Gears of War Ultimate Edition Review

   It's that time of the year again, the time where 3/4 of the games for the year come out in 1/4 of the year because Christmas. I was originally going to start this 'Game season' with Rare replay but it's disappointing nature stopped me from doing so (quick review; old games you have no attachment to don't hold up well), and to write about so many different games would've taken forever, so I've started with the weekend where 4 games I want to play come out in 5 days (looks like Mad Max is going to be missed) and I accidentally started with Gears of War Ultimate edition (I say accidentally because I was more psyched to play 'Until Dawn' but I accidentally sent that t my mothers house, and although I've got my hands on it now, I'd already started Gears by the time I got my grubby mitts on it).
   I suppose the million pound question before I start is am I a pre-existing Gears fan? (as this is a remaster of the 2006 'classic'). No, I wasn't. I didn't play it when it first came out but did pick it up a couple of years later for £5 (or something), played the first couple of chapters, didn't like it and never picked it up again. I figured I must be missing something though, right? It' Xbox's second biggest franchise (by quite a distance mind you) and millions of people can't be wrong, can they? (probably).
   I started and after the same first few missions I was put off for the same reasons I was the first time, just generic cover based shooting, but I'd paid new game money now so I was gonna get my moneys worth here, whether I liked it or not. I ground away and pretty soon I actually started enjoying it, despite all the stupid things about it, the game is actually pretty fun. For a game that's just about cover to cover shooting they do a good job of mixing the game up and providing new locations and gameplay modifications, like dealing with the Kryll, going underground, fighting off giant boss type enemies and more. The gunplay is fun and it's satisfying to unload a clip of ammo in to some Locust scum and watch them explode into a flesh and blood pile.
   I like the way the story of the game is just one mission too (granted, it goes wrong so takes much longer than planned) just like Half Life 2 and you feel like you're going along for this short story that they're on. The only problem I have with the story can be summed up in one word is 'bro'. These people are just hulking masses of men that celebrate when they eviscerate an enemy, love doing man stuff, saying phrases like "yeah, bring it on sucka', this my kind of shit" and don't even get excited when one of their former sports heroes joins them on their adventure. If Juan Pablo Angel had joined me on an adventure I'd have never wanted to get off the Angel-train.

   The other thing I don't get is how there's so many 'stranded' about. How can humans live in this war torn environment relatively safely when enemies can just come up from the ground and some evil bat things tear you apart in the dark? That's not safe living conditions, I'm sure they would've been dead withing a week. It's a very, very mad world on Sera. While I'm on weird things, the game its a huge difficulty spike on the penultimate chapter (when you get on the train), I probably died twice as much on that level as I had the whole game before it, and that final boss, urgh. After googling for help turns out I wasn't the only one who had problems with Raam, bu as soon as I found the Torque bow I did it first time, and the annoyance of having just spent half an hour getting nowhere faded away (somewhat (not at all)).
   The graphics have been caught up with and the game again looks great. also, in a weird turn of events, the levels that have been added in extra here (although they were in the PC release of the game but not the 360 one) have far better team mate AI. I ran in to problems all over the game where the rest of Delta just stood miles behind you and didn't help you from being overrun, or alternatively, ran way too far ahead of you and got shot to pieces. In these extra chapters though it was perfect. Couldn't they have fixed that for the main game at the same time?
   A quick touch on multilayer then. Clearly everyone who was playing online already had done so before because I was getting destroyed the second I moved anywhere, and it took forever to get in to a game anyway. Maybe this should just stay for the original players and noobs like me should say out of it, I'm hardly the worlds biggest fan of online shooters anyway (though I need to be ready for Battlefront).
   Overall then I think the game is pretty good now that I've actually given it a fair chance. Some parts of the game feel a little outdated (you really should be able to destroy cover, glaring omission or what?) but for the most part it's a solid game that make sense to be a big Xbox franchise as it's well made, simple fun. 7/10.

Tembo the Badass Elephant

   Remember when I said I was going to talk about a further 3 games, well forget that. Yeah I played them but there's not really much to say about them, except that you should've bought 'Saviors' when it was 15p on Steam. I moved on to this game then, after all it is a Sega published 2D plaformer based around speed and you know my feelings on those.
   It's not like Sonic. Despite the gag I made just there and what lots of reviewers are saying. Just because it's published by Sega and about a fast animal doesn't automatically make it the same (can't think of a good analogy). They don't play anything alike. There's plenty of 2D platformers in the world and people just don't say they're all the same. This lazy comparison has annoyed me (clearly) as a massive Sonic fan (from the Mega drive days anyway), granted, it does welcome this comparison for the reasons listed above if you hadn't played this game, but if you have, you'd know there is no comparison to make.
   Hmm, that dragged on a bit. Anyway, getting to the actual game. It starts out great, speeding through the first area of levels, trashing enemies in well designed worlds and having a whale of a time, until you get to the fourth level where you have to have hit a certain amount of enemy kills to progress. Urgh. Then that happens on the fourth level of every wold so you have to keep going back to older levels and making sure you kill off as many enemies as possible to advance. Speaking of replaying levels, the fact that the game lets you replay levels whenever you want but doesn't give you infinite lives is stupid, and I'll tell you why. On level 1, you can easily pick up enough peanuts (you see, peanuts are the thing you pick up in this game to build up extra lives) to gain 2 extra lives every playthrough. That means you can just play level 1 as many times as you need to have enough lives to complete the game, all it does is waste the players time as I had to keep playing level 1 to have enough lives to get past the final boss.

   Speaking of final bosses, and I've spoken enough before about my dislike of bosses as a whole and how I think it's time to move on from them, but my point here is that just like Rogue Legacy a few weeks before it's got a double layered boss, where the first bit is pretty easy but you have to spend ages doing that first section of that boss over and over before you can get to the actual tough bit that you need to get done. Another waste of my time that I'll never get back and could have spent doing something more important like, watching TV or drinking.
   Going back to what I was saying before, the problem is the game kind of changes about 2/3 of the way through, where it becomes more fiddly and the speed element goes from the game so what the initial section of the game did so well vanishes and it becomes something else. It's still not bad though, I should point out, it's just a completely different game. While I'm talking about things that aren't so great about it, it's the start up time. When you fire up the game, it takes forever to load (on xbox one anyway).
   Sill though, it is a pretty well designed platformer, it's worth a play if you like classic 2D platformers, but for a non-fan it won't convert you. It's fine, but I won't remember it in a years time. Decent game, stupid name.