- My free Xbox Game Pass subscription has run out, and Gears 5 is coming out now, so I re-joined the 'Ultimate' Game Pass for the excellent price of 2 USDs for the two first months. In November, I should downgrade to the basic Xbox Game Pass, I don't use 'Ultimate' for anything.
- I played through Act I with JD (Marcus Phenix's son) and so far, I'm very happy with this game. The story is as dumb as always, but the characters work reasonably well in their primitive way, and the levels are extremely entertaining and everything looks amazing. The campaign seems to run at a solid 30 FPS, which seems very reasonable giving the level of graphical detail. I hope Horde Mode runs in 60 FPS.
- An icy area has opened up, and I'm now free to explore. The area seems pretty small, and graphically it is less detailed, but it's an interesting addition to this franchise, and I enjoy finding these little areas with upgrade parts and a few gunfights.
- I returned to the lab from Gears of War 2. This game reminds me a lot of Gears 2.
- I'm upgrade hunting in the snow.
- These post were entered after I migrated the server to a new installation. I had to replace the Ruby mysql gem with mysql2, which has a slightly different interface, causing a whole bunch of trouble for the site.
- I played through the mines, but I'm too tired to play properly tonight...
- The secret research lab in Mount Kadar explained more about the universe than all the other games combined. All my suspisions were true, The Locust are mutated humans. Also, The Locust Queen is Kait's grandmother. Why not?
- I had a fun glitch where I fell through the world during the boss fight with the Matriarch.
- Act II is complete.
- Act III switches blue for red, ice for desert. There are some new weapons to try out, which is going to be fun.
- The second open world area is becoming a little boring for me. The side missions are fun, but travelling around the areas on the skiff is just too boring. I think the game would benefit from having some sort of skiff combat, anything to make it a bit less boring.
- The variety of Jack abilities are making combat feel pretty interesting. I now have the ability to freeze enemies, place a shield in front of me (Borderlands-style), or even take control of enemies. And cool how the fit all these ideas into Jack, a classic feature of the Gears series.
- The rocket hangar was a bit too long and boring for my taste.
- The 'Russia' chapter ends with a rocket launch, very 1960s cold war space race. I was happy to be done with this chapter, that was a bit boring, even despite of some powerful visual ideas, such as the glass trees created from the red sand by lightning bolts.
- The Kraken attacking the rocket and constantly grabbing COG soliders was silly, but fun.
- The street fights of Act IV were super cool, I feel like the game is really back on track now. The Hammer of Dawn is active, and everything is exploding. :)
- Completed the game on Intermediate difficulty (Campaign). I completed my sixth Gears game, 11 years after completing the first game. This entry in my gamelog has the ID 10,000, but after counting the total number of entries, there are only 9335. I guess I have deleted a bunch along the way. Still, I consider it an anniversary of sorts.
- I managed to complete wave 1-9 in solo Horde Mode (beginner). When playing solo, getting caught by a Sire is automatic failure, so they are the most dangerous enemy so far. Another big problem is flash grenades, which obscures your vision for a long time. I'm not sure what to do about them. It's very fun though!
- After trying Halo 5 on Project XCloud, I played a few minutes of Gears 5. It totally works, and I hope the latency will be as good in Denmark when it rolls out here.
- Completed the game on Beginner difficulty and got the score: 5979 (Horde). Malu and I went through all 50 Horde waves in a single 4 hour marathon sitting. The end boss that we managed to beat was the Kestrel attack helicopter. We learned that you can level up and buy weapons and fortifications using Power, and that Power Taps that generate additional Power can be captured. Fortifications and Power Taps are attacked by The Horde, and players get a warning in the form of an annoying sound when this happenes. Beginner difficulty was very forgiving, to a degree where we rarely had to use cover. Playing this again on a higher difficulty could be interesting.
- After trying a bit of split-screen Team Deathmatch, which wasn't much fun, Malu and I ended up starting a new Gears campaign with her playing as Dave the robot on Beginner difficulty, and me playing on Experienced difficulty.
2019-09-06
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