I’m just starting to think you’re an alternate account/alter-ego I made because I see you in every type of media I enjoy whether it’s video games, random history/science or even music ffs. Basically what I’m saying is that I’m literally Joe from fight club and you’re my Tyler Durden.
Marcus got that scar on his face at the slab. A guard wanted to kill him so had dogs try to kill him. He would’ve died but got saved by one of the coolest characters in gears. Theres plenty of vids about the comic and its awesome
Gears 1 has an aesthetic and style I’ve not seen since it’s release. Gears 2, while being undeniably great, dropped this style, which fine as it had to change. The style I refer to is it’s gothic-military shooter style and world. There is no massive armies, the COG are completely desperate, the locust even move in small groups but have more superiority. The gothic style is evident, all building are memorials or churches dedicated to wars. The locust have a complete mystery to them and because of the graphics they look very ominous. They are actually scary to face. Boogeymen with heavy uncanny and machine vibes. They are so gritty in their uniforms and scrap weapons. The hollow creatures of war add to it heavily. The kryll are criminally underused. The section with the kryll is iconic and gives such a oppressive feel. I remember moving slowly in the dark and being terrified to even stand in anything shadow like. Our COG characters are forced to rely and haggle with homeless groups that are even more desperate and scrap than both of the main factions mentioned. What a game.
I agree, especially about the kryll. That was one of the main things that had me scared shitless playing the game just seeing how fast they come in and kill in the dark.
After watching this, I’m about to replay the entire series. I never played all the way through anything after 3 and Judgement. I started 4 and got bored or uninterested part of the way through. But after watching this series I wanna play them all and start from the top
Actually you don't have to wait the 3rd game to know why marcus is a convict. It was explain in the manual. Actually a lot of the context of this game is explain in the story chapter in the manual (kinda like the 1st halo) which I think is a meh decision. I actually like the decision of the game to not really focus on story, it really reinforce the impression you join an already 14 years old war. But still,don't put important story element in the manual only.
Yeah i think one of my main gripes of this series is that alot of context, whether really important or not is left out entirely unknown to the player unless they knew to go look or just have the interest to do so.
The story for the first game is probably the roughest of the trilogy, because it has to get its footing, and at least kinda does so, enough to make people play and love Gears 2 and 3 as much as they do, I know I do. But yea, kind of rough if the solution ends up being rock that the Locust have a hard time getting through.
I remember wen I firstly encountered the Berserker. Just say that just like Gears 5 I was happy to get it over with and hoped to never fight one again.
Gears judgment makes some of Baird's dialogue not make sense. Like after Kim dies he's upset that Marcus gets promoted and not him. Like homeboy bombed a city and got demoted he knows why he doesn't have rank anymore
Knowing the reason why you don't get something can still leave you pissed to the point of venting your anger out loud with the right circumstances. Plus, he bombed that city so that Karn wouldn't destroy even more of the city AND kill everyone along the way, a fairly good reason that nobody cares to hear from him for years on end.
But overall, I think the biggest revelation for the entirety of Gears is that you're not actually good guys. Every COG character you play as is technically a soldier for a quasi-fascist regime, and while they do have redeeming characteristics and can even be relatable, in the end you're literally just a cog in the machine, which ends up breaking by Gears 3 as the Lambent attack and you still end up saving the world. If you look at the world they built here through that lense, it explains the grimdark opressive brown look to everything and why their judicial system is so cruel
Not sure if it's fascist - it could be, if it's sufficiently socialist and controls every business. The COG strikes me more as a corrupt republic, like the modern USA (but without the gulags and persecution of political opposition)
@@ericlamb4501the thing is that when you run out of stamina on this game, it gets on a cooldown and you have to wait for like 5 seconds to run again, if your running ever gets canceled in the later games, you just press A and start running again
The stamina was only on the campaign. I can see why some never noticed it too much if you played it a ton online like I did. I played this game so many times before the second came out and played it online nearly everyday. The hype for gears 2 was so high, and you felt it from everyone in the online lobbies.
The bodies at the start hanging up in the prison. They were killed by the psych prisoners. Released by a guard in the hope they would kill Marcus and it would look like a simple dispute between prisoners. Because the guard hated him but was threatened by Hoffman with being drafted into the army if marcus was killed.This was because Marcus father had been kidnapped by them and forced to work for them and he wouldn’t have done so if Marcus was killed. Marcus would have been executed rather than jailed actually if it wasn’t for this arrangement. Good video
Respectfully I'm fairly certain the bodes WERE the psych patients. In their book, "The Slab" it is the gang boss who ordered the butchering of the psych patients. Although I could be missing details or simply mistaken.
Dom saying "We should use the Hammer of Dawn all the time," still works after the 'retcon' because now it seems like Dom's trying to lighten the mood ("imagine if we had it easy all the time"), but Kim misses the joke and spends the next thirty minutes explaining shit the squad already knows. Typical officer, heh. Same with Marcus saying the courthouse was full of "A lot of lies, too." Marcus felt his trial was justified, but he's anti-authoritarian and a student of history. And Kim, who *knows* Marcus' trial was legal, tells him he doesn't deserve to speak. I guess that says a lot about Susan O'Connor's and Karen Traviss' writing talents. I never really thought about how Anya controls the carts. She must be using JACK to plug into systems. And speaking of bots, you've made me finally go "Wait WTF" about the geobots over a decade after the fact... Weird how they're never seen or written about again, and don't even become a collectible in future games. Never failed the part with the 30-second timer and Brumak, except when Boomers killed me, but I agree that we should've seen the Brumak more clearly. It's also true that the Locust AI lose some accuracy when you're running past them, but I think that's because they're less accurate when they're offscreen (for balancing). And their inaccuracy makes sense here, because it's almost always the Locust doing the charging while Gears play defense. MACV-SOG legend, Lynn Black, won a silver star by having his men charge through a Viet-Cong ambush to escape it. I recommend listening to that saga on the Jocko Willink podcast (ep. 247), the survivors only lived because of insane badassery, endurance, and coincidental luck. (but you're definitely overthinking the Cole and Baird stuff with the mansion; those two are the fastest boys alive, plus they were probably the ones who barricaded some of the back doors on their way out) Gotta say, this is one of the most thought-provoking deep dives into Gears I've ever seen. Good job, dude. Several of your criticisms were fixed in Gears UE, like Baird finding the geobot, the Berserker jumping onto the train (BTW I've never seen that girl get *launched* so far outside my own footage, perfection), and a timer forcing Delta One to jump on the train. I will say that the friendly health and A.I. scales with difficulty, just like enemy A.I., meaning Dom is tougher and smarter on Insane than he is on Hardcore. Also, the squad command system works if you experiment, but the finicky bugginess makes it not worth it. Well done. I'm really looking forward to your retrospective on the third game. Hopefully, I don't annoy you with these walls of texts, but man, you really get the gears turning in my head like my brother did. And long-form videos like these are hard to pull off, so you earned this level of my attention.
Thanks man! I do these to just talk about them so your wall of texts are definitely welcome here! I like learning more about these things so this was awesome.
I think the whole “you’d think we’d figure out some kind of goddamn defense by now” line is not talking about weapons to kill grubs when they come out, but rather how to prevent those holes from popping up *in the first place.* Sure they can kill grubs when they come up, but finding out how to somehow keep those holes and the grubs from coming to the surface whenever they want is the real concern. Prevent the Locust from coming up, prevent any unnecessary fighting as a result. That’s how I view that line anyway.
Yeah thats what i meant by defense for them coming out the ground. Something similar to those defense hole covers in Judgement's overrun mode. Maybe not as practical cause youd have to go and place those covers at every hole but something like that. Preventing them from coming up is for sure a difficult problem to tackle in general especially with a decimated population
@@willmelvin2351 thats just a simple gameplay mechanic though. lore wise theres literally nothing stopping them from just coming up wherever the want, im pretty sure
@@willmelvin2351 The Seal thingies in judgement prove what Dom said more, because they were fairly easy to destroy, and that's assuming they can even get them deployed as you said. If they want to come up, they come up.
This was the only one of the Gears games I played that actually felt like a tactical shooter; even on Casual, you were always punished for not staying in cover, there was a (admittedly, not very well implemented) command mechanic to direct your squad and, unlike the other games (with the exception of a much higher difficulty on those games), really made you feel like you were struggling just to get more territory from the Locust rather than an action hero who effortlessly mowed them down, further aided by the much darker and grimier tone of the first game. I still love all of the XBOX360-era Gears games, but I just wished they built more on the squad-based mechanics of Gears1 rather than scrap them almost entirely (although admittedly the introduction of AI squad members reviving you in Gears2 was a brilliant idea). Republic Commando a year prior to Gears1 showed us that a squad-based shooter can be done and done really well. :)
Yeah i totally agree. Especially with AI being able to revive teamates in later games, thats def something that was a good improvement in terms of squad-based format, is sad we couldnt see more improvements on commands, would be cool to get them to flank or something like that
new to your channel and i love your commentary. some people you can tell they’re reading a script but your videos feel like someone talking to me. like your my friend telling me bout a game you’re genuinely interested in. and i love the little editors notes you do, like the one when raam dies
I want you to do a retrospective of the second game please 🙏 The only thing I have to ask you is talk about some of the icebergs that these games have on an off side point of the game or community but besides that this was sooolid
Because I'm basically giving out factoids like candy I want to share at least three things on why Gears is Gears. First off, why go underground? There's an answer to that. As Cliff states it: "I was so used to the Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich kind of alien invaders. They're gonna blow up the White house. First off, we're not going to do this shit on Earth, we're going to make it its own planet, you know. It worked for Lucas clearly, and I want them to have been from the underground." and, "The idea was that the underground of Sera was alot like the deep sea of their world, and they don't understand like what's actually down there." Why do the characters look like Arnold from the 80s? The distinctive physique of what would ultimately become the members of Delta Squad and the rest of the COG Army wasn't intentionally over the top and massive. It was instead something that happened more organically and it fit in with some of the gameplay, and the rest of Epic's designers were toying with. To quote Cliff himself, "I never gave an executive order as the designer/design director to give me the biggest, toughest buff motherfuckers you can. Kevin Lanning was an amazing character modeler. He started building these characters with Jerry O'Flaherty, and they just wound up brick shithouses and I said, 'Okay, they look cool slamming into the wall. Let's just go with that'. And the most important question why do they have those circular plates on their chest? When they were creating COG Gear designs they wanted to make them stick out otherwise they'd look like just another space marine faction, so they gave their chestplates two circular plates at the front end.
Wow these were some nice tidbits to read, thanks for that! I always loved that they were just massive af in their design. Always seemed to make sense to me seeing how their world is. Shit the locust match them in buffness too
My question is how could they have a defense against the Locust popping up from anywhere? How could you defend against that? I mean what if they just pop up in a building, how could you prepare for that? That's why the locust were such a dangerous enemy.
Yeah you’re right, someone else said the same thing and after seeing theirs and your comment I wonder why I asked that question in the first place lmao. I wouldn’t know how to defend against them popping up randomly, and e day is gonna capture that fear so well I hope so that’ll be exciting to see in action
4:09 the reason Dom would have gotten in trouble for rescuing marcus is that even though Hoffman pardoned everyone, in the fluff he considers saving marcus to be too risky to do with the assets he had, which Dom went against anyway.
Gears 1 will always be one of those beautiful and extraordinary games that I was lucky enough to get to play as a child. This game has stuck with me for years and now that i I'm older I can still find new reasons to come back and new details about the story I happen to miss on my other playthroughs. I really like this video man, it was like a stroke of nostalgia came over seeing that thumbnail and title lol! very well done!
Yeah same, I never played the first game when it came out since I was literally a few days old at that point, but after playing it now and seeing just how good the Gears of War series is, I'm ashamed to see how Epic fell bro 😂
when I went back to play through Gears 1, and properly appreciate it, I was surprised at just what kind of nerd stuff it was. How did this game get the weird jock dude-bro reputation it did..
Its not a big delal but its quite a chore to play the OG copy of this game and having to pick between casual and hardcore difficulty solo. Maybe the devs intended you to play coop first try??
Heres my theory they took a car with 30 gas in the system they drove for 20 minutes they ran out of gas they had to jump because of 4 boomers shooting at them they later meet don and Marcus
Underrated channel deserving of more subs for sure! And to answer your question Hoffman pardoned everybody but Marcus because of the grudge he had against him which is why Marcus is on his own in the prison
Bro you really need to read those books cause you find out about alot of crazy shit the COG did to civilians. Stranded hate the COG mostly because they dropping the Hammer of Dawn on populated cities to slow down the Locust after E Day, or you know create the Locust Horde by experimenting on children dying if Rust Lung and accidentally creating the Locust, and dont even get me started on the fucking "breeding camps" the COG ran behind the scenes for a majority of the series (no that was not me exaggerating, the COG ran, and i quote, "Birthing Creches", that all fertile women were forced to join in order to repopulate during the Locust War, i cant even begin to say all the fucked up shit that happened in these places without getting banned off TH-cam). If I was a Civilian on the Planet id rather be an Outsider or Stranded than take my chances with the COG, which is crazy cause living on Sera's already bad enough, you got Razor Hail in the Winter, Krill every night, Lightning Flares in the Fall, Leviathans living in the oceans, and the list just goes on and being in the COG doesnt prevent you from any of that. All they do is give you some half assed armor that blocks your field of Vision and doesn't stop a bullet from blowing your brains out, RIP Anthony you will be missed, barely any training on how to fight or reload properly, RIP Benjamin you will also be missed, and a gun that loves to jam constantly, RIP Anthony AGAIN, if thats all im getting out of the COG i might as well take my chances being stranded.
Lmaoo nah you’re right, the cog haven’t prepared anyone for a damn thing. And I’ve read a little about the “breeding” camps I think with someone in the 3rd game, some wild shit from the cog but unfortunately believable.
idk for sure, but i believe to have heard you say pause a couple of times... anyways please please please!!!!!!!! stop cutting out every single second/space between words. this isnt tik tok or ytshorts. I HAD TO KEEP UP sometimes. your vid was great, although i was expecting some sort of review or analysis, this summarized narration of the game was aight. keep it up, i bet your current vids are better!
Lol I hear ya. Trying to get better with that in terms of recording audio, gets difficult but it does get better in the later videos and I’m gonna keep improving! Thanks for the feedback!
This was my first 360 game, my sisters friend bought me the triple pack during 2011, so I was very late coming into the series. Looking at the back of the cover, seeing a screenshot of Marcus chainsaw dueling Skorge, I was imagining this game as some crazy dark scary series. Only to realize that, ehhh it kind of is but I definitely didn’t expect the locust to have guns haha. Very fond of the gears series.
I am not shitting anyone here, the reason general raam can control the kryll is because he is built different, he was not custom made by the queen, he is a drone like any other, just somehow is bigger
Went to watch the 3rd gears video but you let me know you had vids for the first two. So I guess I’ve got a few hours of gears vids to watch. Hell yeah
So... Has anyone played this on Series X? This game feels so smooth with that boosted framerate. Also, it still holds up! It's honestly the definitive cover-based third person shooter, not to mention that gothic sci-fi style is to die for with the designs being perfectly balanced when it comes to functionality and cool factor. EDIT: I should note that although Resident Evil 4 was an influence, the main inspiration was Kill Switch, so much so you could consider it a refined spiritual sequel to that game. Kill Switch provided the gameplay, Resident Evil 4 provided the over the shoulder perspective and gothic artstyle.
I will say, while a lot of historical detail is missing from this game, the topic of Marcus’ “betrayal” and subsequent trial and prison time is captured excellently in the books written by Karen Traviss. Specifically the Slab. There are others going over the operation at Aspho Fields and the aftermath of Jacinto’s fall as well. Very good series, highly recommend.
I had the same thing happen with the brumak, I actually got fed up and stopped playing for a month or so till I tried again, finally I just got annoyed and stopped trying and just ran through the all the enemies and realized wait I actually beat it. I was like 9 though when it came out lmao
The stranded centered missions in gears 1 are my favorite missions in any shooter of all time. I remember thinking the final stand with the lost was like if gears of war had its own battle for helms deep lol
My first introduction to this game was the corpser boss fight when playing it on my older cousins xbox. When my younger cousin was cheering for me when I finally killed it after so many attempts.
Hey man loved your video. Hoping to check out the rest of your Gears of war retrospective videos. Small criticism I can offer that may or may not be a big deal but I just couldn't help but notice how many times you would mention something only to say more on that later. Doing it a few times is all well and good but I think it's best to avoid it when possible, perhaps with structure or specific segments. I dunno, just an observation. Loved this video regardless and I'm definitely going to check out the rest.
Sorry saw this comment couple days ago but forgot to reply! Thanks for the feedback man, I’m trying out a new method of separate parts for the gears 5 video cause you’re right, I realized I’d say some stuff to mention it later and I may forget or the writing feels less structured. Tried doing a better job of this in 4’s video, but in 5 it should be a bit better!
6:50 Why do you say "for 14 years they've not had a single idea for a countermeasure" when they just before say that "command's tried everything, but nothing works"? So they _do have ideas_, and they try them, but _nothing works_
16:46 the Kryll actually do return in Raams shadow dlc for gears of war 3. RAAM used a Tremor(boomer variant) to summon Seeders throughout the city so that they could use their Nemacyst to ink the skies, accelerating the time of arrival of the Kryllstorm
True they do, I meant more so that the kryll stop appearing after the events that take place in this game and we dont have any more sections where we have to avoid being in the dark since RAAMs shadow takes place before this game.
Also, about the Hammer of Dawn. It actually needs to be verified at command, as well as have an open sky and satellite in the area, that's why Locust and Stranded can't just use it.
@@willmelvin2351 They also talk about it in Gears 3 when they go to Char, Anna was in the control room with some other people when they called the Hammer down on the city and watched as people got vaporized instantly
Good question lol. Only thing i could think of were the hole covers from Judgement's Overrun mode, but having to do that with every hole wouldnt be worth the effort. Hell, I wouldnt know what to do with them just bussin out the ground like that either lmao
Lmao nah you right they are, I figured i may eventually do a vid on ue so i just stayed with the og graphics. Runs a little better with fps boost on xbox series
I really loved the darker aspect, the feeling of mysteriousness and even the horror vibes that Gears 1 had going for it.
I’m just starting to think you’re an alternate account/alter-ego I made because I see you in every type of media I enjoy whether it’s video games, random history/science or even music ffs.
Basically what I’m saying is that I’m literally Joe from fight club and you’re my Tyler Durden.
@@pinkinthesushilmao that’s what I’m talking about, I see this dude everywhere as well
Marcus got that scar on his face at the slab. A guard wanted to kill him so had dogs try to kill him. He would’ve died but got saved by one of the coolest characters in gears. Theres plenty of vids about the comic and its awesome
I really need to read these books..
The slab
I just want to say, you might be a small channel. However, you are bringing big channel energy. Please keep up the great work bro.
I appreciate it!
Gears 1 has an aesthetic and style I’ve not seen since it’s release. Gears 2, while being undeniably great, dropped this style, which fine as it had to change.
The style I refer to is it’s gothic-military shooter style and world. There is no massive armies, the COG are completely desperate, the locust even move in small groups but have more superiority. The gothic style is evident, all building are memorials or churches dedicated to wars. The locust have a complete mystery to them and because of the graphics they look very ominous. They are actually scary to face. Boogeymen with heavy uncanny and machine vibes. They are so gritty in their uniforms and scrap weapons. The hollow creatures of war add to it heavily.
The kryll are criminally underused. The section with the kryll is iconic and gives such a oppressive feel. I remember moving slowly in the dark and being terrified to even stand in anything shadow like. Our COG characters are forced to rely and haggle with homeless groups that are even more desperate and scrap than both of the main factions mentioned.
What a game.
I agree, especially about the kryll. That was one of the main things that had me scared shitless playing the game just seeing how fast they come in and kill in the dark.
After watching this, I’m about to replay the entire series. I never played all the way through anything after 3 and Judgement. I started 4 and got bored or uninterested part of the way through. But after watching this series I wanna play them all and start from the top
I completely agree with your take on the Theron guard introduction part that shit is definitely harder than the rest of the game
Just remember hearing "lookit all dat Juice!!" on repeat almost here lol
@@willmelvin2351hahaha! Oh man I'm right with you there
Raam pointing at whoever he's going to stab, kinda feels like he is a wrestler taunting his opponent
Actually you don't have to wait the 3rd game to know why marcus is a convict. It was explain in the manual. Actually a lot of the context of this game is explain in the story chapter in the manual (kinda like the 1st halo) which I think is a meh decision. I actually like the decision of the game to not really focus on story, it really reinforce the impression you join an already 14 years old war. But still,don't put important story element in the manual only.
Yeah i think one of my main gripes of this series is that alot of context, whether really important or not is left out entirely unknown to the player unless they knew to go look or just have the interest to do so.
The story for the first game is probably the roughest of the trilogy, because it has to get its footing, and at least kinda does so, enough to make people play and love Gears 2 and 3 as much as they do, I know I do. But yea, kind of rough if the solution ends up being rock that the Locust have a hard time getting through.
Loved 2 and 3 never played the first though
I just finished it yesterday. And Dom is a huge liability!
I remember wen I firstly encountered the Berserker. Just say that just like Gears 5 I was happy to get it over with and hoped to never fight one again.
Man I miss the gnasher/curb stomp combo from the first Gears. B+B+X
Me too man! I almost favor it more lol
Gears judgment makes some of Baird's dialogue not make sense. Like after Kim dies he's upset that Marcus gets promoted and not him. Like homeboy bombed a city and got demoted he knows why he doesn't have rank anymore
True, another contradiction thanks to Judgement lol.
Knowing the reason why you don't get something can still leave you pissed to the point of venting your anger out loud with the right circumstances. Plus, he bombed that city so that Karn wouldn't destroy even more of the city AND kill everyone along the way, a fairly good reason that nobody cares to hear from him for years on end.
24:24 😂😂😂💀💀💀
But overall, I think the biggest revelation for the entirety of Gears is that you're not actually good guys. Every COG character you play as is technically a soldier for a quasi-fascist regime, and while they do have redeeming characteristics and can even be relatable, in the end you're literally just a cog in the machine, which ends up breaking by Gears 3 as the Lambent attack and you still end up saving the world. If you look at the world they built here through that lense, it explains the grimdark opressive brown look to everything and why their judicial system is so cruel
Not sure if it's fascist - it could be, if it's sufficiently socialist and controls every business. The COG strikes me more as a corrupt republic, like the modern USA (but without the gulags and persecution of political opposition)
I never noticed a stamina mechanic
You notice it more often in UE, specially in the brumak boss fight of the extra chapters
Been a while since I played any Gears game but IIRC you can't roadie run forever, there is a limit
@@ericlamb4501the thing is that when you run out of stamina on this game, it gets on a cooldown and you have to wait for like 5 seconds to run again, if your running ever gets canceled in the later games, you just press A and start running again
The stamina was only on the campaign. I can see why some never noticed it too much if you played it a ton online like I did. I played this game so many times before the second came out and played it online nearly everyday. The hype for gears 2 was so high, and you felt it from everyone in the online lobbies.
The bodies at the start hanging up in the prison. They were killed by the psych prisoners. Released by a guard in the hope they would kill Marcus and it would look like a simple dispute between prisoners. Because the guard hated him but was threatened by Hoffman with being drafted into the army if marcus was killed.This was because Marcus father had been kidnapped by them and forced to work for them and he wouldn’t have done so if Marcus was killed. Marcus would have been executed rather than jailed actually if it wasn’t for this arrangement. Good video
Oh wow I didnt know it went that deep even with those two guys thats interesting! Seems I really need to read the books then
Respectfully I'm fairly certain the bodes WERE the psych patients. In their book, "The Slab" it is the gang boss who ordered the butchering of the psych patients. Although I could be missing details or simply mistaken.
@@fatalstudios7211 You could be right yeah 👍
I thought it was prescott who threatened the prison staff, not Hoffman.
Dom saying "We should use the Hammer of Dawn all the time," still works after the 'retcon' because now it seems like Dom's trying to lighten the mood ("imagine if we had it easy all the time"), but Kim misses the joke and spends the next thirty minutes explaining shit the squad already knows. Typical officer, heh. Same with Marcus saying the courthouse was full of "A lot of lies, too." Marcus felt his trial was justified, but he's anti-authoritarian and a student of history. And Kim, who *knows* Marcus' trial was legal, tells him he doesn't deserve to speak. I guess that says a lot about Susan O'Connor's and Karen Traviss' writing talents.
I never really thought about how Anya controls the carts. She must be using JACK to plug into systems. And speaking of bots, you've made me finally go "Wait WTF" about the geobots over a decade after the fact... Weird how they're never seen or written about again, and don't even become a collectible in future games.
Never failed the part with the 30-second timer and Brumak, except when Boomers killed me, but I agree that we should've seen the Brumak more clearly. It's also true that the Locust AI lose some accuracy when you're running past them, but I think that's because they're less accurate when they're offscreen (for balancing). And their inaccuracy makes sense here, because it's almost always the Locust doing the charging while Gears play defense. MACV-SOG legend, Lynn Black, won a silver star by having his men charge through a Viet-Cong ambush to escape it. I recommend listening to that saga on the Jocko Willink podcast (ep. 247), the survivors only lived because of insane badassery, endurance, and coincidental luck.
(but you're definitely overthinking the Cole and Baird stuff with the mansion; those two are the fastest boys alive, plus they were probably the ones who barricaded some of the back doors on their way out)
Gotta say, this is one of the most thought-provoking deep dives into Gears I've ever seen. Good job, dude. Several of your criticisms were fixed in Gears UE, like Baird finding the geobot, the Berserker jumping onto the train (BTW I've never seen that girl get *launched* so far outside my own footage, perfection), and a timer forcing Delta One to jump on the train. I will say that the friendly health and A.I. scales with difficulty, just like enemy A.I., meaning Dom is tougher and smarter on Insane than he is on Hardcore. Also, the squad command system works if you experiment, but the finicky bugginess makes it not worth it.
Well done. I'm really looking forward to your retrospective on the third game. Hopefully, I don't annoy you with these walls of texts, but man, you really get the gears turning in my head like my brother did. And long-form videos like these are hard to pull off, so you earned this level of my attention.
Thanks man! I do these to just talk about them so your wall of texts are definitely welcome here! I like learning more about these things so this was awesome.
Just skimmed over Carmines death like that sniper never sniped!
That uv light car part is so hard on insane
That part was so difficult for no reason lol
I found that part pretty easy on insanity tbh. I was on solo and all.
@@groggywater2006That part was fairly easy for me too tbh, Act 2 is actually where I had my lowest number of deaths 😂
I don't know how I beat it in co-op with my dad. We just accepted it back then lmao
I think the whole “you’d think we’d figure out some kind of goddamn defense by now” line is not talking about weapons to kill grubs when they come out, but rather how to prevent those holes from popping up *in the first place.*
Sure they can kill grubs when they come up, but finding out how to somehow keep those holes and the grubs from coming to the surface whenever they want is the real concern. Prevent the Locust from coming up, prevent any unnecessary fighting as a result. That’s how I view that line anyway.
Yeah thats what i meant by defense for them coming out the ground. Something similar to those defense hole covers in Judgement's overrun mode. Maybe not as practical cause youd have to go and place those covers at every hole but something like that. Preventing them from coming up is for sure a difficult problem to tackle in general especially with a decimated population
@@willmelvin2351 thats just a simple gameplay mechanic though. lore wise theres literally nothing stopping them from just coming up wherever the want, im pretty sure
@@willmelvin2351 The Seal thingies in judgement prove what Dom said more, because they were fairly easy to destroy, and that's assuming they can even get them deployed as you said. If they want to come up, they come up.
This was the only one of the Gears games I played that actually felt like a tactical shooter; even on Casual, you were always punished for not staying in cover, there was a (admittedly, not very well implemented) command mechanic to direct your squad and, unlike the other games (with the exception of a much higher difficulty on those games), really made you feel like you were struggling just to get more territory from the Locust rather than an action hero who effortlessly mowed them down, further aided by the much darker and grimier tone of the first game. I still love all of the XBOX360-era Gears games, but I just wished they built more on the squad-based mechanics of Gears1 rather than scrap them almost entirely (although admittedly the introduction of AI squad members reviving you in Gears2 was a brilliant idea). Republic Commando a year prior to Gears1 showed us that a squad-based shooter can be done and done really well. :)
Yeah i totally agree. Especially with AI being able to revive teamates in later games, thats def something that was a good improvement in terms of squad-based format, is sad we couldnt see more improvements on commands, would be cool to get them to flank or something like that
new to your channel and i love your commentary. some people you can tell they’re reading a script but your videos feel like someone talking to me. like your my friend telling me bout a game you’re genuinely interested in. and i love the little editors notes you do, like the one when raam dies
I want you to do a retrospective of the second game please 🙏
The only thing I have to ask you is talk about some of the icebergs that these games have on an off side point of the game or community but besides that this was sooolid
Oh of course! Just started working on the second game just yesterday!
Underrated channel. Quality content
I don't remember much but "Look at all that JUICE!" and "There's shit everywhere!" have been at the back of my mind for years.
That juice line I think is forever stuck in my head with how many times I was on that part lmao
How does this guy not have more subs?
I am so in love with this story and timeline, everything about it. It’s crazy
14:19 i think since marcus is in the prison, he doesnt know about the kryll and dom knows the kryll since he mentions kryll
Interesting my, don’t think I noticed that
Because I'm basically giving out factoids like candy I want to share at least three things on why Gears is Gears.
First off, why go underground? There's an answer to that. As Cliff states it: "I was so used to the Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich kind of alien invaders. They're gonna blow up the White house. First off, we're not going to do this shit on Earth, we're going to make it its own planet, you know. It worked for Lucas clearly, and I want them to have been from the underground." and, "The idea was that the underground of Sera was alot like the deep sea of their world, and they don't understand like what's actually down there."
Why do the characters look like Arnold from the 80s? The distinctive physique of what would ultimately become the members of Delta Squad and the rest of the COG Army wasn't intentionally over the top and massive. It was instead something that happened more organically and it fit in with some of the gameplay, and the rest of Epic's designers were toying with. To quote Cliff himself, "I never gave an executive order as the designer/design director to give me the biggest, toughest buff motherfuckers you can. Kevin Lanning was an amazing character modeler. He started building these characters with Jerry O'Flaherty, and they just wound up brick shithouses and I said, 'Okay, they look cool slamming into the wall. Let's just go with that'.
And the most important question why do they have those circular plates on their chest? When they were creating COG Gear designs they wanted to make them stick out otherwise they'd look like just another space marine faction, so they gave their chestplates two circular plates at the front end.
Wow these were some nice tidbits to read, thanks for that!
I always loved that they were just massive af in their design. Always seemed to make sense to me seeing how their world is. Shit the locust match them in buffness too
@@willmelvin2351 Given what happens in the Gears of War: E-Day trailer they might go back to what the Locust were suppose to be.
My question is how could they have a defense against the Locust popping up from anywhere? How could you defend against that? I mean what if they just pop up in a building, how could you prepare for that? That's why the locust were such a dangerous enemy.
Yeah you’re right, someone else said the same thing and after seeing theirs and your comment I wonder why I asked that question in the first place lmao. I wouldn’t know how to defend against them popping up randomly, and e day is gonna capture that fear so well I hope so that’ll be exciting to see in action
4:09 the reason Dom would have gotten in trouble for rescuing marcus is that even though Hoffman pardoned everyone, in the fluff he considers saving marcus to be too risky to do with the assets he had, which Dom went against anyway.
That man Dom is a real one
Gears 1 will always be one of those beautiful and extraordinary games that I was lucky enough to get to play as a child. This game has stuck with me for years and now that i
I'm older I can still find new reasons to come back and new details about the story I happen to miss on my other playthroughs. I really like this video man, it was like a stroke of nostalgia came over seeing that thumbnail and title lol! very well done!
When I first played this i was like "i beg your pardon, epic games?"
Yeah same, I never played the first game when it came out since I was literally a few days old at that point, but after playing it now and seeing just how good the Gears of War series is, I'm ashamed to see how Epic fell bro 😂
@@83ATwo exactly I'm like "how did epic make this" bc they made Fortnite
Lmao I think this everytime Im reminded Epic made Fortnite
@@SquifferMain ong
when I went back to play through Gears 1, and properly appreciate it, I was surprised at just what kind of nerd stuff it was. How did this game get the weird jock dude-bro reputation it did..
Its not a big delal but its quite a chore to play the OG copy of this game and having to pick between casual and hardcore difficulty solo. Maybe the devs intended you to play coop first try??
Heres my theory they took a car with 30 gas in the system they drove for 20 minutes they ran out of gas they had to jump because of 4 boomers shooting at them they later meet don and Marcus
7:12 Jesus Christ carmine
22:34 Wait you shoot those things? I've always baited the corpser into breaking them with it's legs
Underrated channel deserving of more subs for sure! And to answer your question Hoffman pardoned everybody but Marcus because of the grudge he had against him which is why Marcus is on his own in the prison
Bro you really need to read those books cause you find out about alot of crazy shit the COG did to civilians. Stranded hate the COG mostly because they dropping the Hammer of Dawn on populated cities to slow down the Locust after E Day, or you know create the Locust Horde by experimenting on children dying if Rust Lung and accidentally creating the Locust, and dont even get me started on the fucking "breeding camps" the COG ran behind the scenes for a majority of the series (no that was not me exaggerating, the COG ran, and i quote, "Birthing Creches", that all fertile women were forced to join in order to repopulate during the Locust War, i cant even begin to say all the fucked up shit that happened in these places without getting banned off TH-cam). If I was a Civilian on the Planet id rather be an Outsider or Stranded than take my chances with the COG, which is crazy cause living on Sera's already bad enough, you got Razor Hail in the Winter, Krill every night, Lightning Flares in the Fall, Leviathans living in the oceans, and the list just goes on and being in the COG doesnt prevent you from any of that. All they do is give you some half assed armor that blocks your field of Vision and doesn't stop a bullet from blowing your brains out, RIP Anthony you will be missed, barely any training on how to fight or reload properly, RIP Benjamin you will also be missed, and a gun that loves to jam constantly, RIP Anthony AGAIN, if thats all im getting out of the COG i might as well take my chances being stranded.
Lmaoo nah you’re right, the cog haven’t prepared anyone for a damn thing. And I’ve read a little about the “breeding” camps I think with someone in the 3rd game, some wild shit from the cog but unfortunately believable.
idk for sure, but i believe to have heard you say pause a couple of times... anyways
please please please!!!!!!!! stop cutting out every single second/space between words. this isnt tik tok or ytshorts. I HAD TO KEEP UP sometimes.
your vid was great, although i was expecting some sort of review or analysis, this summarized narration of the game was aight.
keep it up, i bet your current vids are better!
Lol I hear ya. Trying to get better with that in terms of recording audio, gets difficult but it does get better in the later videos and I’m gonna keep improving!
Thanks for the feedback!
This was my first 360 game, my sisters friend bought me the triple pack during 2011, so I was very late coming into the series. Looking at the back of the cover, seeing a screenshot of Marcus chainsaw dueling Skorge, I was imagining this game as some crazy dark scary series. Only to realize that, ehhh it kind of is but I definitely didn’t expect the locust to have guns haha. Very fond of the gears series.
Man which one you choose pc one or console one because on pc you fight brumag
I am not shitting anyone here, the reason general raam can control the kryll is because he is built different, he was not custom made by the queen, he is a drone like any other, just somehow is bigger
Isn't it confirmed by the official gears "top 10 bosses" that baird states he has a special cologne?
Went to watch the 3rd gears video but you let me know you had vids for the first two. So I guess I’ve got a few hours of gears vids to watch. Hell yeah
You should try changing the title I don't know why youtube isn't sharing this more these videos are great
So... Has anyone played this on Series X? This game feels so smooth with that boosted framerate.
Also, it still holds up! It's honestly the definitive cover-based third person shooter, not to mention that gothic sci-fi style is to die for with the designs being perfectly balanced when it comes to functionality and cool factor.
EDIT: I should note that although Resident Evil 4 was an influence, the main inspiration was Kill Switch, so much so you could consider it a refined spiritual sequel to that game. Kill Switch provided the gameplay, Resident Evil 4 provided the over the shoulder perspective and gothic artstyle.
Ok so i wasnt crazy for thinking it had major killswitch vibes!
Good video brother I can see your love and passion for the game underneath all that humor and sarcasm 👍
WE BACK WE NEVER LEFT GEARS BABY GEARRRRRZZZZZZZZZ
It has been 15years?👴
Love ur comedy 😂😂
i like cars they're cute
I will say, while a lot of historical detail is missing from this game, the topic of Marcus’ “betrayal” and subsequent trial and prison time is captured excellently in the books written by Karen Traviss. Specifically the Slab. There are others going over the operation at Aspho Fields and the aftermath of Jacinto’s fall as well. Very good series, highly recommend.
I had the same thing happen with the brumak, I actually got fed up and stopped playing for a month or so till I tried again, finally I just got annoyed and stopped trying and just ran through the all the enemies and realized wait I actually beat it. I was like 9 though when it came out lmao
Perfect
I loved the TAC/COM mechanic. In my experrience it worked well in Insane dif and I missed it the other 2 games.
The stranded centered missions in gears 1 are my favorite missions in any shooter of all time. I remember thinking the final stand with the lost was like if gears of war had its own battle for helms deep lol
My first introduction to this game was the corpser boss fight when playing it on my older cousins xbox. When my younger cousin was cheering for me when I finally killed it after so many attempts.
Gio bots are in the hollow so the miners have an idea where/how the tunnels flow.
Hey man loved your video. Hoping to check out the rest of your Gears of war retrospective videos.
Small criticism I can offer that may or may not be a big deal but I just couldn't help but notice how many times you would mention something only to say more on that later. Doing it a few times is all well and good but I think it's best to avoid it when possible, perhaps with structure or specific segments. I dunno, just an observation. Loved this video regardless and I'm definitely going to check out the rest.
Sorry saw this comment couple days ago but forgot to reply! Thanks for the feedback man, I’m trying out a new method of separate parts for the gears 5 video cause you’re right, I realized I’d say some stuff to mention it later and I may forget or the writing feels less structured.
Tried doing a better job of this in 4’s video, but in 5 it should be a bit better!
yeah but because of the secret nature of the hammer as a weapon I don't think dom really knew it was the hammee of dawn
6:50 Why do you say "for 14 years they've not had a single idea for a countermeasure" when they just before say that "command's tried everything, but nothing works"? So they _do have ideas_, and they try them, but _nothing works_
Lol youre right, guess I shouldve paid attention to that
Marcus had the hammer of dawn optic that caused a defeat for the cog because he abandoned his post to try and save his dad
the trilogy never surpassed by other games often copied .........
Yeah there's a lotta lore and story elements that were left to be explained by the comic series
16:46 the Kryll actually do return in Raams shadow dlc for gears of war 3. RAAM used a Tremor(boomer variant) to summon Seeders throughout the city so that they could use their Nemacyst to ink the skies, accelerating the time of arrival of the Kryllstorm
True they do, I meant more so that the kryll stop appearing after the events that take place in this game and we dont have any more sections where we have to avoid being in the dark since RAAMs shadow takes place before this game.
Underrated TH-cam channel
Preciate you, theres more comin, so stay tuned!
I know this video is quite old, but fun fact, that final Berserker was let loose on the train tracks, and ran so fast, it caught up to the train.
I always had that theory when I was younger! Was the only thing that made since lol
Perfect timing
Right? Just wish they had actually announced something lmao
This is your sign to start reading the Gears books
At that point he had already slept with Anna per the books. So staring would be ok
Really? Interesting never knew that one
Why do you keep saying pause?
Also, about the Hammer of Dawn. It actually needs to be verified at command, as well as have an open sky and satellite in the area, that's why Locust and Stranded can't just use it.
Ah thats right thanks, dont know how i forgot that lol, answers a question i had in RAAMs shadow too
@@willmelvin2351 They also talk about it in Gears 3 when they go to Char, Anna was in the control room with some other people when they called the Hammer down on the city and watched as people got vaporized instantly
Sometimes less is more.
10:50 funny story this level idk why as a kid playing this part it made me quit the game entirely and went straight into gears of war 2
Lmao, that part is scary as hell first time around
@@willmelvin2351 lol yeah I was just having fun shooting locus,Feeling badass and when that happened my heart sunk and I felt my smile drop 😂😂😂☠️
Torque the kryl and longshot raams head, best strategy imo
On Insane, I finished it by using a torque bow and shotgun after several attempts the other week
7:07 So what's your plan?
Good question lol.
Only thing i could think of were the hole covers from Judgement's Overrun mode, but having to do that with every hole wouldnt be worth the effort.
Hell, I wouldnt know what to do with them just bussin out the ground like that either lmao
Great video
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it
Dude, you played this 11 years old? Lmao damn, poor kid.
The graphics and gameplay are awful in this compared to ultimate edition lol how did you even play through this game.
Lmao nah you right they are, I figured i may eventually do a vid on ue so i just stayed with the og graphics. Runs a little better with fps boost on xbox series
5:23 I find that for such an old game the graphics still hold up well and I personally prefer GoW1's tone.
Gears retrospective. Yes, yes, and one more for gears 3 yes.
Sometimes I wish they made chaps a playable character
same, i remember hoping he would be playable in 3
This is why I got a series x 🫡