I’m ashamed to admit it, but I had one of my not-so-best gaming moments this past weekend during some public matches of Gears of War 2. It was the first time while playingGOW 2 that I frustratingly threw my controller, got up off the couch and abandoned my team (along with the game for the rest of the evening). Gears inconsistencies coupled with disconnections and round after round ofglitchers just got he best of me, and I completely gave in to the dark side.

When the playing field is level, I don’t care whether I win or lose – I’m playing to have fun. When the playing field is distorted (as it can be at times with Gears) each ridiculous death I suffer raises my blood pressure higher and higher. This past Friday as my shotgun missed point blank targets, my lancer had the stopping power of aNerf gun, and my chainsaw revved with the ferocity of a Play School toy I finally reached my breaking point. I began a downward spiral of getting decimated round after round. It was as if I left for a war forgetting to bring bullets along with my guns. Blasting away at my opponents did little to their health and even less to my score as I ended round after round with zero points. Despite my screen showing fountains of blood flying off my targets as I emptied clip after clip my shots simply just did not register to the game’s score keeper as if he was turning a blind eye to my best efforts.

As much as I love Gears of War I want to strangle the game for it’s network code. GOW1 was a blight to play on-line at times, but Epic seemingly fixed those issues with GOW2. Now it appears that they’ve only masked those issues, and after nightly, lengthy play time with the game that mask is starting to fall off.

Match to match I have no idea what to expect from Gears of War 2. Will I be firing blanks during the round, or will I actually be able to damage my on-screen opponents? More often than not my attempts to keep my head attached to my body prove to be futile as theWMD’s my enemies posses lay waste to my pee shooter. Sure, time after time I have the drop on them. I sneak up from behind, jam my shotgun into their backs and pulled the trigger repeatedly. This normally tried-and-true tactic is no match for their bullet dodging abilities and their Mike Tyson-like melee as they drop me to the ground in a supremeWTF moment. I change up my tactics to try and avoid repeating that scene. I keep my enemies at a distance only to see clip after clip of lancer fire do nothing to stop them as they run right up and obliterate me with the same one two punch shotgun melee.

This scenario repeated itself more times then I could bare that fate-full evening, until I reached my breaking point which caused the controller to fly from my hands.

While I know it’s “only a game” my anger boiled down to the simple fact that: I really like Gears of War, I want to keep playing it – but I am not having fun, and why do I want to play a game that is not fun?

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 2:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.