If the hype surrounding Horde mode in Gears of War 2 was to be believed, it is the only reason you need to own this game. It made me wonder if the gaming press had finally lost it, by eclipsing a retread of the previous single player campaign with what sounded like some clever variation of multiplayer. In his review of Gears of War 2, Tim Rogers writes:

Let’s go ahead and mint a brand new law to be obeyed from here on out by all those seeking citizenship in the kingdom of videogames: if your game isn’t fun enough to be enthralling in the context of an endless mode, nothing else about it means shit.

Is this an exaggeration, or an epiphany on the elegance of the game mechanics behind Horde mode in Gears of War 2?

I had the opportunity to play both the single player campaign and Horde mode over the weekend. The single player campaign starts off in almost the exact same fashion as the original game (Hospital = Prison). After the first chapter it felt too familiar; this was nothing new, and I can hardly get excited about a few new weapons. From what I’ve read, the story of Delta Squad in their endless battle with the Locust doesn’t have much to offer either, but this is an action game and I was too busy falling in love with the controls again to notice.

I’m still making my way through the PC port of the original Gears of War, and one of the stand-out aspects of the game for me are the controls when played with the XBox 360 gamepad. The third person shooter is always a dubious proposition for me as a PC gamer – especially noticeable when compared with my recent adventures in Dead Space – but Gears is one game that perfected them on the first attempt.

After a few rounds of Horde, I felt myself getting even more comfortable with these controls. The bursts of action enclosed in encounters of increasing difficulty forced me to be quicker with each wave of Locust; with only two of us playing I had to be. I stopped trying to reach for a mouse. I felt myself being programmed.

Horde mode strips away the missions and the story and the meaningless objectives that take you from point A to point B. It dumps players into a multiplayer map and throws a varying collection of Locust against the players. There is only one objective: survive the onslaught. The Locust increase in number and difficulty, mercilessly, until you get through all 50 waves. Or you die. It is you versus the game itself.

As a result, the game’s mechanics are front and centre. Everything available in the game is here for use and is on display and open for criticism. As such, the controls are revealed to be every bit as good as I originally thought. The concepts that form the very core of playing Gears of War are fucking brilliant in their simplicity. This is not a tactical FPS that gets bogged down in implementing what can only be called video game realism. Nor is it pure action, that is satisfied in putting a big gun in your hand and asking you to repeatedly pull the trigger.

Instead, Horde lets the player experience the best parts of Gears of War over and over again. Duck and cover, suppressing fire, flank, chainsaw the living fuck out of anyone that gets close enough to do so. And even when you die, it’s still pretty enjoyable. You managed to survive one more wave.

By Cliff Bleszinski’s own admission Gears of War 2 will almost certainly never see the PC; and for that reason I feel the sudden need to own an XBox 360.

Spike Lee’s Inside Man got a bit of attention in the gaming community earlier this year for a scene that showed a computer generated sequence made to look like a violent video game. I just saw the DVD on the weekend, and I have to admit I’m a bit suprised at the clumsily inserted social commentary. I could understand using the wounds of the World Trade Centre as a point of reflection in 25th Hour, but Inside Man’s approach to criticizing violent video games simply felt gratuitous, from multiple viewpoints. It seems that the bigger Lee’s budget, the lesser his tact.

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After I wrote last week’s post for The Cultural Gutter, I was given a link to an interview at Gamasutra that had been published a week prior. The interview was with Clint Manny, vice president of sales and marketing at GameWorks. The arcade chain was recently acquired by the Sega-Sammy Group, who has big plans to boost GameWorks’ market share – and rebuild the U.S. arcade scene while they’re at it.

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As much as I enjoyed holding Nintendo’s glistening white lozenge in my hands, something about it didn’t feel right. The DS Lite was more screen than portable gaming device – which is fine for showing off the significant difference in brightness from its predecessor. In a game like Metroid Prime: Hunters, I almost didn’t notice the difference when using the plastic nub and touch screen because my thumb was naturally closer to the edge of it. However, in any other game, having the ABXY buttons packed together and so close the edge of the unit can be a little unnerving when you’ve got oversized man-hands. The easiest comparison to make is playing any GBA platformer on my DS and then going back to play it on the GBA SP: my hands felt cramped in the smaller playing space. The old DS may be unattractive, but it wasn’t overdesigned to the point of being almost unusable. Are we really past the point where it’s unfashionable to carry around an ugly piece of hardware?

On a general DS note, I wouldn’t advise changing the Gameboy/Gameboy Advance display screen on the DS while a game cartridge is in the slot. I lost all of my progress in Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (including my recent replay) when I switched from the upper to the lower screen, though I haven’t read of this happening to anyone else. It wasn’t a big deal; I already know how it ends and my opinion of the game hasn’t changed two years later.

After exploring the relationships formed by console gaming, I thought about the place of the arcade in the evolution of the bonds shared by gamers. The friendly competition established by beating a high score in Galaga or mastering the moves of Street Fighter II seem like such simple pursuits when compared to the complexity of multiplayer gaming today. The Internet, voice chat and anonymous challenges have supplanted the community building that took place inside the local arcade. While a form of this pastime may have made its way onto home consoles, it’s hard not to lament the loss of these hallowed dens of gaming. This month’s article at the Cultural Gutter tries to figure out what happened to the arcade.