This is the second part of a two-part series. Read “Part 1: Discovery”

I started thinking about writing full length reviews of video games in late 2001. I was still at University. I was going to make a website and came up with some generic name I thought was edgy and reflective of what I wanted to accomplish. It was going to cover more than video games. I had some things to say about popular culture.

After talking to some friends at school about my vision, there was some interest in this collaborative effort. There was already a zine floating around our faculty, but it was horrible. It was a soapbox for people frustrated with school and mostly contained their annoyingly priveleged views on an “oppressive” society. Instead of being provocative or insightful it was lampooning popular culture with pedestrian observations and half-baked philosophy. I could do better.

Of course, when you rely on friends to produce something for free, it doesn’t happen unless you get on their case about it. And I wanted to keep my friends. Plus, the whole “trying to graduate from University with a degree” thing. The project died on the vine, and I gave up the dream. For the time being, anyway.

I graduated from school the next spring, and started playing video games while I looked for work. My comptuer was getting old, and at this point the most it could muster was Unreal Tournament and Civilization III. I read the issues of PC Gamer that were mailed to me to keep up with the industry and the hobby I loved. I hung out on the internet a lot, and read too many terrible reviews that people actually got paid to write. My head started filling with ideas again. I could do better.

I started thinking about another website. Something that would capture my love of video games and provide an outlet for my brand of scathing commentary. I would call it “Tales of a Scorched Earth”, because I am an insufferable Smashing Pumpkins fan. I would adopt the handle of “Gatmog”, because it sounded cool and it provided the mystery any good internet handle should have^[1].

During this time, I started playing and thinking about video games as if it were research. I built a new desktop PC after I got a job and some money. I had a new purpose: I would record my thoughts on video games, write some reviews and share them with others. The availability and ease of use of self-publishing tools made this easier than I expected. I thought I would be doing something different than the typical weblog, and I used that as inspiration.

I wrote a lot of reviews and embarrassing posts during that time^[2]. I published most of them. It was a start.

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My first exposure to Gears of War was a commercial that aired in late 2006 featuring Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World”. It was an awkward insertion of a popular song for what appeared to be a grungy, blood spattered action game for emotionally stunted adult males. If I heard that song in, say, a Final Fantasy commercial, that would have been entirely justifiable – predictable even – for the series’ melodramatic tendencies. But watching these juiced-up football players bedecked in pock-marked bulky armor fight off what appeared to be zombies, or insects, or insect-zombies to such a mopey tune was a jarring spectacle. What message was the advertisement sending me? Was I supposed to feel sorry for these battle-weary soldiers pressing on in some city decimated by war to defend the human race? Were these men actually sensitive to the death and destruction around them? My first response was that it was merely a ruse to get me to think this game would be something different. It wouldn’t be about killing endless waves of the faceless alien invader; rather, it would explore the human condition and man’s response to being thrown into a war he didn’t want to fight, but was damn well expected to end.

After about two solid hours of playing the game, I stopped thinking so hard about this. Gears of War is not a statement about the atrocities of war in modern times. The arrangement between Gears of War and its player is much simpler. The game inscribes upon the player the desire to fire a gun – repeatedly and with extreme prejudice. It encourages hooting and hollering and much chest-thumping after each challenging firefight. It revels in the act of shooting a weapon so much that it becomes the only reason you come back to the game. And the game leaves you no other choice but to love it in return.

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I took advantage of the Boxing Day shopping frenzy over the weekend and picked up an XBox 360 Pro Holiday Bundle at a discount that was hard to ignore. This is a purchase I had been deeply considering since my life-altering experience with Gears of War 2’s Horde mode. My familiarity with the console was mostly limited to some time with it shortly after launch, so I’ve been relatively out of touch with what has been released for the console since then. I was also a bit disappointed at the lack of hardware upgrades: the Elite is still hoarding the 120 GB hard drive, and there is still no Wi-Fi out of the box even after three years. Though I guess I should be thankful that the power supply hasn’t burst into flame yet.

Since getting back into gaming this past summer, I’ve tried to keep myself aware of the titles capturing the most buzz on all of the next generation consoles. Over the past few days I familiarized myself with the new XBox dashboard and downloaded a grab-bag of demos: the critically acclaimed and a few others that I was interested in. I’m still looking for a good RPG other than the obvious selections of Mass Effect, Fable 2, or Fallout 3. Feel free to add any other recommendations in the comments; this is my second leap into the console world since the Gamecube in 2003.

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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.