Good Times in Gears

Gears 2 is pretty much the only game I've felt like playing lately. I have this obsessive desire to max it out, even though I know that will take forever (hey, spending all that time on 1 game is good for the wallet, at least). I really enjoy the MP, despite its imperfections.

Last night was an amazing night of multiplayer, first in public matches, and then in Horde. After slaving for about 8 hours in the research lab finishing up my research (still not done...) I got back and played some Wingman with Marx0r for a while. I understand why he would want to do Wingman from an XP standpoint. If you're good, it's the fastest XP out there. Why he would want to Wingman with me is a different question. He's pretty good. I'm generally mediocre. I had fun, but we definitely didn't do as well as we could have in other modes. Bionik Kommando is the only person I can be successful in Wingman with, and that's because we have sibling telepathy.

Dark showed up after a few matches, and joined the action. He and Marx0r's connections didn't seem to like each other, and neither could join a match hosted by the other. When I acted as an intermediary, they could both join, but also both got punted just before matches started, which was annoying.

Later on the other members of Hand of Thrawn logged on, and we were able to get out post-GSL play session fully started. The core players were myself, Dark, Silva, and Sabre (Derek was on for a little bit, but then switched to a different party... loser ^-^). We could do MP or Horde. Either would have been fine with me, but we went Horde because everyone likes Horde... and, lets face it, Horde is always fun, where MP can be hit-and-miss.

So, we load up Day One on Hardcore and proceed to wipe on Wave 2. We've all been "boosting" Horde on Casual for too long, I think. Tired of getting our asses kicked, and just looking to have fun, we dropped the difficulty down to Normal, and the good times rolled. This play session was amazing. I've been super stressed this week from girlfiend issues, insane work loads, and more, so this came as much-needed relief. We learned Derek has never consumed alcohol (he can rance my bro for who lasts longer), and Silva proceeded to tell us some of his hilarious drinking stories (which will probably make sure Derek never drinks LOL). There was a lot of joking around and messing with each other as the corpses of Locust piled up.

Edit for Sabre, cause I forgot at first. I'm a bad man... One of the jokes we had over the night was meleeing enemies, and keeping our pimp hands strong. We thought it would be amusing to tool a wave using only melee attacks (no lancer chainsaws). We ended up doing this on wave 21, which probably wasn't a good idea, but that didn't stop us. Of course, we wiped, which is pretty hilarious in itself, but Sabre had the honor of having the best pimp hand... I think he got 7 before getting dropped. I believe Silva was in second... and let's just say I need to work on my bitch-slapping, as I wasn't even close to Sabre's total. Sabre suggested some time I write a blog post about ways to mess around with Horde, and I may do just that some time soon.

One of the running themes for the night seemed to be "Thrawn is a beast." I almost always had the highest kill counts for each wave, and across the game. Part of this is because I pick off the Tickers as soon as I see them (the little bastards annoy me) and inflate me score that way, but I was also much better with the Hammer of Dawn and Mortar than I usually am.

The finale of the night had to be the best example of the theme. It was nearing 1am, and I needed to get some sleep, so we agreed to wrap up after wave 30. Silva and Sabre got killed, leaving Dark and I camped out at the Regency sign (Mortar and Hammar spawn point). Dark valiantly defends the area with me, but gets downed by a Blood Mount or Mauler (can't remember) and I had to retreat and kill them before I could reach Dark to revive him. Unfortunately, he got killed, leaving me to solo about the last half of wave 30.

And solo it is exactly what I did. I called the wrath of God with the Hammer, I dropped mortar rounds. I had to duck and dodge Blood Mounts more than once. I had to take out a Grinder with a pistol (thank God there was a Boom Shield handy). It was high octane insanity, with the three of them watching. I thought I was going to wipe several times, but wanted to see how far I could go. Once I got the wave down to 3 enemies, it was easy pickings. I ended wave 30 with 22 kills from that wave alone (2nd place had 7, if I remember right). It was probably the most impressive Gears feat I've pulled off, or at least it felt like it. I'm glad I had three witnesses to it... that will probably never happen again LOL.

I got maybe 50 rounds for "1999" under my belt, and another couple hundred kills for Seriously, putting me in the massive 6,700 range. Not much progress, but that wasn't the point of the evening. The point was to just play and have fun, which we definitely did. Thanks for the great evening guys, I had a blast.

I personally believe Horde > L4D. More maps, more chaos, more variety, 1 more friend. L4D is still great, but Horde is legendary.