NakedSushi

I attended the Gears of War prelaunch party last night at Hollywood Forever cemetery and it exceeded my expectations. I thought it was just going to be a bunch of kiosks on the grass hooked up to 360s. Instead, they decorated and opened up the mausoleum and filled it with 40″ LCDs and 360s, a DJ, free booze, and of course, food.

I got a chance to play a little bit of the single player campaign and while visually, it looks pretty, I don’t think it’s that much of a big deal. The graphics are on par with Half-Life 2 on the max settings. I think it only looked impressive because of all the 40″ screens. It reminded me of a darker, grittier version of Half-Life, but with muscled marines. I liked how they included the option to duck behind walls and obstacles because it made finding cover while everything was shooting at you easier.

Multiplayer was what everyone was mostly playing. The maps, while beautiful, started getting boring. They felt a little small, even for a 2 on 2 match. What I liked was that if your body wasn’t completely destroyed, you had the chance to revive yourself, or have a teammate revive you. That meant, even if you shot an enemy down, unless his body was annihilated, you had to run to the body and do a fatality on it, whether it’s ripping into it with a chainsaw, or curb stomping their head.

Unfortunately, I got there a little late, so I missed Cliffy B. I heard K-Fed was there, but that wouldn’t have impressed me. I did meet and shake hands with Adam Sessler, but I think he was a little out of it. I might have been rude with my, “Wow, you’re much smaller in real life than on TV!” but he seemed to be really confused. I think he mumbled something like, “You know me?”