Gears 2 ruined all that.  Its still largely the same game, but there are a few key additions that have ruined the multiplayer gaming.  Since in most game variants you only get one life, it is critical that the balance of fair play be maintained.  The airstrike mortar gun and the grenades as proximity mines have ruined that.  In one life rounds, you shouldn’t die by lucky shots, chasing an enemy into mortar fire, or roll past a grenade and have it blast your head off.  There is little to no skill there; often times just luck.   There is very little one can do to avoid it, except not pursue your enemy, which is boring.

In Gears 1, when you died, it happened because you either did something stupid or were outskilled.  These same qualities need to be present in Gears 2.  I would be fine if these cheap kills were allowed in matches of king of the hill, guardian, but none of the one life per round matches.  It totally distorts the competitive balance, which when paired with the painfully slow match making times, ruins the game for me.

Look for my copy on ebay.

Index my media.  The library for media center extender on Xbox is unaccpetably slow.  There is no reason why the ‘box can’t run in a low power state and constantly be looking for new media on my server.  And when I do boot up Media Center, it takes forever to update music libraries.  The next gen must near instant.  Its stupid for it to be this slow, and in my opinion, for a console to be an all inclusive media centric device, it needs to constantly be updating the libaries.

Second, the menus, in game need to pop up faster.  Nothing kills a gaming buzz faster than when one of your big thumbed friends mashes the guide button and it takes longer than a split second.  Its not like its a very complex operation.

More to come later…

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Posted above is a quick little synopsis from presidential candidate Bob Barr regarding the faulty reasons justifying the auto bailout.  I’d write on it, but its easier to read the words of someone better spoken than myself.

Enjoy.

The man pretty much has it all.  He is talented.  He can sing.  He can dance.  He can write music.  He is handsome.  Most importantly, to me anyways, he is hilarious.  I appreciate him for what he does with his talent, exposure and appeal.  He could leave well enough alone and sing, go home enjoy his money and whatever beautiful woman he shares his time with that week.  That would be enough for any normal person.  But no, he takes what he has and uses it to spread humor, really good comedy to the masses.

The three comedic pieces that he has done which alone make him funnier than Dane Cook are;

The Matrix Spoof with Sean William Scott and Will Ferrell on the MTV Movie Awards a few years back,

The SNL skit Dick in a Box

and the recent Jizz in my Pants skit, also on SNL.

Thank you Justin Timberlake, for your talent and your drive to never stop giving.

When you’re of age give me a call.  Looks me up.  Send me a text.  Between my interest in photography and your willingness to be photographen naked, I’m sure we could find some way to kill an afternoon together.  What do you say?

Anyone got a yearbook photo of these ladies?

Here are my concerns;

Graphics – At the time of its release, GoW was the prettiest game on the 360.  I think its since been replaced by games like Fallout 3 and FarCry 2.  Maybe its unfair, but I somewhat expect GoW2 to be just as gorgeous as these newer games.

Map Size – For some stupid reason, some people want enormous maps.  In GoW2 the versus census is being upped from 4×4 to 5×5.  Fine.  I would imagine that they would need to make the maps somewhat larger to compensate.  However, I don’t want this to be another Halo 3 where I spend half the time running around to find someone only to spend the next five minutes of the round to watch my teammates run around essentially playing hide and go seek.  Please keep the maps intimate.

Weapons – This is my main fear and concern, and the one that I am afraid is most likely to get messed up in a big way.  I hope most people are able to comprehend how perfect the balance of weapons were in GoW1.  They were perfect.  You started out with serviceable weapons.  They were good in some situations.  Not ideal, but good enough to play the whole round with.  You could upgrade your weapons if you could dive, straife and safely get to them.  And once you had them, its not like you had a huge advantage.  You still had to be skilled with them.  The boomshot had two rounds.  Anymore than that and its too much.  You had one screw up and one to be succesful with.  I can’t remember how many people on Live I yelled at after they whined that the boomshot didn’t have fifty rounds.  Again, Halo 3 is what you want if Rocket Launcher wars if what you are after.  Heck, Unreal Tournament 3 would be better.  Ironically also made by Epic; Unreal is the game for you if ammo conservation is a turn-off and you simply must be shooting something at all times.

Here’s a parallel between vids and sports; GoW is like basketball.  In basketball you defend with your feet.  You get your feet in position, which moves your body, and thats how you defend properly.  Its not arms and hands, its your feet.  And many times in GoW its not the gun in the hand, but more where you are and gaining a positional advantage over your enemy.

For GoW2 to be another raving success this arms balance must be kept in store.  I see new weapons and I have my concerns that one will be too powerful, too resilient, too favorable.

What made GoW great is that no matter the position, the situation, the numbers, you were never in an impossible situation.  The odds may be against you, but you are never out of it.

Drums? Check.  Guitar and bass? Double check.  Vocals that would get the most fearful and shy would-be singers sanging? Do-Ra-Me- CHECK.

I have yet to fully sing a song on Rock Band.  I can’t stand it.  Won’t do it.  I would sing to this though.  I always do when I hear it.  I can’t help it in fact.

It would sell like hotcakes.  I guarentee it would be the single best song for Rock Band.

Holy crap, I thought my 360 was sucking up all my free time and ruining relationships now, with Fallout 3, Fable 2, Dead Space and Saints Row 2.   Those will be measly warmups compared to the attention that Gears 2 will command.  I might as well tell my wife I’ll see her at Thanksgiving, and to leave me alone until then.  As we all know Gears of War the first is the best game ever made.  And it holds that title for about the next 24 hours.  I can’t see Cliffy B and his team at Epic making the game worse.  If you don’t count the Unreal Championship games for Xbox 1 (and no one cares to remember those), every Unreal Tourney sequel has been a huge success over the previous (2003/2004 were basically the same, shut up).  I can’t see Gears 2 breaking that trend, although I do have some concerns.

Anyways, if you all have any great reasons why I need to leave work early on Friday, let me hear them.