What elements do you think hurt Gears and what do you think super shot it into stardom?

Hey,

I didn't play GoW but if I may I'd like to recommend that you start off the bat by giving your opinion on the subject. I think you'll find people are more willing to participate in the discussion if they see you've given it some thought.

(I'd like to give it a shot but I don't own an XBOX)

;-)

Marketing.

i have beat the game, and played online and coop.

- the textures don't use a lot of colors and are rather bland
- tired theme and some of the enemies were pretty uninspiring
- the bosses game play is pretty lame

+ it was the best looking game at the time of its release, and still might be
+ multiplayer coop is awesome
+ it brought a new fps play style to the mainstream
+ it had an incredibly powerful engine behind it, probably the best engine in existance, and it showed
+ it seemingly came from nowhere, there was little if no marketing for the game before its release, so the shock and awe of its awesomeness took a lot of people by surprise, thus it created a ton of buzz
+ probably the biggest plus of all, it is a new franchise
+ the bosses gameplay sucks, but they look awesome
+ the story is actually pretty good

Things that made it so good:

1) Epic
2) The gameplay mechanisms that forced realistic fighting in an FPS (can't just strafe-run around your enemy to kill it + can't carry 5 million guns = strategy!).
3) The co-op was well-integrated and didn't hinder the game's flow.
4) CliffyB (haha, no, really)
5) Gorgeous engine

Things that hindered it:

1) The end boss was anti-climactic.
2) ...that's all I can think of.
3) ...but I wanted a balanced list.
4) So, I'll just keep filling these in
5) until I reach the fifth line.

Chainsaw Bayonet!





Jokes aside, I think it's the fact that it brought a relatively new way of playing a shooter to the genre.

Chalk another one up for marketing and the hype machine. With ads like this one, it's no wondering it sold as many copies as it has. I haven't played the game, but from what I have seen, it does look very polished. They didn't necessarily do anything new with it, but what they did do they did well.

Pretty pictures, marketing hype, and "ok" gameplay will beat out excellent gameplay with mediocre graphics and poor marketing any day.

That's why Psychonauts bombed.

Quote:

Original post by JBourrie Pretty pictures, marketing hype, and "ok" gameplay will beat out excellent gameplay with mediocre graphics and poor marketing any day. That's why Psychonauts bombed.

I think Psychonauts had great writing and art direction, but as far as gameplay was it was a pretty bland platformer.

Lack of marketing probably did kill it, but I wouldn't say it had great gameplay.

Gears, it's mostly a highly polished game. Some tweaks from the typical shooter with the cover system, and you're mostly set. Having graphics that make you stop once in a while just to look around did help, and the marketing wasn't bad either. The bad guys also felt tough enough to give you some satisfaction at defeating them. The story was relatively typical, and at times not as well told as it could be. You'd be forgiven not to understand what's going on on a single play through the game.
The one big downside that got me frustrated was the checkpoint mode. Specially in the cases where you had to go through a bit of a level to get to a high chance of death area, which meant repeating a part of the level time and time again.

In the end people do like shooters - if you give a good enough shooter game, they'll buy it.

Quote:

Original post by alexmoura I think Psychonauts had great writing and art direction, but as far as gameplay was it was a pretty bland platformer.

To each their own, I guess. I thought it was a pretty innovative take on the platformer, and some of the levels were somewhere beyond amazing (The Milkman Conspiracy and Waterloo were so innovative they were almost games in themselves).

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The art direction for Psychonauts was definitely great, but it also wasn't very mainstream... alot of people just thought it was ugly, and the unimpressive box art didn't help. Gears of War, on the other hand, had exactly what the mainstream was looking for: dark, gritty, futuristic, with cutting-edge shaders and amazing special effects. It was the hollywood blockbuster of games.