43. ...And to all a Good Game

It’s been a good year, eh? Now that it’s over I’m not sure it ended up being better than last year but it was still pretty great. Games such as Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Prince of Persia and Fallout 3 have kept me up late many a night and I’m looking forward to spending much more quality time with them (especially Fallout 3) over my Christmas vacation later this month.

I managed to stomach almost an hour of the Spike TV VGAs (winners) last night before I turned it off in disgust.  The entire thing is such a joke and the worst part is that I knew it going in.  I was watching the webcast which was abysmal in it’s quality.  I’ve seen amateur’s do WAY better.  In fact, if you want to see how multi-view should really be done then I suggest you check out this awesome episode of Diggnation.  GAH!  I just want to erase the entire event from my brain!  Next time we meet up with Geoff Keighley I’m going to give him a piece of my mind…

If you didn’t watch them, then maybe you don’t know that Rockstar’s GTA4 ended up taking Game of the Year.  It was a good game, for sure, but I can tell you that it didn’t make it into my personal top five experiences of the year.  I’m going to hold back my winners for a potential future comic later this month, but I am very curious as to what other people’s top three games of 2008 are (any platform, not just 360).  Leave a note in the comments below.

39. The Gears of our Time

Gears of War 2 drops this week and and if you’re not excited, you should be.  Judging from the reviews that dropped this morning I think it’s safe to say that the follow-up to the 2006 GOTY will be a resounding success.

In the Sinnix household, the original Gears is somewhat of a legend.  It remains one of the few games to implement couch co-op really, really well.  Two years after the fact I can think of only a handful of games that equal it and none that surpass it.  The coordinated gameplay, the excellent checkpoint system, properly done achievements… all of it boils down to an experience that really makes you both feel like you’re both heroes and making progress in the game.

The competitive multiplayer, on the other hand, was the aspect of the game I couldn’t really get into.  In fact, about the only versus gameplay I like is that found in COD4.  I played a few rounds against some of the other Canadian Xbox forum people but I just never hit my stride… it didn’t click with me.  Now, I’m not saying that the multiplayer in Gears 2 will either, but I am very excited about the new Horde mode.  Essentially co-op with larger groups of friends.  Once again, I don’t expect to be particularly good at it but what I do expect is to have a good time.

On a side note, I have the New Xbox Experience running on my primary console at home and we’re going to be talking about it a little later this week.  Stay tuned!

You know, since I’ve been doing this whole comic thing I’ve picked up quite a few t-shirts and cheap knick knacks.  Typically, I’m not swayed by such things but this thing is friggin’ awesome.  Today, in my mailbox, I found a box containing the gear pictured above. The box also included some simple instructions:

1. Go to GearsOfWay.com/LastDay
2. Enter the code on the back of the Gear

6 of 14

Doing so unlocks a small icon.  The file was called 6 of 14, so I’m assuming there are more of these things out there.  I’ve seen photos of this gear pass through my RSS reader a few times so I can probably visit Kotaku or Joystick to find out more.  Are there other things to unlock? I have no friggin’ idea.  I haven’t browsed the website in depth yet but maybe I’ll find the time this weekend.

If you’re interested in seeing some more high resolution photos of this thing I’ve uploaded a few (including a snap of the box it came in) to my Flickr page.