varingblaar

Gears of War 3

2026-04-28T00:00:00Z

Part three of playing through the Gears of War series in co-op.

This is the second time through the campaign, but I haven't touched it in 15 years. We're playing on the Series S and I was surprised to see the game start up exactly where I'd left off on the XBox 360. Achievements I expected, but multiplayer level and unlocked ribbons are all here. That's impressive.

The "previously on Gears of War" clip didn't play, probably because the game decided that I'd played before. I did find it in settings, but would've been nice to have a reminder of everything that happened since Gears 2.

Story

We live on the ocean now. Subsistence farming on the decks and holds of carriers. The enemies are the Lambent now. They don't need solid ground to appear, with their stalks emerging even in the middle of the ocean. Nowhere is safe. Then we receive another message from Marcus's father, but only part of it, and suddenly our mission to destroy the Lambent is back on like it was before!

As part of returning to ground, we get Augustus Cole's backstory during our visit to Cougar Stadium. The fact that he used to be famous, actually helps us get to the people in charge of the Stranded that live there. For a brief minute we get to see Cole be the "NFL-but-future" star he used to be.

Dizzy is back! There's a mission where we need to rescue him, then he helps out for a few chapters until we get to Anvil Gate, and then he's part of the mission to get fuel for the submarine. He also helms the submarine, leading us into the final act.

The Big Scenes

This is the reason I wanted to play through these games in co-op. Dom's sacrifice is even more poignant because we played his character almost every step of the way. Having Mad World in the background was a nice callback to the trailer that launched the whole franchise. The quiet moment at the grave just before this, was a nice goodbye for me after 20 hours with the character. For my counterpart, who is actually playing as Dom most of the time, it was a nice moment but the gravity only made sense in hindsight.

But there's more. Marcus also loses his father. It was a little predictable, and the way his father was speaking leading up to this made it obvious he didn't expect to make it. It's such an anime moment where his dad turns to ash in front of him.

The Queen Myrrah fight is pretty standard. It has waves, during which you're either shooting at her, or at the many enemies that spawn. Then there's an opening to trigger the next phase but hitting her with the Hammer of Dawn. Rinse, repeat. The second part of the fight has her on the building, but you're still basically shooting until she goes down, then Hammer of Dawn. Marcus gets his bad ass up close moment with the villain, ending the fight with a dagger.

When all is said and done, we have celebrations all around. The war is (potentially) over... but at what cost? How do we rebuild?

A Suitable End to the Trilogy

Storytelling in this game was a little different from previous iterations. There was less exposition and more dialogue. Conversations instead of speeches. For the first bit I got pulled out of gameplay for a short 5 second cutscene a few too many times, but I'd have that rather than characters shouting at each other over gunfire anytime. The story beats felt better planned, and it felt like we were building towards the finale, rather than doing whatever needs to be done until the finale presented itself.

Oh I Forgot Carmine

I've mentioned that I got into Gears just after the second game. So I remember the Fate of Carmine campaign. You could buy shirts, either in real life or for your avatar, to vote whether the third Carmine brother should live or die.

Clayton Carmine is a part of your squad for a good part of this game, always in the background. During the final battle against Queen Myrrah, Carmine arrives in a Raven (chopper) to offer support, and gets taken out by her angry wasp (Tempest, apparently). As it goes down in flames, it looks like the end...

... until the final cutscene where Clayton Carmine picks up his helmet from the sand and helps with the post-battle cleanup.

Graphics

5 years after Gears of War 2 and it shows. Better quality textures, and the characters are more proportionate and less action figure shaped. Still a little action figure shaped, but they need to be recognisable I guess. Their armour is also less formulaic. I guess if you've been a soldier for 17 years with a very loose chain of command, you customise your uniform a bit.

Also there's a prominent female character now named Sam, and Anya is a playable character for the latter half of the game (I mean, because Player 2 can't be Dom anymore...)

Light plays a big role in this game. It looks like the entire lighting system was reworked. The Lambent glow, and they emit glowing goop everywhere, and we often fight them in the dark just to make the point. That puts a lot of pressure on the lighting system to perform well, and it is definitely up to the challenge.

Outside beach scenes look amazing, along with a much improved draw distance. I'll get to it below, but despite the actual play areas not being much bigger, the maps feel far more open because you can see further into the distance, and characters point this out. During one of the earlier missions, you're trying to catch a Gas Barge that you can see in the sky, then see it touch down far ahead. It's very impressive.

Gameplay

First things first, TAC-COM is more useful, telling where to go. A little star pops up pointing to the objective, and opening the overlay shows that same star. No more accidentally backtracking because we didn't see the door in the corner. There's still a bit of "press Y to look at things" happening, but in general if you don't want to, you don't have to. The game will carry on without you.

Pretty soon after the beginning, you get to control Cole and Baird. It's a nice change of pace, especially following Cole through his nostalgia-filled adventure in Cougar Stadium. In terms of gameplay it doesn't really make a difference. They both more and play like any other character.

For most of the game ammo is even more scarce than before. It forces the player to get more comfortable with different weapons, because a lot of the time your ammo supply is whatever the enemies drop. Besides less ammo pickups, the amount of ammo held is also less. For example the Lancer holds 420 rounds, down from 550 in Gears 2.

The Retro Lancer is insane. It takes forever to reload, packs a massive recoil and the spread is all over the place, but damn it does damage! The melee is not a chainsaw because this weapon is from the before times, it's a bayonet charge. Essentially a roadie run that kills the guy you run into. You can get in trouble though. If you miss your target, you can roadie run your way right into enemy lines.

Speaking of roadie runs, it feels better. Character seems smaller on screen so you have a better idea where you're going. Might just be a better camera, not sure, but I was using it a lot more.

Enemies

So the Lambent work a little differently. Instead of an emergence hole in the ground, it's now a stalk that stands up in the air. This changes the approach.

The emergence hole in previous games required a player to run in and grenade it, then fight their way back to a defensive position to take out the remaining enemies. It could be closed at a distance, if a player could aim a grenade's arc high enough. But often the target is below the field of view, especially in splitscreen multiplayer with it's super-ultrawide view.

The stalks being off the ground makes it easier to take out the pods at a distance, limiting the number of enemies on the battlefield before engaging them. They do often spawn pods on the opposite side, so they can't all be reached easily, but reducing the initial spawn goes a long way to taking them down.

The Lambent themselves are interesting but a little overwhelming to understand. Most of them are Lambent Locust, standard Locust enemies but they explode. Then there's the Drudge that transforms into different things and basically needs to be "murdered further". Occasionally the head comes after you like a snake...

The Gunker is a Boomer on steroids. It covers the battlefield with thrown bombs and if you get to close it swipes at you. Best to take these out as soon as they appear.

Lambent Zerker is no fun. That's all I have to say.

The Locusts also updated a little bit, like grenades that go underground, but mostly they just played as an additional force during combat to add another flank to worry about. By now we know how they work and can dispatch them easily.

Level Design

Levels feel more open. I don't think they're about the same size as Gears 2 but there's more room for movement, more flanking opportunities, more levels... Gears 3 is capable of 4 player co-op, so there are options. Often if we died, instead of brute forcing it, we could try a different approach. It makes the whole game less frustrating.

Due to this open layout, I did find myself running and gunning more often, instead of sitting behind cover waiting for enemies. Enemies were designed to get you behind cover, forcing you to move around more, so overall a more active experience.

The submarine underwater section really showed off what they could do. In effect it's just another driving-and-shooting scene similar to the run to Mercy, but it looks great. I do feel the dark sections towards the end were maybe too dark, Might be the HDR settings on my TV though.

So... This is it

A suitable end to an awesome trilogy. I'm happy to have replayed all three games in rapid succession like this. It's fun to share the whole story with someone, and I'm happy that it can still be enjoyed with relative ease thanks to XBox Game Pass and backwards compatibility.

It would be a perfectly suitable place to end the series right here. However there's a board game from 2011, I haven't played Gears 4 or Gears 5, and Gears of War: E-Day is slated for later this year...

Update: RAAM's Shadow

I lied. There was DLC for Gears of War 3 that included an additional act. It took some jumping through hoops to purchase it in the today times, and then it downloaded slower than my 1998 dial-up for the first bit, but after an hour we were ready to go.

This is a prequel, about 9 years before Gears 1, 9 years after E-Day. We play as Zeta Squad, most notably Kim who will be the boss guy at the beginning of Gears 1 and Tai the not-really-Pacific-Islander from Gears 2. It's nice to spend a little more time with Tai. His specific style of banter is refreshing.

Young Jace Stratton is here, but he's not in the military yet. He's just a young adult that we come across while doing our job. It becomes an escort mission. Luckily it's background story and you don't actually have to keep him safe. Then he gets picked up by General RAAM himself. Literally picked up. Valeria saves him, sacrificing herself, Jace swears to avenge her (or something) and tadaa he's in the army now. Turns out this is his origin story.

Fun thing, we get to play as the bad guys for some of the bits. Specifically RAAM. He doesn't have weapons as such, he has this cloud of Kryll he sends out and if you hold it over a guy long enough they "pop". It's fun, but not very effective. Other than that the RAAM segments are the same as most COG parts. Go to area, wait for the guy with the spike to hit it into the ground, kill anything that moves.

The voice acting for this one isn't up to par with the main game. I actually have a hard time tracking who's speaking. For most of it, it doesn't actually matter who's saying things as long as you follow what they're saying.

On a technical level, we experienced a couple of hard freezes. First time it was necessary to quit the game and start it up again. The second time it sorted itself out after a minute of random noise.

So in conclusion, glad I played this little act, because it fills in Jace's story and we learn a little more about RAAM. It was a little over 2 hours of extra content.

We Used to Live Here

2026-04-23T00:00:00Z

Familiar Premise with a Twist

The premise seems familiar; Someone shows up while you're home alone and you can't get rid of them. Sure. Except we take every part of that trope and tweak it a little bit.

Our protagonist Eve and her partner Charlie are house flippers. But this is a horror story, so of course this is a big spooky house far from the nearest town. Eve is home alone when people knock on the door. Whole family, actually. "We used to live here, can I show them around?" All the red flags, but also Eve has problems with saying no. So here we are. Whole family in my house, with a storm outside so the people can't leave and Charlie can't show up.

What Is Even Real?

Right off the bat there's a white lie about checking with Charlie. If Eve is already spinning a white lie, are the visitors also lying? That doubt settles in and becomes the norm for the first half of the novel.

Who's telling the truth? When Thomas the dad tells stories about the house, is he making stuff up through keen observation? At some point he mentioned a dumb waiter that he couldn't have known about. So maybe it's all true?

After a while people start saying things that clearly didn't happen. But they all agree? A phone goes missing, later a kid has the phone, but after an argument it turns out to be his own phone? Can I trust my own perception? Or is this gaslighting? Is this their method? Do they make you feel crazy to manipulate you? Is that what happened to Alison?

When the stained glass window changes to a normal window, this feels like the first external validation that something strange is happening. Charlie confirms that the window did change. Charlie agrees it's time to leave.

This makes the body snatching scene more creepy. Real Charlie calls fake Charlie to warn Eve it's not her. One with a tattoo and the other without. Realising the person next to you is an impostor is a trope for a reason; Because it's evocative. Again your perceptions might be incorrect. But what adds weight to this, is that this person, the impostor, is the only person that has validated your lack of craziness.

Back at the house, we're in full gaslight mode. The family calls her Emma, refusing to acknowledge her as Eve. Everything is wrong and the unsettling feeling has now turned completely to anger, both for the character and for me as the reader. Eventually she ends up in a psychiatric hospital. Apparently there's no record that Eve ever existed? Maybe this was a person we made up all along...

The Man in the Woods

I'm not sure what his purpose was. Exposition? Was he just there to confirm to the reader exactly how weird things are? And then he's gone later? So it might've been part of the same psychotic break?

The novel built up to him being important. At the bottom of every section there was a little group of dots and dashes. I immediately thought it might be Morse code, and punched it into an online translator. When the guy in the forest shows up, I thought this would be the big revelation that ties the whole backstory together. I was a little disappointed.

r/nosleep

The story in the novel is interrupted by newspaper articles and external ephemera. It reminds me of Carrie by Stephen King, except the articles are tangentially related, if at all. It's definitely creepy. It shows the origins of the story, as a collection of Reddit nosleep posts. It has that disjointed narrative and not all the loose ends are tied up nicely.

Apparently the story was optioned for a movie by Netflix before it was even a book. It definitely reads like a horror movie.

Mercy

2026-04-20T00:00:00Z

Science fiction tends to show what we most fear, and nowhere is this more true than Cyberpunk. When repeated often enough, they become tropes of the genre, and Mercy is no exception. The reason these things come up is because they're relatable. It feels conceivable that we could end up in these situations, or in some cases we see it starting to happen already.

The AI Take-Over

In this case specifically the relinquishing of control to AI, either for convenience or to remove human error. SkyNet in Terminator was meant to have control over nukes to remove human error, and we know how that went. WOPR in Wargames is similar. VIKI in I, Robot was meant to run the city's infrastructure, but came to the very logical conclusion that the biggest danger to humankind is humans themselves.

In Mercy there's a courtroom that uses every piece of information available to decide the fate of a person. Then it executes on that decision with impunity. There's a reason convicted persons remain on Death Row for many years. Because there's always a chance that "we missed something", and once you pull that lever it's too late. You can't bring them back.

Invasion of Privacy

Oh this is a big one. Mercy Court has access to virtually every piece of media that exists, and every hardware input and sensor in the city. A lot of this is simple OSINT, Instagram posts or a publicly accessible bird watching camera (yes really). But occasionally we access a camera and I think "there's no way that's legal, right?" When someone realises exactly how much of their actions are known, it is offensive to them on a visceral level. And I would too. It's difficult for us to understand exactly how much information we "leak".

The Class Divide

There's rich, and there's poor. The rich live in a utopia, the poor live in squalor. In a lot of fictions the utopia can only exist because the slums exist. Sometimes these organise themselves into places you don't go, and the narrative is greatly altered by which side of the proverbial fence the story takes place. Historically it may be the other side of the train tracks. In Altered Carbon it's the lower levels, in Alita Battle Angel it's the Scrapyard. In Mercy it's the "red zones". It also appears that people were forcibly relocated to these red zones, which makes it even more of a divide.

Electric Sheep

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick, the story Blade Runner was based on, about whether machines can feel. We've seen this a million times. There's some story thing a machine can't do because it lacks compassion and understanding, or it fails to see the value in "life", or it has no sense of "self". Again, this is a trope because it feels familiar. As large language models get better at mimicking our own behaviour, we anthropomorphise them. We see personality and preference. It feels "alive".

In Mercy, the AI has perfect knowledge and is perfectly logical, but it lacks compassion and it lacks "gut". The big plot twist that makes Judge Maddox glitch, have a change of faith, and start actively breaking laws herself to help the hero in favour of a "greater good" is because the AI doesn't have a "gut" to follow.

But what is "gut"?

Apparently we make 35000 decisions per day. What we call our "gut" is basically our brain making decisions for us, based on previously observed patterns, so that we don't have to pay attention to it. Often we can't explain exactly why we draw the conclusions that we do. Isn't that exactly what an AI does?

The Actual Story, and Why The Plot Don't Plot

So now we have this AI that can "see and hear everything" and has perfect knowledge of all evidence. Then the accused is given an arbitrary amount of time to plead their innocence when there's a big score board telling them that they don't really stand a chance. And when that timer runs out, they are executed on the spot. No chance for appeal. I mean, what could go wrong?

I think in a normal Mercy Court case, the accused would explain their side and the AI judge could cross-reference evidence to corroborate and create enough doubt to delay execution. But over 2 years this has never happened? A 100% guilty verdict over 18 cases feels very unlikely. The sessions are being recorded, but are they being checked?

The problem is, we often ship tasks to AI specifically because they're too difficult or time consuming to do ourselves. The "big reveal" is the fact that they missed evidence in a previous case. Evidence that would've been known to the AI Judge. Jaq (the partner) didn't report the phone call informing them of this, but after watching Maddox (that's her name, by the way, the AI Judge) do her thing for 90 minutes, there's no way she would've missed it. It's literally timestamped. And if it was possible for someone to intervene and hide that evidence from Mercy Court, it defeats the entire purpose for Mercy Court to exist. So... huh!?

The Actual Movie, Though

The movie drops you in the deep end and does not let up. The trial happens in near-realtime, but not quite. Close enough that it feels realtime. It goes at a breakneck speed the entire time. Editing is difficult to follow, as cameras change from phone cam to body cam to dash cam to helmet cam. But it's all center-framed so not a lot of looking around or missing things.

"Reconstructions" given to Chris during the trial don't seem reasonable in context, or even that practical really, but damn they look cool! Especially when he is sat in the middle of a live explosion that's somehow being projected around him in 3D, when every camera in the area had been damaged or destroyed. It looks awesome even if it doesn't make sense.

That's the thing though. The movie is fine. The story is exciting, the special effects are pretty good. It does that thing where the digital hacking world spills into the real world. It's the guy from Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World (he actually does the hands up thing a couple times), opposite the mom from Dune.

Watching Mercy wasn't a waste of time, but now I've seen it and it was fine and I'm probably never going to watch it again.

Condottiere

2026-04-17T00:00:00Z

I've played the Fantasy Flight version at some point, but the version I own is the Z-Man Games edition from 2018. It does include the "classic" version of some cards to play the older version. The game is actually 30 years old with several revisions, so I'm not sure how much the rules have changed over the years.

It's basically Gwent but much simpler. There's only one line of battle and the cards don't "activate". The rules are mostly simple. A spot is picked that we fight over, then we take turns playing cards to up our total strength until everyone passes or a Turncoat is played. The person with highest strength places a token there, but on a tie nobody gets it. Rinse and repeat until someone either has 3 connected tokens or 5 total tokens on the board.

The tricky part is when the cards refresh; If you have no Mercenaries you can discard your whole hand, but then you can't participate. When everyone (or everyone except one) is out of cards, we shuffle everyone gets 10 cards again, plus one for each token they have on the board.

What Makes It Fun?

Each card you play feels like a big move. They're not very complex cards, but the way they interact, and what opponents play, create some interesting combinations. It does mean people sit and stare at their cards trying to decide their best move, which slows down the game. The box says 45 minute game, but most of our gamer are 90 minutes or more. Might just be inexperience with the rules.

This version includes a 2 player mode, but honestly it's broken. Half the deck is removed, including most of the fun cards. Maybe we need to give it another shot, but I have way better 2 player games we can play instead of this.

Aesthetic Is Nice

The art style is a hand drawn or watercolour type look. It's nice. Feels classic and fits the theme. And it's small. I love a game with a small board that does what it needs to, without taking up the whole table. The Fantasy Flight version had an even smaller board, but this one is still nice. The cards are a standard size, which helps with shuffling because this is a monster of a deck of cards to shuffle in one go. The special cards have icons along the bottom as a reminder, and once you understand the iconography it's quite clear.

Why Don't I Love This?

The problem is we don't play it enough. It's such a finely balanced game, that you don't want to play the rules as writ. The rules should be innate so you can play the other players. If you commit all your best cards to the wrong battle you might sit out several rounds, especially on higher player counts. If you don't know the game as well as other players, they will absolutely destroy your chances of winning.

So it's fun to play every so often, but unless we play it more often, we probably won't play it more often. If you get what I mean...

Gears of War 2

2026-04-15T00:00:00Z

Part two of playing through the Gears of War series in co-op.

Back to Old School

From here on out, there's no remake. So we're playing the XBox 360 release on the XBox Series S, which means FPS boost. It also means split-screen co-op. That 32:9 "super-ultrawide" aspect ratio takes a little to get used to. Luckily the Gears of War games are generally more left-and-right rather than up-and-down. Roadie running can get tricky, because you can't see very far ahead, especially inside the riftworm where teeth need to be dodged. But we'll get to that...

In terms of graphical fedility, I think 2008 is about where we reached the point of games looking "pretty good" to the point that it doesn't really need an HD remake like Gears 1 needed (twice, apparently). Gears 2 actually looks better than Gears 1: Reloaded...

A Desire for Power

We open with a cutscene explaining the consequences of the first game, more specifically the fact that the bomb didn't stop them. Also, it's the same person speaking from the first game's intro and outro. At this point we don't know who this is.

Right at the beginning of the game we're introduced to Benjamin Carmine, green as grass. During training (the tutorial) he asks about his brother Anthony and says he died a hero. Everyone just agrees and moves on. We saw it happen and it wasn't glamorous, but if Ben believes he's fighting like his brother and that drives him to be better, then let him have it. This is probably the first hint that this game will be playing on our emotions a more. Ben actually sticks around for quite a bit. He attempts to stand ground so the rest of the squad can escape, but they drag him onto the evac chopper. It doesn't make a big difference because the chopper gets hit and Ben falls out. We encounter him a little later inside the Riftworm, half eaten by stomach acid or something. He delivers his last words before succumbing to his wounds.

Tai seems a Aborigine or Pacific Islander. In the lore of the game it's South Islands. He has a very philosophical view on the whole situation that feels almost zen compared to the "must go shoot" mentality of everyone else. A very likeable character. Which makes his end feel even more heart wrenching.

Now the main characters' story progression. This game goes much more into their back stories. Dom's search for Maria is a driving force, sometimes even dragging Marcus away from the primary objective. After so many years it felt like a lost cause. And then they actually find her... This scene. The scene where they find Maria and see what has become of her... It's the one scene that stuck with me for decades.

During the course of the story we find out about Marcus's father, Adam Fenix, who seems to have done research on the Locust species? Finally discover why Marcus was in prison all those years: When his family estate was being attacked, he abandoned his duties to save his father. I mean it didn't work, but he tried...

Now we find recordings of his father's voice, deep in Locust territories, telling what we need to do to defeat them. If we had this information years ago, the war could've been much shorter. So we send the information up the chain of command and they agree, which conveniently lines up with what we were sort of doing anyway.

And then we meet "The Queen" and realise it was her voice narrating the cinematics. And she looks surprisingly human for someone controlling the Locust Horde... But now we can put a face to the voice.

Also did I mention there's a civil war going on? In the first game the Lambent were just special versions of normal Locust. Now they're a second faction. Still mostly a slight alteration to the normal Locust enemies, but it makes it interesting to see the Locust fighting "their own" in a way.

For the sake of the story it makes sense. It means we can effectively "win" and there can be another game with a new threat.

What's New With Gameplay?

Well, we're still shooting things then pressing a button for most of the game. The weapons are mostly the same but it feels like they've been "balanced" a bit. The Lancer doesn't hold as much ammo anymore. The Locust weapons have a few new tricks. The Hammerburst doesn't even burst anymore. But it packs a nice punch. Seeing that there's less ammo lying around now, and all the weapons seem to be carrying less ammo now, it's best to get used to shooting with what you can find.

Getting knocked down is different now. You can crawl around a little bit to get to a safer spot, so the other player doesn't have to risk their neck as much. But time is limited. The NPC characters also revive players now. When splitting up each player has a buddy, so there's someone to revive you and the game can keep flowing with less restarts when a player goes down.

Problem is, the Locust have also figured out how to revive, and they do so often. The Kantus specifically allows them to revive at a distance, which is unsettling to see and to hear.

There's more enemy variety though. Theron guards are more common now. Boomers and Grinders too. So I spend a lot of time with Boomshots and Rippers. The latter part of the game involves a lot of Scorchers. We had to completely rethink how we approach a fight if we knew there's someone with a Scorcher involved.

The biggest enemy was probably Skorge, the Queen's favourite Kantus. He chainsaws a helicopter at the beginning of the game, then the Queen leaves him to kill you. The fight is intense but not difficult. We beat it second try. The chase scene straight after was more difficult. Oh that reminds me!

You get to ride stuff! At the beginning of the game is the Rig, though you're not driving so it's more of a moving platform than actual riding. Then about an hour is spent driving a tank pretending to be a jeep (looked it up, Centaur) which is actually fun. For a bit of it you're in the darkness, one person steering and the other pointing the light. A lot of arguing about where to shine the light, and some proper jump scares.

During the Skorge chase sequence you're flying a Reaver. It's on rails but you have to dodge incoming missiles.

Finally you ride and control an actual Brumak! Stampeding through things VVab

The Floor, It Moves

There's destructible terrain now. It's pretty cool to see bits fly off when shooting at thigns (or getting shot at) but in at least one mission you actually need to blow out the pillars holding up an entire section of town.

Levels also progress or change, buildings collapsing (hiding a loading screen) but it feels very dynamic. Train cars, elevators and gunboats. Cover also moves. Some change when a lever is (excruciatingly slowly) pulled, others when you stand on the platform in front of them. Sometimes there's a bulletproof worm following a fruit that acts as moving cover. That was quite smart.

Oh, the inside of the Riftworm was... ambitiuos. Considering the technology at the time, they did a pretty good job making it feel biological. Can't fault them for trying.

Locust Architecture

This I found very interesting. We spend a lot of time in the Locust Nexus, and the deeper we go, the more Gothic it becomes. Long concentric curves coming to points. Maybe some H.R. Giger influence making it feel more natural and imperfect. It stands out compared to the above ground Brutalist, European style of the COGs.

Last Few Things

The achievements are all sort of tongue-in-cheek. It offers a bit of comic relief, considering the dark tone and heavy atmosphere of the game itself.

While writing this, the end credits were playing on the TV behind me and I heard a voice. It's Adam Fenix. He's alive. And apparently we misunderstood the assignment...

Gears of War

2026-04-14T00:00:00Z

Part one of playing through the Gears of War series in co-op.

Here We Go Again...

I owned an XBox 360 and played through the first three games back then, but had forgotten almost everything about it. What I didn't forget was the menu music. When the game started up and those first notes floated in the air, a wave of nostalgia made me long for a simpler time.

This is not the original game. We're playing Gears of War: Reloaded on the XBox Series S. It runs at a buttery smooth 4k 120Hz and has cross-platform online co-op, which is how we're playing this particular iteration of the series.

Here's the weird thing: The remake feels half-baked. Especially in the graphics. The character models are higher detail, explosions and animations look better, but a lot of the environment is still low poly. Areas just outside the playfield are reduced to a flat plane with a texture unrecognisably stretched across it. Sometimes when the game was too vague about our next objective, I could spot which door to open because it was the only door with newer textures.

Besides cool explosions, it doesn't look like much attention was paid to the lighting system. Everything seems darker and moodier. Maybe because it's HDR now? I didn't check. Often times I hear an enemy near me, but only know where they are when they shoot. Was the game always this dark? And then you'll be walking down a dark hallways and a crate shines at you like it's in full sun.

The game was known in its time as "an ocean of brown", which it still mostly is but now with "4k mud and dust". I don't mind it. It fits the feeling of the game and helps the COGs and Locust stand out a little bit.

But all that aside, damn that framerate makes a difference. The original game was 30fps, which was standard at the time. The characters felt heavy and sluggish. Now at a higher framerate, they still feel heavy but more responsive. The camera turns faster, even if it still takes a while to do a full turn. It's impossible to directly compare without an original console, as the original game gets an FPS boost on modern consoles.

Now let's get into the actual game.

The Story

It feels like narrative driven railroad games were popular during this era. Halo, Bioshock, Uncharted... All games focused on a well crafted story. I wouldn't quite call it an interactive movie, there's much more gameplay than that, but there's definitely a sense of "we're playing through a story from beginning to end."

The story itself is pretty good actually, if male fantasy super soldiers mowing down faceless enemies is your thing. Four (occasionally six, sometimes two) guys with disproportionately large limbs and tiny heads walk into any situation and shoot their way out. It reminds me of Ultramarines in the Warhammer 40k universe. The story is fine though. It progresses at a good pace and there are some nice developments that makes it interesting to see what comes next. But man they talk a lot...

There's been an opinion online of late, where modern "for streaming" movies and shows will have characters say what's going on over and over because the content is most likely being consumed absent-mindedly while doing something else. But clearly attention span was a problem 20 years ago too. Marcus discovers a thing, Marcus discusses thing with Dom. Marcus radio's Anya to tell her the thing they discovered and what they're doing about it.

Seriously, after finishing this campaign we started ending phone calls with "Delta out."

During all this talking, a few hints are dropped about why Marcus starts the game in prison. Something about trying to save his dad, getting a court-martial and a lifetime prison sentence. Right up until Dom is sent to fetch him, presumably because after 14 years they're run out of soldiers. I think Dom mentions his wife once or twice but that's it in terms of back story. The character that gets the most back story is Cole, who was an "NFL-but-future" player. Other than that, the characters are sort of flat.

Anthony Carmine is fun, up until he gets taken out by a sniper while trying to fix his gun in the middle of a firefight... The only reason I mention him, is because I've played the other games in the series and know the legacy of the Carmine family.

Arguably the most interesting is the appearance of an enigmatic woman figure at the end of the game. Turns out it was her voice earlier, and she seems to be in charge. She speaks prophetically about the future of the war, but her identity isn't revealed. Foreshadowing!

Level Design

Levels basically boil down to combat arenas with a bunch of chest high walls and stuff, connected to each other by hallways or stairscases. A lot of the time you still have to fight your way through these narrow parts, but as you walk into a room and see the shapes you think "oh this looks like a fight" and then the Locust appear. They all have slight differences though. Things block specific paths, enemies need to find a path around things, elevation changes make it difficult to shoot people, or troika turrets lay down cover fire. Sometimes there are methods of flanking or outmaneuvreing enemies that can be quite fun if you spot them, and this is also where the ammo and interesting guns are.

Even though it's a bunch of fights followed by a bunch of fights with some talking in between, it's interesting enough to keep going and unless you're paying attention to narrative breaks, the game sort of just wants you to keep playing.

Enemies

There's some enemy variety, but when you're playing it almost doesn't matter. Most of the basic guys are just "if it moves, shoot it." Wretches are easy but they're kinda quick. Drones, Scouts, Snipers and Grenadiers all take about the same amount of shooting to kill. The Boomers, Grinders and Reavers actually require a little planning to take out, especially when they show up halfway through a fight and you're already overwhelmed. But focus fire on them, then get back to the hordes, and you'll be fine.

The trick is to close emergence holes as soon as possible. By getting a grenade in there, you stop enemies spawning. But the emergence hole is usually way at the back, so you either need to be really good at lobbing grenades, or you have to break cover and hope you make it back before they mow you down. When you do get downed, there's a chance the other player can save you. It means they're breaking cover to do so, and if they go down it's game over, but there's a chance.

If you decide to stand your ground and just fight them off, eventually they will stop spawning. So you can just wait them out. This does mean you'll run out of ammo for your favourite gun and will have to start using the Locus Hammerburst, which is actually pretty good once you get used to it.

Towards the end of the game the Lambent are introduced. Basically same enemy but goes boom when it dies. And they glow yellow. They mostly happen in confined spaces, which make them difficult to dodge, but the way health works in Gears of War makes it annoying more than difficult. As long as a couple of them don't hit you in rapid succession, you'll be fine.

Then there's the set piece bosses that actually take a little planning, like the Berserker. At first the game didn't explain the objective, unless it was in dialogue and I missed it because of all the other talking... It took a few tries before we realised the Berserker needs to break pillars, that lets in sunlight, that makes the Hammer of Dawn work. When the game made a point of "Press Y to look at the important thing," this would've been the perfect opportunity to do exactly that.

The fight with the Brumak feels like an arcade shooter. Just do what the characters shout at each other nad you'll beat it no problem.

RAAM (apparently it's always all-caps) was little interesting . The lead up to the fight was a series of small battles on a moving train heading towards the front, which is cool. The last save point is in a traincar just before RAAM, with some guns and ammo. Why do I know this? Because we had to retry a bunch of times to figure out his attack patterns and what we needed to do. Once we did figure it out, he's not such a bad boss fight. The battle carries on long enough to feel a sense of achievement when he dies, nicely wrapping up the game.

Gameplay

Gameplay boils down to "shoot things until they stop shooting back, then go press a button". This isn't terrible though, once again because you know what you're getting into. We're mostly here for the story. The shooting is really fun and well executed. The active reload system even makes reloading into a little timing test, that feels good when you get it just right. It just feels awesome.

The roadie run is an odd choice. You can't sprint like in other games. If you "roadie run" the camera hunkers down with you and shakes as you move marginally faster. It makes sense for Gears because the low position keeps you in cover as you move forward, and stopping against a barrier puts you in cover immediately, but I wish I could just turn a corner a little sharper. I've seen semi-trucks take a sharper turn than this dude.

Multiplayer?

I joined the XBox 360 generation around 2009, about halfway through its run. Because Gears of War 2 was already out, I just played the story of the first game to get to the second game. Now, twenty years later, we're playing these games specifically for the story. If there even is a multiplayer scene, I don't have the time or interest for it.

Verdict

It was a fun 8 or 9 hours. We didn't bother reading any of the lore we unlocked, which would probably add to the lore if we took the time. It's a cool universe that hints at world building yet to be discovered. Everything seems consistent in design. We have our four main characters of which two are clearly the slightly more core characters (because you get to control them duh) and we're ready for the next one.

Starter Villain

2026-04-10T00:00:00Z

There's a romance to the idea that the world is going about its daily life, blissfully unaware of an entire society living in parallel. That feeling of "if only they knew" is satisfying. Being one of the chosen few in the know, creates a sense of privilege and belonging. Thus the popularity of shows like Supernatural or Buffy.

In this novel it happens in waves:

Cats can talk. Well some cats. Also they're smart, have their own computers, sometimes own property and have been manipulating you for years.
There's an entire network of supervillains operating basically in plain sight, your uncle was one of them (but like, the cool rebellious one) and now you've taken his place. No further questions.
Not only do supervillains exist, but governments hire them for protection. Like the Mafia if the Mafia was a Bond villain.
Literal volcano base, and secret society meetings with normal business people attending, not realising (mostly) what's going on. Attendance mandatory.
Dolphins, on the whole, are assholes.

Each time one of these revelations happens, there's another level of "but what if it's real" happening in my head, and that's very compelling. If Charlie is in on it, what if it's real and I'm just not in on it... Also, is the cat watching me?...

There's a problem with this though. Once the premise settles in, and the feeling of the awesome new concept wears off, there needs to be substance. I feel that's where this novel falls a little flat. The story is fine. There are stakes and they do indeed raise and then resolves. Part of the resolution is due to character flaws that seem like a weakness but turn out to be a strength. Character development go brrr. But it feels like the story could've sort of happened with anyone, it just happened to be Charlie. It's fun that we get to experience it through the eyes of a sarcastic know-it-all, which is something...

Maybe I'm too critical. Thing is, it's hilarious. Scalzi is very sharp. The dialogue is witty and moves quickly. Characters are always ready with that perfect retort that you wish you'd thought of.

If you live in or near Chicago I'm guessing this would be good to read. Specific streets are mentioned, which I guess would amplify the feeling of "among us" if you're familiar with Chicago... I'm not so it doesn't, but worth mentioning.

The Verdict

It's a very entertaining read, and doesn't overstay its welcome (it's under 250 pages) but it's probably not grown-breaking. Good introduction to John Scalzi if you're new. Not a waste of time, but not going to change your outlook on life... except maybe look at your cats differently...

Project Hail Mary

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Full disclosure, I read the book in 2023 and listened to the audiobook last year (2025).

Besides knowing what's going to happen for the most part, it's amazing to see it presented in such a visually stunning way. Once you know the broad strokes of the story, you're not watching to see what happens, you're watching to see how they interpreted the material differently from how you did. Obviously the movie looks incredible, even just watching the trailer would've told you that. But the editing has some cool details.

When a flashback begins, it takes the camera a moment to stop floating and settle down. Almost like you need to wait for your head to stop spinning. Returning to the present is much more abrupt, but are often masterful match cuts. Ryland's shoes on Earth cutting to the same, now more tarnished, shoes on the Hail Mary. A little deep sea diver figurine at the bottom of a fish tank cuts to Ryland in his space suit. That sort of thing. Every time it happened I caught myself thinking "oh that was a nice cut."

The Sound

Wow the sound! Firstly, there was a score through most of the movie but it's so subtle and composed (haha) that I didn't notice it for most of the movie. You feel the music instead of hearing it. Except of course when it's karaoke night, then obviously there's music, but you know what I mean. There are a few major set pieces where the sound design does some heavy lifting.

During the first contact scene we see from Ryland's POV inside the helmet, hearing the sound of his rapid breathing. The thunks and scrapes of the suit are reverberations through the suit, because outside there's no air so outside there's no sound. I saw several people in the cinema sit forward in anticipation.

During the Adrian mission, when the thing bonks him in the head. The sudden impact made me wince and cry out, and I wasn't the only one. Same when the pilot seat comes loose and flies forward, which was a dramatic moment even in writing. The timing, the editing and the sound design absolutely nails what it feels like when something like that happens to you.

And lest we forget the explosion. Casual conversation, people walking, hey what's that flash in the background? Then the shock wave hits, and then the sound follows. Or was it the other way around? Either way, there's just enough time to think "oh shit" before it hits. And it's not a boom to be all dramatic like in other movies, it sounds like a real explosion; Just a bunch of air assaulting your ears. Panic and confusion ensues, as one would expect, camera all over the place. Slowly we figure out what's happened and the implications towards the mission. It's such a good scene.

So... Rocky

Probably have to talk about this at some point... Apparently a lot of design went into the character long before they even though about how it would be brought to screen. Yet it ends up looking pretty much how I expected it to look. Could be that Andy Weir describes it more from a functional point of view rather than aesthetics, although he does explain the mottled rocky exterior at some point, but I saw Rocky in one of the later trailers and thought to myself "yep, that's it, no notes". That feeling persisted through most of the movie.

It must be really tricky to give a personality to something that doesn't have a face... His movements and voice does an amazing job of portraying a highly intelligent creature frustrated with its inability to communicate effectively. I don't know what text-to-speech engine Ryland's laptop has, but there's a crazy range of emotion in that digital voice. Don't care, it works.

Page to Screen

The casting was pretty good. When I saw a trailer with Ryan Gosling it took a moment for my head canon to update, but after that it was fine. I guess this is just what Ryland Grace looks like... Again, it could be that he was deliberately left vague in the book. Same for Stratt; I don't think I had a mental picture of the character until Sandra Hüller "became" Stratt in my head.

The movie has some major differences plot-wise from the book. Obviously you have to condense the story for the sake of time; A novel is enough story for a season or more of a series, so things must be cut. The way Ryland wakes up at the beginning of the movie was clearly shortened from the original. The first few chapters of the book has Ryland literally relearning how to speak before the hatch would even open, followed by experiments to figure out why gravity is weird. It's fun to read and makes the character likeable and relatable, but the movie doesn't have time for all that: Open hatch, big window, "My God, it's full of stars!"

In the book there's a whole story arch about a genetic reason certain people can't survive extended hibernation, which is why Ryland was the only suitable replacement astronaut. In the movie it's pretty obvious it has to be him, even before they justify it to him.

And then there's a couple things they changed for aesthetics that I don't mind, but don't really understand why. The biggest change is how the ship centrifuge works. There's actually a drawing of it in the book, that makes it into a "bolo scheme" (Seveneves reference). In the movie the middle section moves out, which is fine, and then turns 90° which... wait... so now every room in the ship has two floors; One for thrust gravity and another for centrifugal gravity? But when you think about it, Rocky is supposed to roll around inside the ship, which wouldn't make sense if the ship was mostly vertical like in the book. Yet you never question it while reading because it doesn't affect the narrative.

Oh also! They connect up and spin so they can both have gravity! I don't think that's a thing in the book. They keep having to stop the spinning to do stuff. Which makes sense, I guess. But that monstrosity of the two ships spinning in space feels very lopsided. I guess Rocky's ship, being made from xenonite, we don't know how much it ways so we can't verify the physics... but it looks weird...

Last major change I can think of, although I've probably missed some, is Carl.

Carl

In written fiction there are ancillary characters that progress the plot. This is a known thing and it's not a problem because you can spend several pages getting to know these characters and it makes sense for them to be there. In a movie you don't have that kind of time, so often a whole bunch of ancillary characters can be rolled into one supporting character that we can get to know a little more. In the case of Project Hail Mary, I think that's what Carl does.

In a way Carl represents "the rest of humanity". He's close enough to the project that there's a reason for him to interact with Ryland, but far enough removed that he's not "one of the specialists". He's human enough that we can see how the end of the world is going to affect him, but because we know the character he's not just one of the millions of people on TV. He makes the rest of humanity relatable, helping us process the inevitable end of the world on a more direct, personal level.

The Verdict

They managed to turn an 8/10 book with a 9/10 audiobook into a 7/10 movie. It's a great movie and I can't imagine anyone would regret watching it. We need more approachable science fiction movies that don't shy away from the science for the sake of "mass appeal". As soon as it's available on streaming I'll be watching it a couple more times.