Gears of War shameful

[Damo Campbell]

I had Gears of War in my hand to buy today and noticed you get 1 month X Live free and then must pay to continue playing online. This sort of thing must not be allowed to continue. £35 ($70) a game and gods know how much extra each month ... I did not buy it gonna get Crysis tomorrow morning.

Do you agree with paying monthly?

[darkorb]

I think gold allows u to do online co-op. i think u should still be able to play online with the free silver. ill tell you in a month when mine runs up :)

['Amp!']

Do you agree with paying monthly?

Nope that's why I play on the PS3:grin:

[Schwarz]

Thats why many people replace the S for a $ in Microsoft

[westy87]

I will never buy a game that I must pay a monthly fee. Hence why I have never even been tempted by a game like WoW. Fury on the otherhand gives u the option to pay monthly or quartlery or whatever to gain benifits over free players (they call it being an imortal)

[Miker]

If you are a X-Box Live member then it isn't a problem. I HATE Microsoft so why would I buy a Xbox? I stick with PlayStation...

[s_gibson]

I like my XBox, XBox 360, XBox Live, XBox Live Arcade and for how cheap it is I'm not complaining. My son does a lot of online gaming on Live as well and has yet to complain either.

You don't have to pay to play GOW, the single player of that title is great. You only have to have XBox Live Gold to play it in online mulitplayer. Far as I know you don't have to pay to play any game on the XBox, only to play it through XBox Live.

[Nocutius]

You only have to have XBox Live Gold to play it in online mulitplayer.

That is not acceptable on the PC. There are many games that have free multiplayer, why would i want to pay for it. It does make some sense for an mmo but certainly not for an FPS. This is yet another example why M$ fully deserves to be called M$.

[AJ.]

I was never a fan of paying to play online. Hence, why I stay away from the Xbox 360. PC FTW! most of the time :lol:

[tomato]

GoW is a cash cow for M$. They are just milking it for all its worth.... 360 owners gladly pay for MP via an XBox Live Gold account, I guess M$ thinks that PC gamers will do the same... :(

[darkorb]

I dont think im gonna pay for the online Gold, since i have so many other games.. $50 a year or a new game every year :P

[Frag Maniac]

Yeah Live Gold is really a joke, as are ALL monthly subscriptions for online play IMO, especially if it pertains to PCs, where you can so easily find scads of things free. Since this thread pertains more to MS's overbearing publishing than the game itself though, I'll elaborate further for those of you whom aren't aware of the game's other main problem.

My contention with GoW has nothing to do with MS Live, but rather how quickly with just one title Epic Games has taken me from respectful Unreal series customer to one whom may never trust them to produce a smooth running PC game again.

I still am baffled as to why so many people rant about Crysis being a system hog when even with my mediocre P4 3.0GHz, X1950Pro 512MB AGP, 2GB RAM spec I can get the game to look better than any other I own and do it at 35 FPS average.

GoW PC by comparison is a crappy console port that clearly was not ready for release. It stutters worse than STALKER , something I never thought I'd see, especially from Epic games who's Unreal titles look great and play very smoothly.

Worse yet no one on Epic Game's forum seems to be talking about it, are they afraid of being banned? I had to go to the GoW Gamespot forum to find performance tweaks.

The main tweaks mentioned are editing the config files to reduce texture lod parameters as well as one other that makes the game stream textures. I added my own tweaks to remove motion blur, bloom, lens flares and change shadow res particle lod bias.

The above tweaks smooth the game out very slightly but the most annoying thing about applying them is the game keeps overwriting them. Say what you will about MS being controlling and restrictive but when such things happen with the game script itself, Epic is partly to blame too.

It's really a shame because this game is graphically beautiful, has engaging enemies and gameplay, and keeps you wanting to play it. Play it too long though and the combination of the severe stutter and motion blur can actually cause eye strain headaches.

Epic stuck with UT 2003 through thick and thin with numerous patches, I seriously doubt they will do the same with GoW PC. In fact I don't see them acknowledging or addressing the PC performance issues at all. The in game auto detect is an embellishment at best and the system requirements are so grossly understated they're a false advertisement.

Clearly this game caters only to 360 fanboys, in fact mostly to those whom are so addicted to it they think nothing of shelling out a fair chunk of money to play online. It's a joke, no a disgrace, that they are advertising this game as looking even better on PC considering how unoptimized it is.

I'm really getting sick of the ongoing trend of many PC game devs/pubs making big money on nothing but eye candy hype despite such terrible performance as this game has. Worse yet the reviewers that used to be trustworthy are becoming passive to it and leading us on with their raves.

So far my only consolation is that I only paid $30 for it and am hoping I can find a way to get the tweaks I mentioned to stay put. Aside from a bit of unique gameplay though, there's little else here to enjoy. BTW, forgot to mention it takes about an hour just to install it and takes up over 10 GBs of space too.

[slugbug]

You can't argue with the fact that XBOX Live makes multiplayer matchups easier though. Of course free would be better, but if you shop around you can find 12+1 gold membership cards at good prices.

[Frag Maniac]

Actually my main dislikes with console gaming in general are lesser graphical quality and settings, smaller maps, more expensive games, clumsy gamepad controls, problematic systems, etc. The expense of paying to use their online services is just one more straw on the camel's back really. Xbox Live only makes mp easier on games that were intended to be primarily written for Xbox.

Where GoW is concerned the PC platform was merely an afterthought to make even more money on what is basically a stuttering piece of garbage on that platform for the most part. I mean how many PC games are there that exclude you to MS's Live for mp play? This is the only one I can even think of.

Another gripe which is more indirect is the way those whom make and market console systems and games have to a large degree infected the PC gaming community with numerous low quality console to PC ports. Some PC versions of games now even launch via an ad splash screen for console versions of the game, utterly ridiculous. The console industry is like the brat of the gaming family that whines to get what it wants and we all get less because of it.

[Raptorfury]

i purchased GOW . and i dislike the online portion but i am not goin online with it . and my achievements i can careless ... but i do like the crossplatform ability so paying for it isnt all that bad for that purpose . but with unreal and other games coming out that have free online play i dont think there be many playing GOW online .

[darkorb]

Raptor sorry to burst ur bubble but there is no cross platform ability for this game

i tried playing with my friends on their 360's, didnt work

says they need to pop in the Windows PC version :S

[Frag Maniac]

Yeah cross platform online gaming via Live doesn't make too much sense anyway after MS restricted the 360 to no KB/M in accordance to what their Xbox customers wanted. Few console fanatics like to admit it but KB/M users generally kick butt to gamepad users and with the SmartJoy FRAG KB/M adapter for the original Xbox it has been proven in games like Halo Combat Evolved.

I would guess that there is a very minute percentage of MS Live players paying to play GoW online via PC. Personally I lost a lot of respect for Epic having taken part in making a game they knew would restrict PC customers to only MS lousy Live scheme for mp. It's bad enough that the sp campaign stutters so badly.

[Xcess]

1st off, The reason you pay for the xbox live service because your playing on it. I find it awesome that you can go on and play someone on there console from your PC.

I think that if more games adopted this, it would bridge the gap between consoles and pcs.

2nd I have a PS3 and an Xbox 360, and all I have to say is Xbox Live is amazing. The PS network cannot compare to what Xbox Live is.

[Frag Maniac]

All that sounds like to me is the console industry trying yet another way to make money. Bad enough they charge $10 more for games that take less time to make. You pay through the nose to pay with an Xbox online because it's made by MS, not because it's a console.

Many PC gamers aren't going to go for it especially when they're used to playing most mp games free. MS could have let anyone setup a server like the PC mp communities work but they wanted to control all the profits, anyone can see that.

About the most absurd thing you said is that it will tie the console and PC communities together. I don't know of too many PC gamers that give a hoot about playing console gamers because most gamepad users aren't in the same league. The only exception being some PC gamers wanting to play with a few friends and/or relatives that haven't stepped up to the PC platform yet.

[Ranzear]

Wait... you have to pay for an XBL account to play GoW for PC online?

Excuse me while I BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA That game is overrated anyway.