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Gears of War Sweeps AIAS Awards
GamesIndustry.biz reports on a very successful night for Epic Games, which garnered no less than eight awards for their 360 console shooter Gears of War. In addition to awards like 'Best Console Game' and 'Game of the Year', feathers in Epic's cap include 'Outstanding Character Performance Male' for John DiMaggio's Marcus Fenix and 'Sports Best Online Game Play'. Epic's CliffyB and Michael Capps were onhand to accept the awards, and were elated by their success: "The thing is ... being on the outside of this industry looking in as a kid, and wanting to be part of it, and then being able to be here and get an award from all of these talented people who've been in the business for so long, finally to be a part of it, to be recognized like this is absolutely unbelievable. We could not be honoured more." Other impressive winners for the night included Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fight Night, Rainbow Six, and the Wii. The full list of awards winners is available on the article.
It looks to me like these guys just took one look at Gamerankings, saw that GoW had the best ranking for the year, and then decided to give half the awards to it on that basis alone.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
Gideon Emery's voiceover of Balthier for Final Fantasy XII this year is so much more meaningful, colorful, not to mention a far larger work that even the whole of Gears couldn't compare. All in all, if there's one award this year that FF XII should have definitely walked away with, it was voice acting. Probably several others as well. Gears was a phenomenal game, but I don't think that means it should sweep the awards the way it did. Its voice acting was spot-on, but not deserving of any sort of special honor in my opinion.
:-P
On top of that, Cole's dialogue was best
I like basketball!!1!
Have you even played the game? A disgruntled Nintendo fan, I'm guessing.
The graphics are stunning - best I've seen on any game on any platform (including top-end PCs) - and that's just on my crummy non-HD TV. I can see how some of the in-game graphics could be taken for pre-rendered, but they're not. If I had to pick a niggle with the graphics, I'd have liked a bit more "oomph" to some of the weapon effects. On the other hand, the understated effects do contribute a bit to the whole "shakeycam real-war" visual style.
Gears looks significantly better than Resistance: Fall of Man. While I admit this isn't an entirely fair comparison (Gears is a title for a mature system, while Resistance is a launch-title), there's no denying that the level of detail in Gears goes way beyond that in Resistance.
I'll admit that the game is too short (yes, 8-10 hours is probably a reasonable estimate), but what's there is great. The cover mechanic, while not completely original, gives the game an extra layer of depth and separates it from the vast majority of other "run and gun" shooters out there. It adds a nice degree of tactical depth to a lot of the battles, as you have to constantly think about which directions you are vulnerable from. I remember finding the gas station battle a real challenge thanks to this.
I've yet to hit any glitches in online play. As for being limited to 4vs4? Fine. So what? Some games are large team games, others work better with smaller sides. Counter-Strike was the most popular online fps around for years despite degenerating into an unseemly mess with more than 5v5 (or 6v6 at the absolute limit) and duelling and 2v2 remain extremely popular game types. Not every game needs to set itself up as a Tribes/BF1942 clone.
I was initially as bemused by MS's entry into the console market as anybody else and basically felt that the the Xbox was an interesting but failed experiment. Right now, though, I've got all 3 of the new consoles and I can say quite unambiguously that the 360 gets by far the most use out of the 3 (and that Live is by far the best of the online services and well worth the money). The PS3 may catch up over time, but right now, I'd say MS are winning.
I just picked up GoW last week. As a long time UT / UT2003 / UT2004 PC game player, I was definitely interested to see what Epic has been delaying UT3 for. I've been enjoying the game and overall think they did a very good job with it. I think they made a traditional shooter a little different with the way the whole "cover" system works...and then of course the chainsaw action is fun to mess around with.
Is it worthy of all the awards it seems to win everyday? I don't know, but at this point, it has become easy and almost expected for whatever game award it's up for, it will win. Kinda like the Oscar and other movie awards...there is always one or two movies a year that all the award shows just fawn all over.
Either way it's a fun game and I'm enjoying playing it. I don't know if it's the best game EVAR, but worth it if you like a good shooter. Character development and story isn't the greatest, but I've seen worse. The gameplay makes up for it IMO.