Gears of War 2 or drugs?

I’m sitting here in the morning trying to muster the energy to get my laundry going and I started to watch a recorded TV show called behind the music of Courtney Love. As you can imagine it’s a show about rock n roll and drugs. As I’m watching it I see the part of her life where Kurt Cobain was so far in drug abuse he was lost. While I’m watching this it came to me. Gears of War is a drug. Last night was a prime example of something that feels good to do, but can hurt you at the same time.
Good part – the game is an ultimate team player game. If you go into a team based match and fly solo it almost always leads to you being eliminated. The maps are detailed in the way you can position yourself to get the upper hand. On any given map there is a plentiful amount of special weapons for every player. On a good match and with a bit of help from other players you can work as a team and mop up the other online team.
Now the bad part - Please don’t start explaining the whole connection based game theory from host base to server. This is with out a doubt a game that is based on 90 percent host connection and 10 percent of skill from experience with the advance weapons on a map to the typical player patterns where the big skirmishes occur. Rank in this game means nothing.
When the game first came out players with no morals and ethics would glitch the program and get the achievement award to level 100. I must clarify to all non-Gears players; there was a level system before the system of leveling up due to experience that relied on wins and loss percentage. I was very happy to see that at least one programmer at Epic games actually is a gamer and knows that there are too many flaws in the connection of the game to allow a fair skilled battle to occur.
Additionally, this game also breeds something I am sickened by – unethical players. To me, “ethics” means to make moral decisions and to know what good taste is. For example, if you are playing war zone mode, which is a 5-on-5 team battle where if you get knocked down you must rely on your fellow team mates to pick you up, and if you can’t be picked up in a short period your character dies. If you’re knocked down, and the opponent has time, they can kill you, or himself or herself. There are times where another teams’ players will linger over your fallen characters body and “make believe” they’re doing sexual and lewd acts to you. This is a practice I despise and loath. That puts me at a fever pitch.
If you ever asked my wife to describe me, she will say I’m an asshole, like all good wives say about their husbands. The next might be I’m the best lover in the world. The third thing she would say is I’m very loyal to my friends. So, when I play with friends I get even angrier when this happens to them. If I had to put a percentage on how often this happens it would be 30 to 40 percent of the time. If I had to put a percentage on how many times you win or lose based on the host of your party getting host for the match, well that happens at least 90 percent of the time.
Now that I detailed the highs and lows of this game Ill give you a history of my game play with gears 2. The first gears of war game I played on a regular basis with friends in private matches. There were host and game flaws, but I believe the social part of talking and discussing world events outweighed the problems. When gears 2 came out, there was a disappointing switch to online matches. I admit, I love competition and team work but the whole social art was lost. The nightmare began when the epic programmers stated in articles, blogs, and in interviews that the design issues as host shotgun power, one side host advantages, and so on had been fixed. Guess what? No luck on that. So I personally spent stressful nights playing the game, frustrated that my ability was not important, but my hope was that my connection would be good to other players and that the other team did not exploit the cheating flaws in the game.
After some months of playing the game I got fed up and put the game away. Recently I took the game out and started playing it. The designers decided to increase experience points to what I believe is a ploy to get people back. Are any problems fixed? No. So I have been playing it with the same frame of mind that Courtney Love must have felt when she abused drugs. You know its bad for you but you still do it. Last night was a prime example of why I am going to say no. Two nights ago, I played and toward the end of my game session Evil Ric and I vowed to put the game away for a time due to our continued anger toward the game. Last night a friend sent me an invite and what did I do? You guessed it. I played Gears.
Something happened last night that was the first in all my online game play. I gave up! The last match I honestly ran out and got killed. Didn’t care what the consequences would be to my team. By the end of the match I could not wait to get out of the room. Afterward, I once again vowed not to play the game for some time since I broke a rule that is dear to my heart. Don’t give up!
So, in parting – does anyone else feel the same about this? Does anyone else have a game that makes them insane? Are you just like Courtney and self destruct over a game? Think about that as you are getting mad over a game.

Until next time,

Drink Quality Jim Beam