Gears of ARGH!

When I first started playing games in the mid 1980’s, I could accept a certain amount of technical glitches considering I was only 6 years old and all of my games loaded from a Commodore Plus/4 cartridge or tape deck. But even the simple looking style of my favourites such as Treasure Island, Icicle Works or even the Perseus and Andromeda text adventure could uphold game play for hours on end without fail. Okay so saving was a pain in the backside, due to the fact that many games pretty much just wouldn’t allow you to save at all. But this was a golden age of gaming so mock all you may with your fancy 120GB hard drives; my point being that despite its simplicity, reliability was rarely called into question and when it did, it was pretty much a given.

Now before I get a flood of arguments for next generation gaming and the computing know-it-alls attempt to correct me on why games these days should be given a certain leeway considering the technicality of today’s titles will automatically give a higher chance of problematic gaming; I get it. Really I do. I just don’t think it should be acceptable.

A Saturday afternoon; midway through my long awaited and hard earned weekend and time at the other half’s place. Thanks to a spanking deal at my third home, Enfield’s Gamestation (cheers Raz and co yet again!) I finally decided it was time to buy my own copy of Gears of War along with Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix for the bargain price of 2 games for £20 – get in! By this point I’d already clocked Gears Of War 2, and due to a dodgy disc lent to me by a mate, my attempt to get through Gears 1 had been halted three chapters into the first act! But enough time had passed, I was ready to go in guns and chainsaws blazing, and finally work my way through a game I had so much fun watching other people complete.

Three weekends down the line and me and Bal were making good time on the Insane Campaign. As he‘d already completed it what now seems like yonks ago we jumped straight into the hardest setting so, being the achievement hoarder I am, I could grab as much out of the game as possible in one run through, then enjoy going through the easier modes again, and maybe dabble in some online fun on my own during the week. After a damn annoying run through the deadly, dark roads of Burnt Rubber (which nearly ended in another dent in the wall the week before!) we innocently booted up our save to continue our quest of completion. Thankfully we survived the chapter, and thanks to our handy little Cog Guide (say what you think, I’m not spending hours hunting for little tags on my own!) we looked up which one should have been next.

To my horror, when jumping to the pause screen, my previous collected Cogs had pretty much vanished. Scrap that, there was no pretty much about it, all of the little b*ggers were gone. Call it gaming karma if you wish, I call it ridiculous! When the rest of the game loads up fine it should be safe to assume that everything you’ve collected and recorded up to that point should also be in tact. WRONG! I quickly brushed it off as a dodgy side effect of updating my gamertag name and left it at that.

Come forward to the weekend just passed. After a confusing drive to Northampton with a Sat Nav for the Insert Coin event, and with our spare spontaneous red ringing console in tow, we continued our quest while waiting for the rest of the Ready Up team to arrive. Nothing was different, little had changed other than a few levels progression, and yet a day later not only were my cogs now gone, but my entire insane campaign save.

My anger was halted due to the bombardment of ‘How?’ questions running through my head! How is it possible in this day and age, over two decades since those text adventures, that a save can lose its way? Maybe it’s taken a holiday, or been abducted by aliens. Unfortunately after scouring the Gears forums it seems that Gears saves have a nasty habit of packing up and taking off during the middle of the night, taking everything and the kitchen sink with them. No kills, no cogs, no levels complete. Well that’s not technically accurate in my case considering it some how recognises I’ve completed 1, 3 and 5. Oh for the days where games had your back; held their own! Okay okay, so it’s not a complete disaster. We all know how good a series it is when it works without its flaws. But as for my (second!) attempt to complete Gears of War and despite the developer’s name, it wasn’t so much an Epic Game as an Epic Fail.

Bumped!