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Gears of War Ships November 12th
Kotaku is reporting that Epic has confirmed a November 12th retail date for Gears of War, the highly anticipated shooter for the Xbox 360. This announcement confirms a date found by individuals participating in a viral marketing campaign via Xbox Live. From the announcement: "'Our vision is to deliver a one-two punch of cinematic action paired with a thrilling and compelling interactive experience,' said Cliff Bleszinski, lead designer at Epic. 'With Gears of War we've created a title that will place gamers directly in the shadows of a ravaged world, surrounded by the beautiful remnants of a destroyed city and the horrific dangers that hide in the rubble.'"
November release? Sounds great! How about a PC version?
Our vision is to deliver a one-two punch of cinematic action paired with a thrilling and compelling interactive experience
:(
Someone let the marketing guys talk to the design team again
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
No accident I am sure that the release is planned just days before the PS3 release... I'll bet they are working mighty hard to make sure that deadline is hit.
It does look like a cool game, hopefully it turns out as interesting as the trailers make it look. Microsoft could use another game that has the same following Halo does.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can't see an over-the-shoulder TPS game being the "Halo" game to stop people from buying a PS3. From the E3 video footage, the game seems to be an impressive, although unimaginitive duck & shoot game. kill.switch with a face lift and team play?
Future ruler of a small Asian-Pacific island
I did not realize Halo possibly had a negative game buying influence in that regard. Very odd...
I figure they also have to be shooting for Halo 3 to come out around the same time as well. I still think they'll use Halo 3 as a lever to try and get people to buy the HD-DVD perephial, perhaps with an extra disc of HD-DVD content related to Halo.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Gears of War is imo way overhyped, and even then they didn't do a very good job at it, and didn't get the message across.
I always thought that it would be one of the first release titles available for the Xbox360 (or at least, that's how the marketing/interviews I've seen put it down), but it never quite made that.
Also, seriously: What does this FPS have to offer me, other than other games of the same genre? I've seen lots of footage, and alot of it just seems to be pre-scripted scenes (been there, done that), and once again mechanised-animals/cyborgs... *yawn*
Can anyone tell me what Gears of War has to offer, other than the Unreal3-engine in action?
I playtested this game several times and while Im excited to see a full demonstration of the new unreal engine, I will say that GoW itself isnt anything spectacular. Basically it is a checkpoint grind ala halo, but with less story. You start out in some kind of prison whose population have gone amok and you have to fight your way to the evac point. Your enemies are interesting looking, but each one looks the same. Once again, it looks spectacular but if youve every played Unreal, Quake or Halo, the title will bore you quickly. The nonstop firefights can be broken up by your (necessary) use of scenery as cover but it rapidly becomes utilitarian and loses its wow factor. I encourage people to get the game and have a look but if story and drama are your thing, dont expect to be swept off your feet.
The FPS genre isn't really renown for gameplay innovation. Superlative execution counts for a lot, as Halo has shown. This game looks to have polish in spades.
s/FPS/Shooter/
Well, /. wont let me log in so Ill have to add to my last comment this way:
In my experiences with the game, the aspect that stood out were the unending crashes. On my first day of testing I burned up an Xbox 360 in less than ten minutes. We then switched over to a Dell PC to complete the first day's testing (Yes, MS uses Dell. Dont ask me to explain because frankly I'm at a loss). The PC locked three times requiring a hard reboot and crashed to blue screen twice. When I managed to get to a point past the initial story sequence at the beginning I noticed some serious "issues" once the wow factor wore off (keep in mind I wrapped up testing last month). Yet more lockups requiring some work on the console (GoW uses Unreal Tournament cheatcodes just so you know!), texture flickering, disappearing scenery, clipping and CPU overheat. I managed to get past an area in which several enemies were firing down at me from a balcony by shooting through a disappearing conrete balcony floor with a pistol. While I am sure (err, hope) these errors will be fixed by November, the game itself was in its final stages of development and from what I saw there was little gameplay tweaking left to do. The cover system is clunky and buggy. You have to hold down the White Button to enter the cover selection menu where you are left standing and unable to control movement or weapons to choose what type of stance you want to take and how you want to get there. For example you can roll into cover, jump into cover, dodge to cover or even sprint between objects to get to the covering object you want. Pretty cool, but a title cannot ride that gimmick alone. At the beginning of the first level you are given very vague orders which amounts to "This place is tearing itself apart! Run!" You have to assume the place you are running to is through the open doors arranged in front of you and in fact that is how the rest of the level plays out: running through the open doors and killing everything in your way until you get to the evac point. After which you are dropped into another "hallway" and the formula repeats. The scenery is interesting and somewhat destructable. You can blow the corners off certain concrete blocks or shoot some material off marble pillars but you can never completely destroy anything since the environment around you has a Roman Gothic feel. If you were able to shoot out those pillars the roof would cave in and the game is not designed to take that into account. Your weapons are the FPS standard: Knife, Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun, Machine Gun, Weird Energy Weapon, Rocket Launcher, BFG. There are squad members who follow you around but they serve no purpose. At one point I had 5 soldiers in my squad (halfway thru the first level you come up to a crashed dropship and link with the survivors) and all of them took cover and stayed there without making an attempt to fire at the enemy. The player is not informed of locations where your squad will for some reason not follow. The game requires the player to take certain locations solo commando style and your squad will stand behind a wall and refuse to respond to your orders. Just as well since they are actually more of a problem by taking up good cover that you could use. The environments are littered with weapons that you cannot pick up. Turrets and gun emplacements are usable only for a short period of time and then cannot be used. Not because of lack of ammo, but simply because the game decides that you should move into the next area. You remember those old side scrolling shooters that forced you to move ahead or risk being PUSHED forward by the side of the screen? GoW is very similar. While the scenery is nice to look at, it is all vanilla. Concrete and asphalt with some marble pillars. Also, the character models are straight out of Unreal 2: The Awakening. Anyone who has played it will immediately see that the lead character modeler was hired for GoW. Non-organic objects are realistically rendered but human faces are caricatures of the Juggernauts seen in Unreal Tournament
Or CliffyB will eat a puppy
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
I thought the game was called "Gears of War Ships".. I somehow managed to imagine a game based on a transmission gearbox.
Great news! For sometime I've needed a replacement 2nd order reduction gear for my Ohio class battlesip. Too bad I have to wait until November 12th
And I can tell you, the mouse and keyboard are a far more accurate way to move, point and shoot, than any console controller.
I say this after kicking tail in Halo, Halo 2, Perfect Dark: Zero, Area 51 and Doom 3 (all deathmatch) PLUS countless single player games. I've also played Oblivion, Kameo: Elements of Power, Fable, Beyond Good & Evil, Prince of Persia (all 3 new versions), and other 3rd player games, and once again, with Oblivion, PoP, Fable, and BG&E, the mouse/keyboard points me to my target a lot faster than a console controller.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Nov. 12 - Gears of War ships.
The Wii launch likely won't be much more than a week before the 12th, if not the 12th. Not to mention Guitar Hero 2 ships in November, and FFXII ships Oct. 31. Shopping's going to be a real b*tch this holiday season.
just some guy