Out of interest for this thread I "appropriated" a PC copy of the first Gears of War. I've only played about one hour on the second difficulty (Hardcore?) and I can't really see this getting any better down the line, though I will try.
Not really liking the bulletspongy nature of the enemies. The difficulty descriptions said Hardcore mode was intended for those who can score headshots, but it takes about 15-25 shots to the head with the Lancer or that burst fire weapon the Locust drop regardless of the damage boost a perfect Active Reload is supposed to grant, making me wonder why I should even bother with aiming for the head. The Active Reload is a pretty cool gimmick, though I feel it's too easy to consistently get perfect reloads.
Despite all my squadmates telling me to flank everything, the element of surprise is lost when it takes a zillion bullets to kill one grunt anyways, so the stealthier option would seem to be to sneak up on enemies with your loud chainsaw bayonet, except the enemy AI must be psychic considering they somehow know the position of the big burly man trying to flank them from behind without even looking at him. Flanking more or less works when the enemies are kept occupied by your allies, otherwise it just gives you the advantage of being able to shoot at enemies without them being protected by cover, even moreso through blindfiring.
The chainsaw bayonet is only really effective against enemies around corners and those trying to vault over cover, but that's understandable given its instakill nature. I don't know why you'd use the melee attacks on other weapons though.
I did notice enemies can be crippled by shooting them in the legs who can be promptly finished off with a stomp or apparently used as body shields with the pistol (have yet to try it out myself), though I don't know how useful that is given that the pistol feels rather weak. I don't know whether I'm supposed to be aiming for the legs or head.
The basic combat seems to follow this loop of 'pop out and shoot some enemies in the head until you tank too much damage and then pop back as your health regenerates and you reload your gun', which feels like it can get pretty repetitive. Now one thing I did notice is that it's possible to reduce damage taken by moving to another piece of cover where you're exposed to less enemies and are thus able to deal more damage before you have to sit back and regenerate. Most encounters thus far seem to allow this. Grenades also allow you to bypass the protection cover grants to enemies by blowing them up or flushing them out, but there's this GODAWFUL delay between pressing the throw button and the grenade actually being thrown which makes it unnecessarily more dangerous to throw an aimed grenade than it already is.
The overall design does strongly encourage you to utilize cover, though it doesn't do much to encourage one to flank all the time because playing it full popamole style works just fine thanks to the regenerating health. Games like FEAR and (at times) Wolfenstein: TNO which primarily featured hitscan enemies made flanking appear like an obviously more effective choice as it let you avoid hitscan damage by letting you get the drop on enemies before they could even aim at you, made even more obvious by the fact that health in those games was limited and thus should rather be preserved. By playing offensively and putting yourself at more risk, you can offset a whole lot of potential damage.
Add regenerating health into the mix, and there's way less reason to worry about getting hit. You'd think that regenerating health would encourage one to play recklessly, but GoW asks the opposite from you given how quickly you get damaged outside of cover, since health management is too much for console casuals. It's possible to play offensively in GoW, it just doesn't seem to encourage you to do so by design, so your squadmates have to tell you about it, which is kinda lazy.
The AI isn't too noteworthy either. They can utilize cover much like you, but they're not as aggressive as I had hoped. They don't seem to know how to flank you either, so chalk that up as wasted potential.
I hear that the MP and Horde mode are supposed to be this game strongest points, but I assume that the community for the PC version of this game is really very dead and I don't know if I can maintain enough energy and motivation to get to Horde Mode as the campaign is already boring me to fucking tears. I don't know if the campaign can do something interesting with its barebones gameplay concept to the same extent other games with cover systems like Shadowrun and nuXCOM can, and I don't know how much bullshit and halftruths this post contains given that I've not yet finished the game, as everything else about the game is just off-putting, so stay tuned.
I wish I was playing Vanquish, or Binary Domain.
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