I bought Gears of War on Friday of last week, and I exchanged it two days later for Tomb Raider Legend. I’m enjoying TR much more than I did gears.
In my gaming history, I’ve only completed around 20 games. Of those, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and God of War were the only 3D ones. This is more a credit to their brilliant designers than my own skill. They made enjoyable games with tight controls, and their play style doesn’t fall down when you try to do platforming stuff1. They are both to this day among my favourite games. This is no surprise for God of War since it never had a 2D version, but Prince pulls off its transition from 2D amazingly well.
Their design philosophy seems to centre on a control over graphics, even though they all have great visuals. They also emphasise thinking over mindless shooting/stabbing2 (though all three have great action sequences).
How do they compare to Gears? Well, Gears has better graphics, since it’s been in the works for 4-5 years and it’s designed almost exclusively for the XBox 360 platform. They push DX 9.99999 to the maximum to get a believable real-time environment. It’s just too bad it’s so difficult to control Marcus.
I gave up on Gears because both aiming and the cover system were a pain in the ass. Blind-fire only works so well and you have to pop your (un-armoured) head out to take a carefully aimed shot to actually *hit* something. There were also the countless occasions where I would dive for cover, only to end up on the wrong side of it because Marcy didn’t interpret the ‘A button is everything’ properly. I never could get the chainsaw running in time to melee, either. If it’s a stinker on controls, all the graphics in the world don’t matter.
The problem is you can’t tell if a game is going to be a hoot or a pain in the ass until you play it. For this I’m thankful that I bought Gears used, and got a refund under the ‘7 day, no questions asked’ policy at Gamestop family of stores.
1. OK, God of War kinda sucked for jumping.
2. OK, God of War kinda sucked for puzzles. They still had some good ones.