Gears of War 2 is out (95% avg score)

[Asher]

I just got kicked out of the downtown Toronto EB Games store trying to buy this game.

There was a ~14 year old kid infront of me returning his copy of GoW2 which he bought an hour or so before, it was a bad disc due to a manufacturing defect.

Which is fine, except the douche guy working there (who always pisses me off with his never-ending sales pitch for the "protection plan") told him he should've bought the "protection plan" (extended warranty).

The kid kept saying "but I just bought it..."

The clerk said "you always should buy the protection plan, cause these are mass manufactured which means they have defects"

The kid said "are they all like this?"

The clerk said "about 75% are in general, because they are mass manufactured"

I had to just say something then. I pointed to the sign by the cash (which they had facing AWAY from customers) about the sales and return policy. I told the kid they have a 7-day return policy they have to honour, so he doesn't have to pay anything to buy a new game.

The clerk got agitated and told me "but that's only valid on 1 copy, it's not valid on the replacement and with a 75% defect rate chances are your next will be bad too"

I just about BLEW A FUSE at the stupidity of this conversation.

I told him, paraphrased, "It's a crime to sell people knowingly defective merchandise. I don't believe that figure at all, it's bunk, and even if that's the case if you are selling people bad merchandise, you need to let them exchange it for working copies. Even if they don't, MS will replace it under warranty."

The EB employee (which is a short Latino kid with gelled-up slicked back hair in a polytail, for the visual...) just told me to leave the store immediately. I told him not to worry, I won't be buying my games from them anymore.

I'm looking up the EB Games' corporate email to report this ****ing douchebag.

I ended up going to Best Buy to get my copy.

[El_Cid]

good for you Asher, the sales assistant sounded like a complete wa*ker, although i expect he was just doing what his bosses are telling him to.......it would be interesting to hear what you hear back from them.

But yeah good job

[DarkCloud]

The clerk said "about 75% are in general, because they are mass manufactured"

I had to just say something then. I pointed to the sign by the cash (which they had facing AWAY from customers) about the sales and return policy. I told the kid they have a 7-day return policy they have to honour, so he doesn't have to pay anything to buy a new game.

The clerk got agitated and told me "but that's only valid on 1 copy, it's not valid on the replacement and with a 75% defect rate chances are your next will be bad too"

... that's BS. A 75% defect rate qualifies as a bad faith delivery of goods. No Mfger can get by with such a high failure rate. And the statements about the "need to buy the extended warranty" are ridiculous- sounds like that EB shop is trying to run a racket.
---
On another note- Frosty: Bioshock2 and Assassin's Creed 2 should be coming out in 2009, among other good games- I believe another Halo edition will be released that year as well. 2009 will be a great year for gaming.

[DarkCloud]

Oh yes, also: Mass Effect 2. And is Prince of Persia expected in 2008 or 2009? Is the next timeshift coming out as well?

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Asher
Do you like it rough, or do you just like me?

[DrSpike]

I rarely buy games in high street stores - they are usually £5-£10 dearer here compared to buying online.

[Asher]

Translation?

[Asher]

Gears of War 2 has sold 2 million copies since Friday.

Set a new Xbox Live record with 1.5 million gamers online this weekend.

[DrSpike]

[RGBVideo]

In other news, I bought a game yesterday because of your advertising Asher. Saw a promotional poster of it near a local game store, was reminded of how much emotion you had for it, thought "well if THAT guy spent so much effort on trying to affect the sales of that game, it must be very good indeed!", went in, and paid 60e for it. The first game I've bought from a live store since Alpha Centauri.

Then when I was back home, I realized that my puny computer couldn't run Fallout 3.

[Asher]

You're referring to Fallout 3 or GOW2?

[Alinestra Covelia]

My roommate is now playing Gears 2 obsessively.

I tried the first game and didn't really get into it. My brother has it and tried to get me to like it. He said it's a much more cerebral shooter than most and so a gamer chick would be more apt to enjoy it than other games.

I don't see what the fuss is about. The game is third person, which automatically loses it points in my book if you're supposed to be doing shooting. I couldn't buy into the storyline and I didn't find the characters compelling at all. It uses the "recharging life bar" mechanic which I first saw in Call of Duty and which I took an immediate dislike to. Everything in the game takes insane amounts of damage to kill, and most of the combats I took part in were "enemy wave" type of fights. Both of these elements move the game away from a tactical thinker's firefight and more towards a generic brute force game.

That said, some things about it were really cool, and I hope more games will incorporate them:

Cover is very important. You can't march into the battlefield and waste the enemies.

Running is something to do in sustained bursts, rather than the normal mode of movement. Most FPSes have an optional walk button, if they have it at all. But here running is frantic and you sacrifice accuracy for speed, which I liked.

A lot of obstacles give context-sensitive maneuvers, like vaulting over a barrier or jumping from one side of the door to the other.

The reloading "sweet spot" mechanic is nifty.



All in all, for me this was a game that brought a few quirky new ideas to the table, but didn't introduce a compelling story or characters and didn't do themselves any credit with the insistence on a third person view. It's one of the things that I can see why people find it intriguing, but I don't understand why everybody's saying it's one of the best games out there.

[Asher]

I have no idea why I keep reading why Call of Duty invented the "regenerating health" concept. Did no one else play Halo?

FWIW, the third person view is integral to Gears of War. It would be too weird as a FPS, especially with the melee parts.

[Alinestra Covelia]

A few notes:

The regenerating health-bar seems like it evolved from large-scale firefights. It's really well suited to fights that take place between vast numbers of enemies on battlefields. The best example of this is in WWII scenarios, where the fighting is so thick and furious that skill actually has little to do with avoiding injury, and luck plays a bigger part.

It's well suited to games like Halo and Call of Duty with large numbers of shooters out there. The traditional health bar is much better suited to survival games like Bioshock and Fallout, which tend to be in smaller numbers.


Secondly, the third person perspective is very useful for getting a sense of situational awareness. It's easier to see around your character and figure out the lay of the land when you're in a firefight. But it makes aiming more tricky, and it necessarily focuses more on the character as separate from the character. So it's good for RPGs where you're following a preset character.

For games that want to give you a feeling of actually being in the thick of things and less about watching another character do it (like Thief, System Shock2, and Call of Cthulhu), the first person view is better. And as every FPS since Doom and Quake have shown, it's much more natural to figure out aim and line of sight from FPS.


I guess it all boils down to what your particular liking is. I don't deny that these game mechanics have valid and very effective uses in certain types of games.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by VJ
In other news, I bought a game yesterday because of your advertising Asher. Saw a promotional poster of it near a local game store, was reminded of how much emotion you had for it, thought "well if THAT guy spent so much effort on trying to affect the sales of that game, it must be very good indeed!", went in, and paid 60e for it. The first game I've bought from a live store since Alpha Centauri.

Then when I was back home, I realized that my puny computer couldn't run Fallout 3.

That's funny, because he threw a tantrum at Fallout 3 when he died in an annoying manner, and said he wasn't going to play it any more.