Gears To Be A Trilogy, Ousts Halo 2

Epic's Gears of War has finally ousted Halo 2 as the most-played game on the Xbox Live service. It's not too surprising, given the game's popularity. Epic was apparently expecting that; GameDaily spoke with Microsoft Corporate VP of Global Marketing Jeff Bell, who as much as says that Gears is the first chapter in a trilogy. From the article: "Gamers today demand an excellent story in their games; they need to know what's at stake, and why they should care. Excitement tops the list of desired emotions, but they want to be scared, too. They want the rush that comes from being scared by an enemy or trapped in a dark room and escaping with their lives. The goal of this ad is to establish Marcus Fenix as the hero of the Gears of War trilogy. The intention is to create emotional connection with him that is lacking in typical third-person action title marketing, by communicating a sense of desperation, loneliness, overwhelming odds, and the ultimate futility of the situation he faces."

Comments

Mad World

[C0rinthian]

I can't RTFA because of firewalling. From the quote, it sounds like he's talking about the 'Mad World' commercial they've been playing in theatres and on television. I've got to say that is one of the best game ads I've seen in a long time...

Re:GoW - 95 percent hype

[Pojut]

Or maybe the people doing the reviews didn't buy into the halo hype...as in, maybe they were one of the people with a head on their shoulders.

Don't get me wrong, halo 1 and 2 were quite fun and all, but they were hardly revolutionary...compare them to PC shooters, and suddenly their graphics resemble games that came out 5 years prior to them...their stories horrible and canned and typical...their voice acting spotty...and quite frankly, their gameplay repetitive. Personally, I think the best thing halo had going for it was it's sound effects.

Still, in comparison to other shooters that were around at the same time, halo 1 and 2 did NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING that other games hadn't done ten times over. The CONSOLE fanbois (notice I didn't say microsoft) for some reason thought that they were a gift from god, when in fact they belonged in the bargain bin from the get-go

So?

[Namarrgon]

How can you possibly compare the Xbox 360 and the amount of 'quality' games they have [...] when they've been out for a freakin' year and the other consoles have been out roughly 2 weeks?

Why should one not compare them? People are buying them right now - this is how things stand right now, and those 360 games are available today, to play today. What good are promises of future goodness, when you go to play a game today?

This is the whole point of getting to market a year sooner - to get that head start.