Firstly I bought the limited edition because it gives you some extras not included in the standard game pack such as a code for a golden lancer (the standard machine gun) and the ‘flashback map pack’ which is 6 multiplayer maps from the original Gears of War.

Enough ranting, lets talk Locust killing!

Single player campaign is great and still has the ability to completed co-operatively. Graphics are improved as you would expect and the game plays very much the same as the original with much more visceral scenery and enemies. The battle sequences are larger by several orders of magnitude and the frame-rate is unaffected. I have yet to encounter an element of the game that the console struggles to handle.

Unfortunately the multiplayer aspect that made Gears one so entertaining has been ‘improved’ and while some of the features seem like a good idea on paper, in reality they are horrible. The most annoying of all is the TrueSkill matchmaking which analyses your skills based on certain criteria such as XP points, games played, achievements obtained etc. etc. but it takes such a long time to find anyone that starting a game is no longer a quick and easy affair.

To put this into perspective, while waiting for it to find players (just to be in my own team I might add) I had time to search the internet to try and find out why it was taking so long, join a forum, write a post, comment on another post, take pictures of the screen for this blog entry, write the magority of this blog entry and cook my self two bacon sandwiches for lunch. I think that takes too long. Even now I am waiting to join another game and using the time to write the rest of this post. I imagine there will be more than a few people who agree. It is very much like waiting for a game in Halo 3′s mutiplayer only worse.

The game is good. It is a fine successor to the original but I can’t help feeling “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” with regard to the multiplayer.

If you would like to play me my gamertag is ‘Dark Individual’.

Judging from the keynote speach at E3, the change will be a big one but not necessarily a good one. The new interface is drab – grey and black, not the colourful one that greets me currently. Lovely oranges, reds purples, greens and blues will be banished in favour of a more PS3 meets Wii style menu.

Next is the introduction of avatars. The most annoying creation of recent years in my opinion. You can spend half an hour creating a virtual character that is ridiculous and looks nothing like you. Designed so you can share more of your personality with the online community. No thanks. With the new interface when I sign in to Xbox Live and go to my ‘buddy list’ , god help me the American influence, I will now see stupid characters standing around on the screen instead of a list of friends. Is that better user experience? I think not.

This new interface is designed to make the Xbox more family friendly and in doing so will alienate many of its fans. I much prefer the existing Dashboard and even that of the PS3 which is clean, slick and easily navigated. In changing this, the most basic of functionality, Microsoft is trying to take some market share away from the family friendly Wii but will inevitabley dilute it’s niche market and will gamers struggle to identify with the console.

Best Feature: The ability to rip your games to your hard drive for faster loading times and reduced lag.
Worst Feature: Avatars. Trying to compete with second life, PS3′s HOME and the Wii means once again Microsoft have shown they have no imagination or creativity of their own and are simply copying the other guy.

In other words i think Microsoft have shot themselves in the foot with this one, but the technical skills involved with doing so are so mindboggling that I can;t wait to try it out.

When the workshop was finished we were asked to complete the game as ‘homework’. I knew what needed to be done to make the game work, it was just a question of finding the right code to do it and the right way to set out that code.

It’s now 2.35am and I have finally finished it. It took me 2 hours to figure out how to get text to appear in it and then another hour to figure out where to position that within the code so that when the background was redrawn, the numbers stayed there! FRUSTRATION!

Anywho it is all done and dusted now. So click here to see my pong.

Control is with the mouse for the left hand bat, and the Up and Down arrow keys for the right.