIC decides to tell it right, and not just leave it there as a tease next time around. I will agree that it felt pretty shitty not being told more, but I do think the Gears universe has a lot of potential.

Also, Halo 2 had a pretty compelling narrative; nowhere near MGS or RPG stories, but it was interesting. It did a lot more than merely advance the game play.

I don't know what you want from these games (Godfather caliber storytelling? Think of Gears as an action movie and Halo as a an action with drama movie and it will probably make more sense.)- Gears is lacking, but Halo is more than adequate. So yea, I'm calling you crazy.

honestly, I think EVERY missed the boat when it comes to the "story" in Gears Of War... See, for me, i saw the game the way it really is. Your a REAL grunt, and your in an army... they arn't going to tell you everything. Unlike every other game where your the MAIN guy and everything revolves around you... in GoW, your part of a bigger picture. Your sent to retrive XXX and of course they arn't going to spend 20 minutes telling what it it and what it does, why? Your a GRUNT... your just muscle. Why do you guys think the story is so weird... going from act 4 -> act 5 was confusing at first... your told to just hop on a train with no setup... its because your just a grunt...

Whether the plot is deserving or not, Mark Rein seems to have missed the point of a trilogy: it's one story told in three parts. Make as many sequels as you like and they still don't add up to a trilogy.

Nice one Sunjammer, you're a 12 year old kid who's hit puberty and are feeling for games. Just don't whack-off over it. If you're o smart, YOU go make a plot as daring as GOW and Halo, go on, I'm waiting...

"Personally, MGS has the best storyline i know."

Agreed. I'm also in that PSP dilemma for portable ops, as crazy as it sounds.

I'd just like to make a case for Planescape: Torment, the Suikoden series, Knights of the Old Republic 1 & 2, and pretty much everything Nippon Ichi's put out (and I'm sure I'm forgetting other great games) before the cresending wave of GoW/Halo/FF/MGS fans try to overwhelm every other good game ever. I will admit, though, I'm having more fun with FFXII than I've had in the last decade of playing FF games.

As for Gears of War having a storyline - it's gotta have SOME storyline somewhere, right? Otherwise it's just DOOM, prettier.

I'll go for the Marcus Fenix Hot Coffee/Hot Oil/Lube Job.

Come on people, The Flood gave Halo the one thing it was missing...FEAR.
As for GoW, most if not all of the reviews I've read for it say it has "a more in-depth story than we'd expected." Of course, I don't own the game, but at Xmas I'll have a proper verdict .

i-ghost, Sunjammer just schooled you without saying a word. You just pulled the "why don't you make something better then, HUH" line. Who is the inarticulate 12 year old?

Gears of War is a 'concept' game, and the story and characters are tacked on to round out the title, almost as an afterthought. After playing through the story mode, it is obvious that the developers built a story around the technology and graphics, and not the other way around. That does not mean that Gears in not a fun experience, because it is, but the 6-7 hours of single player with a completely uninspired plot is hard to justify more than a rental.

Did anyone else also find GoW to not be hardly immersive? The Halo games, albeit with weak plots, at least were fairly immersive and engaging. I feel that the single player of GoW hardly kept my attention, as majority of the time I was looking forward to the next action sequence rather than how the story would progress. Anyone else feel the same?

Crap, more than a trilogy? You mean I have to put up with Mark Rein's Graphics over Gameplay philosophy for years to come? It's the same every time Epic puts out a game.. Looks gorgeous, just wish I had a good enough reason to keep playing it.

Since I chose not to get all wrapped up in the GoW hype, and watch every trailer online, I was completely lost story wise in this game. For some reason I was under the impression when I started the game there might be a cool cut-scene explaining WHO I'm at least fighting. Then you have the god awful checkpoint save system.

Apparently Epic didn't play Halo, and didn't learn how to place checkpoints properly. For some reason they felt the needed to place a checkpoint before every scripted event, and anytime a level really showcased the engine.. So that I could watch it over and over again. That ultimately ended in me not caring anymore.

It's a asmanyaswewantogy!

Why is MGS listed as everyone's paragon of storytelling excellence? MGS was good, yes. but MGS2 was bad enough that I almost lost faith in the entirety of humanity.

a plot as daring as GOW and Halo

maybe Halo scenario is.. let's say.. cool (I have no idea about Gears of War), but i WOULDN'T call it daring at all...

also
i can't wait for Gears of War Tennis ;)

Jeez, what's with the name calling i-ghost. You missed my point entirely. Read my post again.

As for Halo having an exceptionally good story; You obviously didn't play Bungie's Marathon Trilogy, of which Halo is a cartoonish mess of a parody.

Marathon, to this day, is *the* deepest, *the* best thought out sci-fi FPS out there. Halo feels like saturday morning cartoons by comparison.

I'm going to be an elitist asshole here (hah, see, i called it first), and say if you don't think Halo or Gears have poor storylines, you're lacking a proper frame of reference. These are action games, granted, but calling Halo's story "exceptional" and Gears' storyline "deep" is giving far more credit than they truly deserve. If you want to give credit, credit technology, visuals, gameplay and sound. That's what drives this particular school of games forward, and that's all we can truly expect to evolve in their sequels.

If you find this kind of fare acceptable, you probably didn't do like me, and bounce right out of the Dark Tower series into Eric Nylund's Halo books. To you, i suppose his books are kickass. To me they felt insulting.

Play System Shock 2. Play the Thief trilogy (in particular Thief 2). Play Planescape Torment. Hell, i have a nagging suspicion Bioshock is going to come out on the 360 and make Gears look like someone had a long, difficult poop, and decided it fit right into their wicked action game as a coherent storyline.

Again, don't get me wrong on this, i think Gears is kickass and i play it online more than i dare admit, but when i hear "Gears of war sequel", it certainly isn't the storyline i'm hoping for.

If they're going to spin a "saga" out of a game about deformed jocks shooting guns at monster-jocks on a world whose one coherent element is classic architecture with no real personality, color me a sceptic. I'll go to Gears for its shooty nature, not it's cerebral impact.

Oh, as for losing the storyline during the game, actual quotes from my first playthrough co-op on hardcore:

"So what are we doing this for again?"
"I think there's some kind of super-thing over there that we need to get"
"k"

"Why are we at this train station?"

"Oh, ok, i get it, the box blocking our path magically disappeared when we killed these snipers, cool"

"Is there a particular reason we're on this train?"
"There's a bomb i think, on the train"
"Do we defuse it or something?"
"I don't know, i think we're supposed to just find it"

Sunjammer, you have my deepest thanks.

sunjammer, thats exactly how my 45mins of GoW went, lol.

yes, MGS2 really destroyed a lot of faith, but MGS3 brought most of it back. Raiden (go die) didnt help out much, but from the looks of MGS4 he is a friggen badass.

back to topic: if Gears goes all Saga, well, cool - it will still be the go "kill'em all" type of game.

Sunjammer hates life!

Lighten up man. I thought the game had some fun, witty, and yes B rated sci-fi dialog like that of Predator, but that is what made it great.

The game graphically is unmatched, and has some kick ass gameplay especially co-op.

It is FUN, and that is all that matters when you game right? FUN

Or do you need Shakespeare when you play?

Nice headline.

Also, can anyone explain why ou go to Fenix's dad's house, or how you end up on a train?

EnigmaNemesis:

I don't think we're necessarily asking for Skaespeare when we play.. However, we do ask for at least some form of reason to do the tasks given out in the game. The entire story of GoW is irrelevant, and can be ignored without loss. Most of the story is haphazard, childish, or not there at all.. The game is fun, multiplayer, but the the single player game is.. mediocre.

The guns are a boring array of standard FPS sci-fi fare. The characters are lifeless, and the enemies are also pretty unimagined. For me, as much as I tried to avoid the hype, I think it's the hype that killed this game for me. Everyone's sucking Cliffy B off over this game, and its just not THAT good. A decent game, or a good game.. yes. Enough for me to drop to my knees and blow Cliffy.. Not quite.

No one said you had the blow the guy. To call this game mediocre is a stretch. But to each is own I guess.

The Gears of War storyline isn't that great, but it sets up so many sub-stories and sequels, it's not even funny.

Dom's girlfriend, Fenix's desertion and trial, and then there's the sequel. I can see the universe thicken as more and more is discovered through more games.

TomHayden:

It's to my understanding that you go to Fenix's old estate because that little data-projector thinger that Baird finds after you detonate the resonator is supposed to be recovered from the Fenix estate.\

After you grab the data, Holffman sends you to place the "targeting data" into the bomb that's on the end of the train.

Seems like the story was setup with Points A, B and C with the paths between them strung together by the easiest solution. The (non-apparent) depth of the story surprises me, especially since Eric Nylund, the writer of the Halo books (save The Flood), was the story consultant on this game.

Yeah well, do you actually care about Fenix' trial? Do you care about Dom's girlfriend? I know i don't.

I don't hate life. I just think it's sad when undeserved credit is given, because it discredits games that really deserve it.

I had a ball with gears. It plays great, looks great, sounds great. Here's my review if you think i actually dislike it on any level.

All i'm saying is, there's nothing there to make me excited about a trilogy, much less a never ending story.

I agree, SunJammer.

I think the story was seriously underwhelming, even considering it's a shooter. The overall plot in Gears seems like something that could've been told in a pre-game cut-scene.

That being said, there are plenty of loose ends that could be tied together to improve the story. Most of the focus went into the [impressive] gameplay and graphics, but story-wise it was just too predictable.

Then there's just the gaping end of the story. Much like Halo 2's story is inferior to Halo 1's, there is no resolve. It'd be great if the game had a sequel coming out the next month, but it doesn't. How long until we can see the next chapter in this universe?

I'd hate to see CliffyB and Epic Studios tied down to an IP just like Bungie is.

And a train ride fighting a boss is no way to end a game where you've been fighting skirmishes between drones. A much bigger battle would've been a better game-finisher. Then again, I am a fan of an explosive climax.

for the hell of it, check out this website. It's a fan run site analysing the Marathon storyline throughout the trilogy, INCLUDING pieces of Halo.

Now find anything vaguely resembling that in any other first person shooter community.

I've seen much of the Marathon story, mostly through researching connections that people have made through the Halo story page on that site.

There is something to be said though. Marathon was made in a time where two-man studios were considered common-place. Where now, multi-million dollar budgets, and 40-50 team members are the norm.

A time where graphics weren't a pinnacle of success. Gameplay, especially in the FPS category, was limited. With new technology, it seems that, despite the efforts of studios, mainstream games' stories must be simplified and take a backseat to gameplay and graphics.

Exclusive to the Xbox 720: Halo Cogs 2. A buddy comedy where the Master Chief, Fenix and their wacky sidkick The Arbiter team up to tickle your funny bone. You'll bust your spleen lauging as the Chief and Fenix try to cheer up The Arbiter, still bummed over the whole "paraiah thing!" Only on Xbox!