Why Gears of War 2 is NOW the greatest game of all time.

Alright - the holiday seemed to be owned by 3 games. Fallout 3, Gears 2 and Left 4 Dead. I have played all of them. And Gears is still the god king of all video games.

Here is the run down:

Fallout 3 - Fallout 3 is like a blow job in high school that ends with your mom coming home right in the middle and abruptly ruining it and leaving you feeling robbed and embarrassed all at the same time. Why? Because when you first start playing F3 you will be enthralled in the amazing post-apocalyptic world, by the way they handle character creation and the way the story seems to pull you in like you were Michael Corleone in a movie that probably could have been skipped. But by the end of this bullshit story, once you've see the same lame enemies and have had the same battle for the umpteenth thousandth time - you will feel robbed, you will still be hard, it will suck and you'll still have some explaining to do.

If you liked Oblivion, you'll maybe sort of kinda like F3. You're basically running around killing shit, raising levels and getting cooler and cooler stuff so that you can run around and kill bigger and badder shit so you can get more stuff so you can...yea...but instead of being a knight in armor - you're mad max.

On the plus side - there is an ultra-violent matrix like targeting system which BRILLIANTLY blends real time + turn based action into something that is truly a joy to play. That and it's lets you blow people's faces off in slow motion with a shotgun which is a horribly under-rated and surprisingly therapeutic way to spend time. However - this is fun for a few days and this where praise ends.

The AI in this game is utterly and completely and totally and completely and utterly fucking stupid. It's as if you took really stupid AI and gave it a brain tumor and then dropped it back in this game. It is the same monkey fuck AI from Oblivion and is easily some of the worst to date. Enemy AI have 3 functions - kill you, follow you, and sit there as if they should be eating paste.

Then there's the story. Which at first is very fascinating but ends up being fragmented, forced and disappointing. It's almost as if they needed to get done and get it out the door for x-mas. The games' critical acclaim has been along the lines of the "open" story and "open" world where you get to determine "what sort of person" you will be in the world. Not to ruin it for you - this is an illusion. While there is some level of choice and self destiny - there are 4 endings and they're all pretty much the same. It's like "Ending 1 - The end event - you're a good guy!" and "Ending 2 - the end event - you're a bad guy!" and "Ending 3 - the end event - you're a not so good and not so bad guy". At the end of the day, it's still the same fucking end of the story and how you get there isn't varied at all. I don't need you to summarize my karma-level in mad max world.

To be fair - if you want to play a sick, single player RPG with an awesome story and slightly varied ending - get Mass Effect, It's better and there are boobies. :) Though F3 has the added benefit of being able to gut innocent civilians and set off a nuclear bomb.

That said though - Another complaint is that the game seems to try to stick you into 2 buckets - good guy or bad guy. I did the good guy plot first (because of my angelic nature), However, when I then later tried to play the bad guy, the natural thing to do seems to be to slaughter rooms full of people in any settlement you encounter which seems not to be handled by the story arc very well. I'm mean, hell I'm a bad guy? After a while I found myself without mission, quest or direction. Mostly because anyone who came within 10 feet of me got a shot gun to the face and there was no-one left to talk to who didn't want to kill me on site. So - maybe this was my fault.

Another point of praise has been for just how much content in this game. This is true. You will struggle to see and do everything in F3. However - if you want to see any of it, you really have to desperately TRY to AVOID the story (which might be how they intended to hide that scrubby piece of shit). Because unlike Oblivion, once the story is over the game is over. There is no ability to just waltz around and unlock more stuff. Which seems odd as this is a perfect game for selling expansion packs and it was an aspect of Oblivion that was done very well.

So all in all - Shotgunning the face is admittedly very amusing but - for this buy Gears2. F3 is fun but would have been better if they'd had a car or something and been able to get things finished.

That takes us to ----

Left 4 Dead - First let me say that everything you have read about Left 4 Dead is true. This game is awesome and it's fun to play online and it is a brilliant *step* for how a multiplayer online game should be played and how we look at how games can be cooperatively and competitively played. However - like so many of the Silicon-enhanced, Cyborg, Soccer Mom's I encounter living in Orange County - Left 4 Dead lacks substance. Yea, I did just just say that. Read on.

If four cloned copies of Selma Hayek were at the top of 10 flights of stairs, naked, covered in bacon (don't ask) and cooing your name in erotic, beckoning whispers, and you needed to climb the all 10 flights of steps to get to your sublime, genetically modified prize, and that was a warped analogy for the evolution of multi-player gaming - L4D is only flight 3 or 4 with quite a ways to go to flight 10 and having your nob polished by a movie star. Ie - it's cool but it's not fucking Selma Hayek (or her genetically grown twin) and it certainly isn't cause for some of the other flaws.

But first the positives -

It's very cool to allow a "sort of campaign mode" to be played where some players are bad guy zombies and others are good guy survivors. It is also very cool to pit them against each other. However - the fact is what you're playing is only a "sort of campaign mode" which just makes it a glorified multiplayer game where some of us have different powers then others. At the end of the day it has glimmers of genius but falls a tad short of something that collectively pits us against each other in a compelling online shared story.

And wait - now notice - the lack of a....single player...campaign...or...any real campaign...at all? What? Really?

When I realized this I simply said: CAN I HAVE A FUCKING SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN FOR YOUR AWESOME GAME PLS YOU TWATS?

Why the CAPS? Well - simply because I can't be bothered trying to play a game which is online only and thus forcing me to attempt to play at the same skill level of random 10 year-old, squeaky voiced brats who do nothing but eat the lunches of grown up douche bag gamers like me all day long. You guys created half-life. YOU HAVE EXPECTATIONS TO LIVE UP TO.

I mean - I just paid 60 dollars for this thing. Well - rather someone else paid $60 to give it to me. But still! I want an intriguing fucking story, and I want to feel like the god-damn hero, even if that hero is a geeky looking scientist in a power suit. After that - I'm happy to get trampled by kids in multi-player mode all day because I realize - I'm a 33 year old with a full time job who still loves video games and that's pretty much how things go. The real Matrix would have been ruled by squeaky voiced brats who call Neo and Smith fags right before blowing their brains out and trading pokemon cards.

So - where was I? Essentially L4D is a crap load of fun with crazy ragging zombies, fast based action, a minor flicker of genius and NO FUCKING STORY. What makes the lack of a story so much worse is the L4D is actually SUCH a cool game with such an AWESOME opening sequence that you REALLY want to play the campaign that doesn't exist.

Alas - not only do I feel robbed, I feel let down. It's like realizing that not only is your Orange County Silicone Soccer Mom lacking substance and regularly turning you down for sex, she's also fucking the pool boy.

Okay - so there is a campaign on L4D but if you haven't noticed that it's just the multiplayer mode with bots then you can give the F3 AI a run for it's money in the "I'm a mentally stunted idiot" department. I never in my life could have imagined me seriously saying that a video game - lacked substance. But it does - Jesus.

Which brings us to - Gears 2.

Well - Gears 2 is Gears 1 with LOTS of NEW shit. It's everything you loved about Gears 1 with heaping helping of AWESOME BACON GRAVY drizzled all the over it and served with CHEESE FRIES the night after a drunken saturday where you scored with 3 different girls and got a 50% raise at work.

It is - the shit.

It has: A HUGE story that ends with an AWESOME CLIFF HANGER. I kept thinking the game was over and it would hit me with new angles. Um - fight a brumak? Ride a brumak bitches.

It has: Awesome new weapons - The addition of heavy halo 3 movable turrent weapons like mortars and chain guns.

It has: SOME OF THE BEST AI to date. The AI is cunning, coordinated and really bad ass.

It has: An co-op online multiplayer mode (horde) that lets you play with five of your friends against an ever increasing in strength horde of bad guys (wonder why they call it horde?) where you have to work together to mow down Locust by the dozens to survive. Team work is a must and lone rangers get cut down in seconds. The crew and I played every sunday night for a month until we were utterly sick of it. And to be fair - the only reason we were sick of it is because online against real people is so cool.

It has: Multiplayer online mode that now supports 5 on 5, new maps, old maps. YES OLD MAPS BITCHES. You get to play on 90% of the maps from Gears 1. Now multiple player modes are - well just okay. At the end of the day Warzone death match is still fantastic.

It has: Plantable grenades to be used as proximity mines.

It has: COLE TRAIN (who is voiced by none other then Terrible Terry Tate himself! (YOU CAN'T BRING THAT WEAK ASS GAME UP IN THIS HUMPTY BUMPTY!)

Now - with all good comes bad. For whatever reason - Epic seems to hire idiots for their network programmers. There are times where you can honestly wait 20 minutes to find an online match. To be fair - the more I play the less it seems to happen but those first few days I wanted to kick someone in the face while I stared at the little spinning "searching" wheel.

But still - Gears 2. If you loved Gears 1 (and if you didn't you're going to hell), you will adore Gears 2.