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.
  

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Terrorists on the Run Second Night in a Row

I've been meaning to properly introduce Play With My Box to the gaming blogosphere but Rainbow Six has been dominating my every waking moment. Therefore I cannot bring myself to even write about anything else, not until I report on my latest T-Hunt outing with Heero.

Long story short: we owned, as they say in gaming parlance. We completed an unprecedented 5 maps last night, beginning with our first love, the Calypso Casino. With the help of fellow R6ers, I and Gratzy, we finally dominated the casino on High Density setting. I had the honour of being the last man standing, facing down a disorganized band of terrorists in the vault and methodically putting them all to rest. Did I get an easy break? Oh, more than I few times. The Normal enemy AI seems to falter when they separate from the pack and you face them head on. I noticed that they take an eternity to draw a bead on you and in rare instances will even get stuck on a wall or be distracted by something other than you.

Border Town became the tough nut to crack that evening, as we were repeatedly ambushed and out-flanked on our first several attempts. Fragpocket promptly dropped out, leaving a 3-man team to grind through the streets of Mexico. Victory finally came on Gratzy's final game and once again, I was charged with eliminating the final wave of terrorists all by myself.

Heero and I bid goodnight to Gratzy and continued on to beat Casino Vault, Dam and Dantes. Heero pulled off a repeat of the previous night's performance as he played Rambo, using his strategically located base camp to defend against the unrelenting wave of attackers. I originally stood guard behind the crates while Heero pranced around the level, baiting terrorists into following him into our deathtrap. All was going well until I became too preoccupied with peering through my rifle scope and blown to smithereens by a well-timed grenade. From then on it was ALL Heero and he did not disappoint, switching effortlessly between his pistol, shotty and a modest helping of C4. My goodness, it was glorious to watch him detonate the C4 and send five unlucky attackers cartwheeling into the air.

All in all, it was a great night of T-Hunt. Heero and I both ranked up and earned our coveted Tour of Duty achievement. Our next challenge will be to finish all maps on Realistic difficulty, where the AI is much more aggressive. I also expect that they will spawn in the most inopportune places and make much better use of explosives.

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