Gears of War + Resistance = "10"
I guess I am in a bit of the minority out there because I’m not as huge a fan of Resistance or Gears of War as a lot of people are. In both cases, I think they got reviewed a bit too highly and that it was due to hype. In the case of Resistance, the fact that it was the one compelling game to play on PS3 caused it to be viewed in a brighter light that it would have been had it been released four or five months from now. Gears of War was basically a MS-driven hype machine all the way… and while it features some impressive visuals (which due tend to look a bit plastic-y on occasion), it doesn’t really innovate in any major ways, preferring instead to take a lot of ideas from other games and refining them.
My one caveat to this is that I have yet to finish Gears of War (I’m still a few hours away from the end), so there is a chance that it will blow my mind in the end, but I highly doubt it. I have, however, finished Resistance and did enjoy that quite a bit. I just think it needed more enemy variety, more interactive environments and one more gameplay feature hook. What GoW has on Resistance is overall visual flair and presentation, but Resistance does have larger-scale battles, more-open environments, cooler weapon variety and a deeper, multiplayer component.
If those games could have been combined to feature the overall visual aspects of GoW, with the weapon variety and environment scale of Resistance, then we would be looking at a “10” game. Add in the multiplayer, ranking system of Resistance (with unlockable skins) and the more-polished VoIP system in Xbox Live and you would have a gaming experience that nobody would want to leave for a long, long time. However, as standalone titles, I honestly feel that we should be talking in the 8-8.5/10 range. Again, maybe I stand along with these opinions and maybe it’s due to me having played Kill.Switch and a whole slew of console-based FPS games. Too much feels repetitive and predictable to me and I find myself relying on the just the presentation (GoW) or weapons/multiplayer unlockables (Resistance) to keep me playing. Right now, that’s obviously enough, but later this year, mine and a lot of other people’s expectations are going to be increasing. We’ll just have to wait to see if the inevitable GoW 2 and Resistance II deliver the goods.
My one caveat to this is that I have yet to finish Gears of War (I’m still a few hours away from the end), so there is a chance that it will blow my mind in the end, but I highly doubt it. I have, however, finished Resistance and did enjoy that quite a bit. I just think it needed more enemy variety, more interactive environments and one more gameplay feature hook. What GoW has on Resistance is overall visual flair and presentation, but Resistance does have larger-scale battles, more-open environments, cooler weapon variety and a deeper, multiplayer component.
If those games could have been combined to feature the overall visual aspects of GoW, with the weapon variety and environment scale of Resistance, then we would be looking at a “10” game. Add in the multiplayer, ranking system of Resistance (with unlockable skins) and the more-polished VoIP system in Xbox Live and you would have a gaming experience that nobody would want to leave for a long, long time. However, as standalone titles, I honestly feel that we should be talking in the 8-8.5/10 range. Again, maybe I stand along with these opinions and maybe it’s due to me having played Kill.Switch and a whole slew of console-based FPS games. Too much feels repetitive and predictable to me and I find myself relying on the just the presentation (GoW) or weapons/multiplayer unlockables (Resistance) to keep me playing. Right now, that’s obviously enough, but later this year, mine and a lot of other people’s expectations are going to be increasing. We’ll just have to wait to see if the inevitable GoW 2 and Resistance II deliver the goods.
posted by Frosty @ 10:52 AM
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