My Uncle is in My Craw

Like he knows better than I do?

I was with family recently and found myself in a conversation my uncle, some 23 years older than me, the one who reminisces and is an authority on everything; you’ve probably got that family member. Our conversation turned to video games.

“You know Simon, the last video game I played was that Goldeneye game back when it came out and I played it because you asked me to,” he started. From there he tells me that a couple weeks prior a friend invites him to play Gears of War 2.

“That game is so addicting,” he claims. “We played through the story and then we went onto the Horde mode.”

He details his rise in prowess; going from “stuck looking at my feet” to “being able to revive my bud” in several hours time. Then he tells me a harrowing tale about how he and Don (I think that's his name), had their Horde game saved at level 47. They came together a couple days prior to our conversation and said “let’s just finish this.” And you know what? They did. They fucking beat level 50 on the Horde.

I told him Gears never caught my attention, that after beating the story I only got to level 10 on the Horde because I got so bored, and that I was barely able to beat the story before said boredom took over. He was shocked. How could I not find Gears of War 2 addicting or fun? He asked about how I played the Horde. Which map, where I took cover, what weapons I used. He gives me good marks for where I made my stand but scolded me for my poor choice in weaponry – a sniper rifle and Lancer assault rifle. For the record I should’ve used a Boomshield, shotgun and Hammer of Dawn. I try to tell him that it doesn’t matter what I used because I would’ve been bored either way. He tells me he “logged about 200 hours in the last two weeks on Gears of War, and it’s an addicting game.”

“Ridiculous,” I think to myself. I’m an avid gamer and have been since Nintendo 64 and Nintendo before that. I play games to get into a compelling story, to play with friends, to utterly destroy others around the world, to simply get better or to just pass the time. And in all my years as a gamer, as an Xbox Live member, I’ve never played 200 hours in two weeks or even in three; I know he’s exaggerating or if it’s true, it’s just pitiful by any standards. Still, this boast of his lets me know that he thinks he knows what he’s talking about, and even further, he thinks he knows more than me on the subject. He doesn't. He's played Gears of War 2 for two weeks. I've played the Halo franchise avidly since I bought an Xbox when it first released. Among friends, who were all avid gamers, I dominated on Halo: Combat Evolved. I graduated to Live and Halo 2, from there I went to Halo 3. A statue of me stands at the entrance to Bungie. Rainbow Six Vegas is my bitch in any game mode. Any other game I come across, Elder Scrolls, Assassin's Creed, Lara Croft, Bejewelled, finds itself penetrated by me. I'm a fucking demi-god. It really sticks in my craw when people talk to me like they know more than me when they so clearly don’t. I usually let him slide because he’s family, but this day he touched a subject dear to me. 

So I tell him that there are certain things that I thought were cool about Gears, but overall it sucks compared to games such as Rainbow 6 Vegas or the Halo franchise and, in my opinion, only achieved popularity because they wanted a shooter game on XBOX 360 and Halo 3 had yet to come out.  It's much like the 6 you let suck your dick while your 9 fuck buddy is out of town even though the 6 doesn’t deep throat. I even listed them for him, as I’ll do for you now.

Pros:

• Gears of War 1 & 2 enables you to use cover – much like in RSV.
• In the Horde mode you don’t have to go looking for the enemies but can remain in one defensive spot, whereas in RSV you need to move forward to spawn terrorists in Terrorist Hunt.

And that’s all I can think of. Let’s move on.

Cons:

• The story is not compelling and little background is given.
• No explanation for why the Locust Horde must fight the humans is given. So I am to believe that for hundreds of years, despite study of the earth and the technology our scientific community possessed, a large race of hybrid mole people lived under the earth developing comparable technology?
• Mention of a prior war is made but no history is given on it. Halo, on the other hand, offers complete background on characters and story from the get-go; there are even books to fill the cracks. And I truly believe that humanity is threatened by something more than angry, hybrid mole people.
• The characters aren’t believable.
• Every male in the story looks like a professional football player with bulging muscles; the main characters look like defensive linemen and the others look like running backs. Those women that are seen look like models. The bulk of the enemies look identical to the humans except they have jagged teeth and grey, reptilian skin. Likewise there are at least 5 types of enemy species – dinosaurs, spiders, shrieking monkeys, humanoids, larger humanoids – all of which are friendly to one another but hostile to their surface brethren. At least with the Covenant it is shared with all that these are separate species come together, some by force others by reason and gamers aren’t left to believe that they all were spawned from one human looking queen.
• The weapons and vehicles are unattractive and gay.
• The weapons and vehicles look like random tools were welded together because there was no time to prepare properly, almost like in Evil Dead. I’d like to know how it is that there’s a floating, invisible robot that’ll obey my every command following me the entire game and yet I have to reload the sniper rifle after every shot. The tank in Gears looks like a supped up monster truck with a tank turret, which, despite it's height and weight, doesn't roll or even tip on sharp turns. The destroyed civilian cars themselves look like tanks; granted they appear to be made to fit and large-bodied humans.
• Aside from the lowest form of the LH, it is necessary to reload twice before putting down an enemy. With their likeness to humans, understanding of our language and similar weaponry, I find their resiliency to my guns hard to believe.
• Fighting the final boss is gay.
  
  
  
• I'm a badass, but if I were a badass with a smoker's voice who had a metrosexual Latino for a friend and I saw a new alien jump 70 feet into the air, land on a tank and cut it in two with a chainsaw bowstaff, I'd want to kick his ass the old fashioned way. And the old fashioned way does not include flying on a Duke Nukem Octabrain. For the badass that Marcus is made out to be, he let the dick with the staff off too easy.
• 
  

While only a few cons are listed, many more branch from them. I convinced my uncle to try Halo 3, one of my two games of choice. He did and called me to tell me he found it uninteresting. The weapons weren’t “badass” and the fighting wasn’t “realistic” – meaning when he was lucky enough to get a headshot the head didn’t explode into blood.

Nor was he able to use cover, which meant he spent a lot of time looking for cover and getting shot in the back. As with most conversations with this man, I ended it with “we’ll have to agree to disagree.” Which is generous of him to take considering the infinite knowledge of video games accumulated in just 200 hours of Gears play.

N00b.

Posted by Simon