Gears of War Insanity

Last night Heero and I finally took the plunge and started a new co-op campaign on Insane difficulty. We managed to slog through the first two Acts before calling it a night.

Here's what I think about Insane difficulty: it's not that bad.

I do feel it is still incredibly challenging. Every single firefight becomes an exercise in maximum intensity, which is makes the game very thrilling to play. I still think Insane difficulty has been hyped up by the gaming critics more than it needed to be. If you've played through on Hardcore, then you are very well-prepared to face the challenges that await in Insane. The transition is much smoother than the shell shock of moving from Casual to Hardcore.

To not sound overly confident, I do realize that I still have to fight through Act 3 and deal with those wretched Lambant Wretches and that infuriating cart ride through the death tunnels. That's the one where you get exploding wretches falling into your ride. Joy. Still, I've learned some basic gameplay principles that should help out anyone thinking of trying their skills on Insane:

• Patience & Positioning: On the lower difficulty settings you really could get by most fights by parking yourself behind one wall and stopping & popping form the same wall until everything was dead. Not so on Insane. Besides having the patience to fully heal when absorbing fire from multiple sources, you really do need to master movement from cover to cover and also the art of disengaging from cover effectively to deal with grubs that rush at you with the shotgun. But above all else, it's having great patience and discipline, so you can effectivley squeeze off short rounds of fire before ducking back down for cover.
• It's the bee's knees: Enemies can take an enormous amount of punishment. You'll find yourself scavenging for ammo like a madman sometimes. Shooting out the knees of your foes is a great way to conserve ammo on your Lancer or shotgun. Once they're out of commission, saunter over for a quick coup de grace curb stomp or switch to your handgun and pump that bent over sucker full of executioner's lead.
• Active Reload: Master it. 'Nuff said.