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Gears of War Hands-On Impressions
The Xbox 360 title that everyone seems to be excited about is the first person shooter Gears of War. Hands-On impressions are available from 1up.com, Gamespy, Gamespot, and IGN. From the IGN article: "Sera is gripped in darkness. The Locusts are most at home in the shadows, so expect the worst moments to occur when the lights go off. Gears of War can best be described as a mix between a third-person tactical shooter and a survival horror game. This is pop-and-shoot gaming, not the run-and-gun style of Halo 2. Oh, and it's f---ing awesome."
Is this what xbox 360 games are going to look like? I might have to join the console dark side. Course if the game play isn't any good...
"but in co-op you have to figure it out between yourselves, punch each other on the sofa and spill beer on each other" ...my question is, will there be coop on Live?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I was almost sure CliffyB told us it was third-person, which is how it looks in the trailer. Is it first or third?
have to act like immature children? I hope in time there will be a source of adult gaming news with the comprehensiveness and bredth the like of the IGN's and gamespots, but with some maturity and professionalism. cough*and integrity*cough
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Actually, this is done by Epic Games, not MS. As much as I don't like MS, I have to say this game is impressive looking.
Insert Sig Here
It's important to understand that in this new generation of engines, you can't actually see the difference from a still screenshot unless you know what to look for.
In motion, though, it's a whole different story. Very obvious.
The lighting in HL2 is still largely precalculated. This leads to a much flatter, more distant world when the game is actually moving.
If Doom 3 hadn't been so damn dark, the difference would have been obvious.
Things to look for are the funny way glass shines in the older style engines, the way shadows drop off. There's a sort of diffuse random light in the HL2 shots you provide.
Stop looking at polys. Start looking at artifacts.
Speaking of artifacts, many current generation titles have anti-aliasing seams running along t-junctions. They're bright speckled lines. If you've never noticed them, you're lucky. They drive me nuts.
All that said, if you've reached the point of suspension of disbelief, good for you.
It's being published by Microsoft.
If by "panic mode" you mean "unlike Sony, actually showing the games working on the show floor", then yes, I suppose they are.
As the show wears on, it's becoming increasingly apparent that Sony has nothing but smoke and mirrors. Try walking up to their booth and actually taking a look at anything they showed in their press conference, and you'll discover that it's just not there. All of their most impressive "game demos" are actually pre-rendered videos of what they claim their console will be able to do. But they don't actually have the goods to back it up. It's real easy to look better than the competition if you're allowed to fake everything.
Everything Microsoft showed was real in-game footage, and you can see it running at the show to prove it.
You must be Republican.
its being *developed* by epic, who the fuck cares who stick their logo on the box and distributes it?
wow, it's being published by Microsoft on a microsoft system. I never would have guessed.
Sony showed realtime demo's for fight night and the impressive looking unreal engine. Other noteables were the final fantasy 7 demo and the london street demo, pre-recorded but running on the hardware. All the pre-rendered videos look as if they would be perfectly possible on the ps3.
Yeah... just like that FF8 dance scene footage was really running on the PS2 hardware back when they were hyping that system...
... they're offering us Doom 3, right???
Seriously. Gamers more or less already know which one they want to buy
Umm... I'm a gamer and I don't know which one I will buy... For me, it comes down to the quality of launch titles on the 360 to determine if I'm getting one or not. What we've seen so far is just a taste. On top of that, the PS3's release date is much more undetermined than the 360. I don't want to hold off playing incredible-looking games waiting for a console that I could have to wait up to a year longer to get. By that time, I could have the money for both.
Hey, don't forget the return of the rubber ducky demo they used to show off the PS2's capabilities that no game ever matched either!! When I saw that, I laughed. Hard. Then I wondered who was going to fall for it. Again. Then I came to slashdot, watched some G4tv, and realized that everyone was doing exactly that. I congratulate Sony on being able to sell ice to eskimos yet again.
Shortly followed by the demo of swirling leaves where he said, and I shit you not, the each leaf (out of thousands) could have its own audio channel used to great effect to simulate....wait for it...'rustling'. I couldn't make this stuff up.
Cluehammer time: publisher is not the same thing as platform vendor. Microsoft do not publish all the games on Xbox, just some of them. This happens to be one of them. Which means they can fairly claim that this is one of their games.
The game was graphically very pretty, and the whole emphasis on using cover was cool.
That having been said, the gameplay footage itself SUCKED ASS. I don't care how pretty your game looks, if it's running at 15fps and is choppy as hell, it's going to look like utter shit, and people won't want to play it.
The other humourous "dirty little secret" at MS' booth was that all Xbox 360 demos were running on Macintosh G5s. Understandable, but nonetheless funny as hell.
and i congratulate you for being one of the very few people who are not complete neanderthals in regards to believing the bs hype.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source