Hoist By My Own Petard

I’ve ruined the Gears of War 3 experience for Tony and I.

Not intentionally mind you, in fact, it was actually in an attempt to make the experience far more enjoyable. You see we both agreed just before the game’s release date that we would play through the single player campaign cooperatively. It all started so well, I managed to get out of work at lunchtime (itself a veritable miracle) and purchase the nearby Tesco’s last copy. I was stunned that I’d managed to successfully pick up a copy on launch day as it’s not a task I usually undertake, primarily because of the near guaranteed disappointment.

So the plan was in motion, except I was delayed at work and by the time I’d reached home, it was 10pm and we managed to play for an hour before Tony retired. We’d barely got through the first part of Act I. Bearing in mind the game was released on a Tuesday, it wasn’t until the following Sunday we managed to play the campaign again and even then we barely reached Act I’s conclusion.

It’s now been over three weeks since launch and we’ve managed to play the campaign, on average, once a week. Whilst I appreciate that may not seem slow to some of you, I’m concerned that we’ve already released a spoiler podcast for a game, at this rate, I may not finish until the new year.

It’s made me realise that cooperative monogamy is difficult to maintain. After all, the whole point of this game is that any one of your Xbox Live friends can drop into and out of your games at will. It’s the online equivalent of a bowl full of car keys.

Of course the question could quite reasonably be raised: why did we restrict ourselves? The answer is simple, we wanted to discover the game ourselves rather than being led. We enjoyed Portal 2 a great deal, more so because we discovered the levels’ solutions together. If either of us had already played the game through, it would have lessened the quality of the experience.

I think our downfall was applying the same logic to Gears as we did to a puzzler.

The problem isn’t just the bowl full of car keys, it’s also the variety of fun to be had. We’ve spent more time playing Horde and Beast than we have with the single player, primarily because most people on our friends list have already completed the game. Who wants to jump into a single player campaign they’ve only just completed when they have to remain spoiler free?

We’ll complete it eventually of course; I just cannot help but feel the self inflicted stuttering of the experience has lead me to unfairly think less of the game.