(Tl;dr video companion for this article)

(Editor’s Note: will polish post in near future, here’s the crux of it, however.)

Oi vey…

As has been the case in the past, at least this past year, I seem to have a knack of getting knocked into another dimension at the end of every other month for a couple of weeks, and normally, perfectly timed to coincide with me entering the final stretch of the grand finale of a new video game I’ve been so adamant about plowing through as soon as possible. I don’t know if I’m even going to bother linking to them, we shall see by articles end. In any case, here we are, almost having completely missed the entirety of spooptober, due to my inter-dimensional shenanigans, barely regaining my cognitive footing, *and* having tripped right at the finish line with Gears of War: E-Day, which had been making quite the ruckus, thus far.


Well, even though I am late to the party, and everyone has assuredly moved on and or checked out of giving a shit about the single player of E-Day, I am a man who likes to finish what he starts, however awkward, off putting, scandalous, offensive, or downright heretical in its machinations reaching the finish line may be. With that said, let’s talk about the end of Gears of War: E-Day.

As I was typing that, I realized I don’t actually think I was even able to write up a article on act 4, which is amazing I would “tell on my self” like that, cause I never promised anyone I would do any of the sort, and if I had just shut the fuck up, no one would have likely been the wiser, but that’s the difference between a lot of people and me: I’d know, and that is enough to bother the ever loving shit out of me, so I’m not going to let myself off the hook like that. Does that mean I’m actually going to do it? Heavens, no, but not because I’m lazy, mind you, it’s just that the moment has kind of passed. Like some kind of weird night where a couple planned to fuck each others brains out but then some weird shit ends up happening and completely fucks up the vibe…I’m just not in the mood to get down anymore, you know?

I’m sure some the more libidinal of my readers are scratching their heads as to how someone could “not be in the mood”, instead just thinking to themselves something akin to “that’s a challenging wank”, as if a gold medal is on the line for this or some shit, but I digress entirely, and feel as if the metaphor works wonders, so I shall leave it be, and move on to greener…err, nay, much redder, bloodier pastures, as I continue to conjure up some final conclusions about the “endish” bits of E-Day, cause I do remember enough of post act 5 (which I played through today) to comment on some of my more cogent critiques on the matter, however segmented this whole shtick is turning out to be.

The campaign mode is a beefy, beefy experience…nearly as beefy as any of the thicc bois that us, the players, play as when we are apart of the Coalition, and I was constantly surprised at how much game was in this game, from act to act. Not to imply the original trilogy (my frame of reference for this series) was in anyway short, I remember them being just and adequate in what they offered, but for some bizarre reason, in my mind, E-Day was going to be like…maybe an 8 hour go around and call it a day? I think by games end, I had clocked in 18 hours, and that’s before any co-op replays, collectible grabbing, harder difficulty gauntlets. The campaign alone has an amazing bang for its buck.

To that point, I will further add both the level and mission design feel varied enough so that you never feel like you’re schlepping through the same encounter over and over again, granting a major boost to general variety of play. This is on top of the devs doing a good job of greatly expanding both the enemy roster and gun total in the game, which is definitely something, at least in Gears 1 (maybe even 2), felt a bit problematic, as there were only so many types of enemies to shooter with so many types of guns. I guess a lot of the time this does boil down to enemy AI itself, and how they are able to navigate around the player and environment, but when you have a bunch of dudes just hiding behind walls all the time (I’m referencing the older games still)…the samey deaths kind of blur together.

It’s kind of funny, cause as I’m looking at the time, and realizing it’s getting kind of late, while I want to talk about this game more, and maybe I will tomorrow (*shrugs), I also want to post this article by midnight, for some arbitrary reasons, but for other more rationale ones as well, as I don’t even think I’m even going to get close to talking about the wrap up of this whole fucking game. God dammit. Okay, let’s see…I usually like my articles and my video content to line up on some level, so let me see what game play videos I have saved that have some interesting hook to them, and I’ll finish off what that. Give me a sec, brb.

(Several minutes later…)

Aaaaand I’m back. It’s good news, bad news. I have plenty of semi-interesting videos to speak of, but nothing springs out to me in a big way, in terms of a direct dictation on Gears as a game, per se, but one of my videos reminded me of another one of my videos, that leads me to a totally underdeveloped, but interestingly salient point. An under cooked one, mind you, and one that deserves far more time baking in the oven, but whatever, just get it out there now and revisit it later. The post I did last time, Ballsacks and Shit Shows, ended up being the only video(/short) that I posted to Youtube that got slapped with a special age rating, so that you have to sign in to be able to see it. Which, I’m not complaining about: that video was over the top fucking ridiculous, so Youtube understandably made it much more difficult to watch, as one has to sign in in order to see it, which made the video basically have no views, as opposed to the regular thousand I may accrue rather quickly on most of my other content I posted.

This all does lead me to wonder how much more developers think about the kind of content they’re putting in their game, as being able to stream a game is such a major boom, and obviously equates to free advertising. So, if a developer were to put any content that is too harsh within the context of their game, they would be shooting themselves in the foot, as the game would have far more difficulty reaching a broader audience as a result. I wonder how greatly this affects how games are now being made vs before, and how a game like say, GTA VI is going to be affected or was affected during development, as you want to be extreme, but more so in the sense of extremely watchable, cause anything that violates a streaming services rules is going to be a studio shooting themselves in their own foot, in terms of a greater sense of exposure is considered. A thought that deserves far greater development, but one that I thought was still worth sharing.

A game can’t just be playable these days…it has to be watchable, too. Food for thought.

~Pashford