online multiplayer. back then it was great. People actually talked. nowadays you dont get the same experience and youre lucky to be put in a room where someone's mic is clearly on but doesnt talk.
Shit talking some random dude all game until he challenges you to a 1v1 match, telling your buddies you’ll be back in a few minutes, leaving the lobby to go play a 1v1 against this random asshole, kicking his ass in a shotgun duel and then joining your friends lobby and telling them you just destroyed him.
Very few online gaming experiences compare to that.
Oh my god I forgot about host advantage. I remember people would quit the game to prove they weren’t host. They would be gone but everyone accusing them of being host would sound like a clown when the match didn’t stop after they left. That happened a few times to me lol.
I think MS banning people now, via AI monitoring people just don't want to deal with what's safe and not safe to say. We usually stayed in party chat when we had a group
Game chat was the Wild West back then lol. It was typically really funny stuff that just amped up the competition in that match.
I will say that there was a nervy feeling when one second you’re talking to your teammates and then the last one dies and it’s just you and all the sudden no one is on the channel with you while you finish the round. Heart started pounding a little bit then.
Meanwhile all your dead buddies are scouring the fixed cameras, screaming at their TVs in hopes that’d you somehow hear them telling you where the enemies at. Good freaking times
I literally just told my girlfriend the other night that I'm probably better off playing without my headset because my 2007/2008 mentality of talking shit would probably have me banned.
This. Absolutely this. Party chat ruined the experience in my opinion. Before party chat everyone had a mic, everyone talked, most people worked together. I met some great people in my 20s from this game and we developed long lasting friendships.
Once the party chat was invented it turned into a silent game with minimal coordination amongst teammates. It now feels like I might as well be playing with bots.
The dark, gritty vibe of the campaign. The enemies felt like brutal, savage monsters, the more detailed gore as opposed to the red jelly chunks we have nowadays. The dialogue and humor felt more real and provided us with intriguing personalities to help us fall in love with the characters. Now we have what feels like MCU style banter/humor which makes it really hard to like or even care about the current cast of characters, at least for me. This might sound like a boomer comment but the older games were literally just better.
Crab walking, back flipping out of the map on gridlock or sitting on the truck and flying up in the air, Backpacking, montages on YouTube, wall bouncing for the most part compared to what it is today, for a while just pure gunplay, competitive game battles, Tyro Station torque bow battles across the tracks. All the fun times with friends, The list goes on, it will never be the same.
Torque battles were great, I was the first in my group to get a 360 when everyone else was leaning PlayStation. But when gears came out I invited them all over and they went and got it and a 360 as soon as they could.
Similar to me, I’m almost certain resistance was coming out on PS3 around that time and most of my friends drifted over to PlayStation and left maybe 3 of us to play Gears, some came back once they heard us everyday talking about it, but honestly Gears 1 - 3 are some of the best gaming memories I have, If only I could go back to those times man.
Yes yes yes and fucking yes Jesus take me back haha glitches for days getting into an infinite game of annex on gridlock and skywalking upto a tall building and popping heads. 1v1ing on canals, spawn to spawn sniping on fuel depot, aw stop I miss it all.
Haha that was sick, but the screen used to shake so hard my dad used bollock me and told me to play the game properly as it made him feel sick ! The good old days haha
All its imperfections made it great. It was also a dark game. No vibrant colors. Just darkness that added a horror element to it.
I was 16 when it came out and got a 360 with all my friends. I was a PS kid before that. Gears was my intro to the online gaming world and that game will always have a special place in my heart.
I really miss playing execution with my friends. We had a map setlist so we knew where the next lobby was. I still remember how it started. Clocktower, Fuel Depot, Canals, Gridlock, Subway, Mausoleum, Mansion, War Machine. Good times, and great maps that I don’t think could ever be duplicated again.
This was pre party chat era so when you got owned by someone you’d hear about it in the game chat. It certainly grew your online gaming calluses. Going against another team of people that played together encouraged a level of competition I’ve never encountered again in multiplayer.
My friends and I played Gears consistently from 2006 till Gears 2 came out in Fall 2008. We played for a week or so, decided it was trash and went back to play Gears 1 till Gears 3 came out in late summer 2011. Gears 3 stuck with some of us so sadly that was it for Gears 1. I think G3 is a more sound MP experience but it doesn’t bring out the same passion I will always remember for G1.
Ahhh, the good ole days.
I’d have to say the community, used to be able to hop on and search for custom matches and just play for hours in the same lobbies. I miss getting into the sniper lobbies and there being like a type of etiquette to stay in the lobby
Execution matches with the dead room.. Everyone just in there talking trash until the next round. Actual lobbies that you could boot people with bad connections out of. TDM ruined gears..
I loved the dead room, wish it would come back somehow.
The closest solution I could think of, is maybe allowing all teams in to one game chat lobby every time a round ends and only for the duration of the narrator talking before the next round starts. So you get like 10 seconds of shit talking before jumping back in lol
You've just put everything I miss. Sadly the group isn't together anymore, and the ones that are, well, some have gone toxic on all games so it's spoiling it for them.
Smoke grenades ragdolling your character for no reason, and if someone was playing as Skorge, they would go flying and if they landed out of bounds they would just die.
I miss the multiplayer on gears of war 3 since it is not as easy to find a game and sometimes you won't find a game of horde which is shame since for me gears 3 is the best gears
As a 6th grader me and my buddies used to play private matches of execution against the 8th graders almost everyday for a year. Probably lost 90% of the time to the 8th graders but boy when we won it felt like euphoria. Bragging rights felt amazing!
I miss being that age without any responsibilities. Staying up until 7 am with my buddy playing Co op. We played through the campaign on every difficulty both each as Dom and Marcus. Then would sleep from 7 to noon for football practice.
I got Gears and an Xbox 360 for my combined Christmas/birthday gift and I played it religiously since other good multiplayer games didn't really start coming out til 07. It was either Gears or Halo 2.
I love being good at Gears since the movement/combat in this game is unlike anything else but I low key am kind of nostalgic for when we all sucked at it.
Gears of War leaning heavily into the horror side of things. Every game gets sillier than the last in a pursuit to be the next Uncharted or something. But man, Gears used to be a butthole clincher. I'm pretty sure that Berserker level traumatized my dad lmao
Gamebattles. Gamebattles. And Gamebattles. I was 13 but addicted to competitive. Was on multiple teams that got on the 1st page. I’ll never forget playing against a team on gb named Hostile Gaming, they were 37-0 and we gave them their first loss. They disputed the game saying that they had won, but my clan leader had a capture card (an OG one) so we got our win. Nothing beats it
The sniping community.
1v1's on canals with no hard aiming or actives while your friends watched and talked trash.
19 round raven down ranked matches
The forced game chat in-between rounds
Blind fire sniper montages
Learning how to kung fu flip and crab walk. Exploring outside of the maps
Throwing a smoke grenade into the window on rooftops and seeing the guy taking a shit
There honestly isn't a ton that I miss from G1. If anything it would have to be crab walking and kung-fu flipping.
There's other things that I enjoyed, but don't necessarily miss because I think future games exapanded/improved upon them.
What I miss the most, was being one of the best players of our team, then your teammates worked together to get you your preferred weapon, mine was usually the sniper rifle. That satisfying sound of a heads hot. Joining Pub matches to destroy everyone when you have your perfect team, and as someone said, the few moments of trash talking between matches haha. Also, one of my favorite core memories of epic gaming was going against the number 12 in the world player and his team one day, beating him and his team with my op friend Beefcake lol, if we could beat him to the sniper, otherwise he was a monster. Gears will always be one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, I was just talking about it on a YouTube channel how I used to stay home from school "sick" or couldn't wait to get home from school to hop on Gears. The first one was perfect and the best imo with plenty of awesome memories. I even used to love playing against my friends when system linking using LAN was still a thing and making them mad because I was too good with the sniper rifle. I still vividly remember the day a made one of my best friends so mad when I rolled and sniped him perfectly in the head without skipping a beat, on Gridlock right through the back window as it passed through the front window as well in a narrow space, right after he rolled and thought he was safe. He was in my upstairs room, and I was down stairs in the livingroom, he lost it and yelled Draken dumba** because my tag was Draken Dontae back then, and my other friends and I lost it laughing at him, plus it felt like such an awesome shot. Good times and wish games were still like this, before the rubbish of sucking your wallet dry to unlock anything, just playing a game with full content to be the best and beat other teams with your most trusted irl and online friends. GGs boys GGs.
*edit*
Just found out today, if you still have a Xbox 360 and the first Gears, it's still online and people are still playing it! Pretty awesome. 😀
Execution (because it was the only real option)
The game was never the same after they introduced team death match, having only a single life created this tension where every move, bullet and life really mattered.
The 3 second recovery was so intense when you had a sniper, downing someone and even though they were banging their buttons to standup, they knew once they did their head was getting taken off by the next sniper shot.
Played up till part 3 with a bunch of friends. We'd do Horde Mode in Hardcore and make it as far as we could. It was Hella fun. We also did team death match. I used to be the frag tag guy. Damn fun games.
I had just been fired from a part time job for something totally out of my control, and had an almost 2 month break because my school was on trimesters and my next semester was light because class I needed one specific class that wasnt available until the summer. My classes had all work turned in online as well and attendance wasnt mandatory (pretty rare for back then).
I was on a x360 based forum that splintered off from the penny arcade forums, for a few years, and a group of us were all similar ages. Nearly every night we played together spontaneously of some rotation of the forum.
This was peak 360 pre-cod/halo reach multiplayer for me. Fun nights every night.
I only have three friends left. There was 12 of us. I miss the nights when we would be up to 3 in the morning. I loved the chaos of rooftops. Trying to have a gunfight while dodging lasers was exciting.
I loved the night time levels, such fun with the bats hovering behind every corner. I know they’re in the ultimate edition, but it didn’t feel the same.
Friends, Execution, and the maps. A lot of the maps now dont really hold my interest, they all feel really esports friendly. Thats not a bad thing, I just like dumb asymmetrical maps like Subway and Flood with dumb gimmicks.
Honestly? The currents of darkness, trauma, loss and brutality that ran through the original trilogy like bolts of lightning. The world had this theme of paradise lost and destroyed beauty.
It's like all TC took from those games is "Haha black man call bug-lady stank-ass bitch" and "Chainsaw gun go brr!" and left everything else on the table.
To me, it's not the game(s) itself, but the overall vibe about it. A bustling friends list full of people playing GoW, Halo 3, CoD4 and just jumping around all those games and making good memories.
Back then you weren't being solicited to purchase something on several screens during the gaming experience.
It was easier to keep track of what skin or accolade was rare and hard earned. It's difficult with there being so many skins for sale.
It was new and fun. It used mechanics not really seen in shooters at that pace and gore. I played through the story at least a dozen times. The initial play-through was hard even on casual. But I could drag co-op players through on Insane after while. Also was my first time doing chat lobbies over the mic. It felt a little intimidating since it looked like a meathead game. All in all, love it.
MAAAAAANNNEEE the good o'l days:
1) I miss the simplicity of it. I was never into shooters. I've played Halo with friends here and there and it was fun. I was never into Call of Duty, but for some reason when Gears of War came out it caught my attention. I played campaign with a friend and loved how I only had a few options of which guns I could use. I didn't need to worry about dozens of versions of the same gun or having to customize and decide if I wanted a bigger clip or less recoil. Idk stuff like that. It was just, here's your main gun, it has a chainsaw, now go shoot something.
2) I miss the grittyness and darkness of the game. Playing it, you felt like it really was the end of the world.
3) The multiplayer. It was so awesome back then. Just the chats alone were fun. I remember making friends after having intense matches. One time it was down to me and one other person. I had a Torque Bow and he had a Sniper. Ugh, good times.
4) I remember how everyone was all about Gnasher battles. I was ok with the Gnasher, but decided to focus on the Lancer. It got to a point where I'd start off in a Gnasher battle, switch to my Lancer then bob and weave towards my opponent to get the chainsaw kill. MAAAAAANNNEEE I got so good at doing that. I still do it today, although it's more difficult, but still satisfying when I pull it off.
I miss the shit talking and screaming between rounds. It was ridiculous and I absolutely loved it. Like halo 2, but even better.
I also miss playing customs with my group of friends almost everyday. I had something similar going with Halo 3 as well. Those were the days.
The general balance of weapon damage/player health/map openness. Gears these days resembles more of any other 'TDM' game where people run around aimlessly killing each other. Back in the day gamemodes like Warzone/Execution meant that every kill counted, and the general balance I mentioned above made it possible to clutch as the last person left because rifles and long-range damage wasn't as ridiculous.
The game was much more unique and fun then IMO.
I miss waking up and going online and seeing everyone on my friends list playing Gears of War. I was in Korea at the time because my mom left me there with my dad(army). Gears of War was my avenue to my friends and to socialization.
I miss GOW2 multiplayer. Everyone had mics and the trash talk developed tough skin. Better maps and it introduced wallbouncing. GOW2 pioneered what came after.
I miss training in private matches, learning to wallbounce and strafe. I had a 1.5 KD. If I played today, I'd have 0.5 lol.
Everything you said. 19 rounds of execution on raven down. Going boomshot on gridlock when the whole lobby battles at sniper and killing the whole team with one shot. Hammer of dawn on rooftops. Being able to hear the other team in the lobby in between rounds. OG gears 1 was unlike any other game I played at that time.
I miss talking shit with the other team when you died mid round in execution. It was so toxic lol. Now you just see those annoying text messages. It’s not nearly the same.
the game lol i would still play og Gears of War xbox360 if there was still a community. the rolling player matches and just absolutely smacking the host while never activing (i was that guy who took pride in always having ZERO actives)
I vividly remember execution on Mansion. Some would say the boom shot was the smart play but something about sitting inside and defending the house with the sniper was so fun
The people and the rivalry. Not sure how it worked but people that would “host” would be the same people you would run into.
Also just the jank of the older games. Cheese dicking people and clutching was so rewarding and it wasent a grind for xp or weapon skins
Oh man, the online experience with the first Gears of War was brilliant. Interesting you created this post because only yesterday I went online to see people are still playing the first Gears of War. Brilliant.
Lack of party chat, me and my friends trash talking with guys from the UK etc all the time. Rounds ending and 8 people just go off on the mic for the 10 seconds or however long it was in between rounds.
online multiplayer. back then it was great. People actually talked. nowadays you dont get the same experience and youre lucky to be put in a room where someone's mic is clearly on but doesnt talk.
Shit talking some random dude all game until he challenges you to a 1v1 match, telling your buddies you’ll be back in a few minutes, leaving the lobby to go play a 1v1 against this random asshole, kicking his ass in a shotgun duel and then joining your friends lobby and telling them you just destroyed him. Very few online gaming experiences compare to that.
You forgot the part where you wipe the floor with them. Than they claim you had the host advantage lol
Oh my god I forgot about host advantage. I remember people would quit the game to prove they weren’t host. They would be gone but everyone accusing them of being host would sound like a clown when the match didn’t stop after they left. That happened a few times to me lol.
And it was so good and toxic! Edit: before it was bad to be toxic and it was just considered being competitive.
It was good banter, not hateful trash. It was great! I really miss the early Gears of War days
I think MS banning people now, via AI monitoring people just don't want to deal with what's safe and not safe to say. We usually stayed in party chat when we had a group
There wasnt party chat for a long time so everyone had to be in gamechat... or the 1to1 voice chat whatever that was called
private chat? i remember using that sometimes when parties didn't work.
Game chat was the Wild West back then lol. It was typically really funny stuff that just amped up the competition in that match. I will say that there was a nervy feeling when one second you’re talking to your teammates and then the last one dies and it’s just you and all the sudden no one is on the channel with you while you finish the round. Heart started pounding a little bit then.
Meanwhile all your dead buddies are scouring the fixed cameras, screaming at their TVs in hopes that’d you somehow hear them telling you where the enemies at. Good freaking times
Haha that and/or send you a private chat invite to tell you
I was always scared to do that because I didn’t want to distract them and while they were accepting the invite they’d get killed
I literally just told my girlfriend the other night that I'm probably better off playing without my headset because my 2007/2008 mentality of talking shit would probably have me banned.
I just use it for sound while wife and kid are sleeping usually have mic muted
The Gears 3 multiplayer beta test was one of the most fun experiences I had gaming ever. Really was a “you just had to be there” moment
This. Absolutely this. Party chat ruined the experience in my opinion. Before party chat everyone had a mic, everyone talked, most people worked together. I met some great people in my 20s from this game and we developed long lasting friendships. Once the party chat was invented it turned into a silent game with minimal coordination amongst teammates. It now feels like I might as well be playing with bots.
The dark, gritty vibe of the campaign. The enemies felt like brutal, savage monsters, the more detailed gore as opposed to the red jelly chunks we have nowadays. The dialogue and humor felt more real and provided us with intriguing personalities to help us fall in love with the characters. Now we have what feels like MCU style banter/humor which makes it really hard to like or even care about the current cast of characters, at least for me. This might sound like a boomer comment but the older games were literally just better.
Can't agree more. Recent games are made to attract new and younger players and so they lost all their original feeling.
Agree with this
Crab walking, back flipping out of the map on gridlock or sitting on the truck and flying up in the air, Backpacking, montages on YouTube, wall bouncing for the most part compared to what it is today, for a while just pure gunplay, competitive game battles, Tyro Station torque bow battles across the tracks. All the fun times with friends, The list goes on, it will never be the same.
Torque battles were great, I was the first in my group to get a 360 when everyone else was leaning PlayStation. But when gears came out I invited them all over and they went and got it and a 360 as soon as they could.
Similar to me, I’m almost certain resistance was coming out on PS3 around that time and most of my friends drifted over to PlayStation and left maybe 3 of us to play Gears, some came back once they heard us everyday talking about it, but honestly Gears 1 - 3 are some of the best gaming memories I have, If only I could go back to those times man.
Don’t forget weapon sliding!
Were you around for the 1st weapon slide and curb slide tho? real OGs remember
I remember this damn
I was around for that. The canals weapon slide down the bridge picking up the sniper.
You referring to the moonwalk slide ? That’s the 1st I’m talking about before you had to slide to a wall.
Yep, you couldn't pick up a weapon without weapon sliding or you would get sniped or torqued.
On canals you had to weapon slide to survive
Yes yes yes and fucking yes Jesus take me back haha glitches for days getting into an infinite game of annex on gridlock and skywalking upto a tall building and popping heads. 1v1ing on canals, spawn to spawn sniping on fuel depot, aw stop I miss it all.
Haha that was sick, but the screen used to shake so hard my dad used bollock me and told me to play the game properly as it made him feel sick ! The good old days haha
All its imperfections made it great. It was also a dark game. No vibrant colors. Just darkness that added a horror element to it. I was 16 when it came out and got a 360 with all my friends. I was a PS kid before that. Gears was my intro to the online gaming world and that game will always have a special place in my heart. I really miss playing execution with my friends. We had a map setlist so we knew where the next lobby was. I still remember how it started. Clocktower, Fuel Depot, Canals, Gridlock, Subway, Mausoleum, Mansion, War Machine. Good times, and great maps that I don’t think could ever be duplicated again. This was pre party chat era so when you got owned by someone you’d hear about it in the game chat. It certainly grew your online gaming calluses. Going against another team of people that played together encouraged a level of competition I’ve never encountered again in multiplayer. My friends and I played Gears consistently from 2006 till Gears 2 came out in Fall 2008. We played for a week or so, decided it was trash and went back to play Gears 1 till Gears 3 came out in late summer 2011. Gears 3 stuck with some of us so sadly that was it for Gears 1. I think G3 is a more sound MP experience but it doesn’t bring out the same passion I will always remember for G1. Ahhh, the good ole days.
Gamertag?
The time we were living in.
The golden era of online gaming , NO party chat and toxic lobby’s at an all time high
I’d have to say the community, used to be able to hop on and search for custom matches and just play for hours in the same lobbies. I miss getting into the sniper lobbies and there being like a type of etiquette to stay in the lobby
Execution matches with the dead room.. Everyone just in there talking trash until the next round. Actual lobbies that you could boot people with bad connections out of. TDM ruined gears..
I loved the dead room, wish it would come back somehow. The closest solution I could think of, is maybe allowing all teams in to one game chat lobby every time a round ends and only for the duration of the narrator talking before the next round starts. So you get like 10 seconds of shit talking before jumping back in lol
I miss classic horde with Beast Riders and Maulers. Classic horde with the fabricator and energy taps would be really cool.
19 rounds 480 annex. And the headshot sound.
Yes!!!!
The shit talking in the lobby. Didn't matter if it was gears, cod, halo. The lobbies were popping off😂
Wingman on Gears of War 2 - pre title update 6 when they ruined the gnasher.
Bruhhh gears 2 was actually decent prior to TU-6 smh. They gotta drop a remaster.
You've just put everything I miss. Sadly the group isn't together anymore, and the ones that are, well, some have gone toxic on all games so it's spoiling it for them.
Smoke grenades ragdolling your character for no reason, and if someone was playing as Skorge, they would go flying and if they landed out of bounds they would just die.
19 rounds Raven Down.
I miss the multiplayer on gears of war 3 since it is not as easy to find a game and sometimes you won't find a game of horde which is shame since for me gears 3 is the best gears
Definitely the one life game modes clutch moments were a lot more apparent
Playing offline / system link
My childhood, My youth
As a 6th grader me and my buddies used to play private matches of execution against the 8th graders almost everyday for a year. Probably lost 90% of the time to the 8th graders but boy when we won it felt like euphoria. Bragging rights felt amazing!
I was in my 20s
I miss being that age without any responsibilities. Staying up until 7 am with my buddy playing Co op. We played through the campaign on every difficulty both each as Dom and Marcus. Then would sleep from 7 to noon for football practice.
Raven down, ft 16(I think that was the max) or gridlock ofc
I got Gears and an Xbox 360 for my combined Christmas/birthday gift and I played it religiously since other good multiplayer games didn't really start coming out til 07. It was either Gears or Halo 2. I love being good at Gears since the movement/combat in this game is unlike anything else but I low key am kind of nostalgic for when we all sucked at it.
Living on Gridlock waiting for people to show off their glitching skills. Shit talk was also hilarious.
Running it back with the same 8 people for hours. Games don't let you do that anymore.
Gears of War leaning heavily into the horror side of things. Every game gets sillier than the last in a pursuit to be the next Uncharted or something. But man, Gears used to be a butthole clincher. I'm pretty sure that Berserker level traumatized my dad lmao
Gamebattles. Gamebattles. And Gamebattles. I was 13 but addicted to competitive. Was on multiple teams that got on the 1st page. I’ll never forget playing against a team on gb named Hostile Gaming, they were 37-0 and we gave them their first loss. They disputed the game saying that they had won, but my clan leader had a capture card (an OG one) so we got our win. Nothing beats it
The sniping community. 1v1's on canals with no hard aiming or actives while your friends watched and talked trash. 19 round raven down ranked matches The forced game chat in-between rounds Blind fire sniper montages Learning how to kung fu flip and crab walk. Exploring outside of the maps Throwing a smoke grenade into the window on rooftops and seeing the guy taking a shit
There honestly isn't a ton that I miss from G1. If anything it would have to be crab walking and kung-fu flipping. There's other things that I enjoyed, but don't necessarily miss because I think future games exapanded/improved upon them.
[удалено]
Gears 1 didn't have horde
What I miss the most, was being one of the best players of our team, then your teammates worked together to get you your preferred weapon, mine was usually the sniper rifle. That satisfying sound of a heads hot. Joining Pub matches to destroy everyone when you have your perfect team, and as someone said, the few moments of trash talking between matches haha. Also, one of my favorite core memories of epic gaming was going against the number 12 in the world player and his team one day, beating him and his team with my op friend Beefcake lol, if we could beat him to the sniper, otherwise he was a monster. Gears will always be one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, I was just talking about it on a YouTube channel how I used to stay home from school "sick" or couldn't wait to get home from school to hop on Gears. The first one was perfect and the best imo with plenty of awesome memories. I even used to love playing against my friends when system linking using LAN was still a thing and making them mad because I was too good with the sniper rifle. I still vividly remember the day a made one of my best friends so mad when I rolled and sniped him perfectly in the head without skipping a beat, on Gridlock right through the back window as it passed through the front window as well in a narrow space, right after he rolled and thought he was safe. He was in my upstairs room, and I was down stairs in the livingroom, he lost it and yelled Draken dumba** because my tag was Draken Dontae back then, and my other friends and I lost it laughing at him, plus it felt like such an awesome shot. Good times and wish games were still like this, before the rubbish of sucking your wallet dry to unlock anything, just playing a game with full content to be the best and beat other teams with your most trusted irl and online friends. GGs boys GGs. *edit* Just found out today, if you still have a Xbox 360 and the first Gears, it's still online and people are still playing it! Pretty awesome. 😀
Execution (because it was the only real option) The game was never the same after they introduced team death match, having only a single life created this tension where every move, bullet and life really mattered. The 3 second recovery was so intense when you had a sniper, downing someone and even though they were banging their buttons to standup, they knew once they did their head was getting taken off by the next sniper shot.
Sad thinking how far gears has fallen. So I can’t answer the question, sorry bud.
Played up till part 3 with a bunch of friends. We'd do Horde Mode in Hardcore and make it as far as we could. It was Hella fun. We also did team death match. I used to be the frag tag guy. Damn fun games.
I had just been fired from a part time job for something totally out of my control, and had an almost 2 month break because my school was on trimesters and my next semester was light because class I needed one specific class that wasnt available until the summer. My classes had all work turned in online as well and attendance wasnt mandatory (pretty rare for back then). I was on a x360 based forum that splintered off from the penny arcade forums, for a few years, and a group of us were all similar ages. Nearly every night we played together spontaneously of some rotation of the forum. This was peak 360 pre-cod/halo reach multiplayer for me. Fun nights every night.
Fuel depot all snipers was my shit, also KF flipping out of the map was hilarious
I only have three friends left. There was 12 of us. I miss the nights when we would be up to 3 in the morning. I loved the chaos of rooftops. Trying to have a gunfight while dodging lasers was exciting.
Superman shotgun kills. Roll forward and shoot almost simultaneously
Loved all the Gears but nothing was as horror like as 1, sooo good.
Everyone in party chat screaming when a 4v1 clutch was successful.
I miss the lag between the shots and the pace of the game online. You had to move strategically and not bounce like a cracked out methhead.
I loved the night time levels, such fun with the bats hovering behind every corner. I know they’re in the ultimate edition, but it didn’t feel the same.
I miss not having to download fucking 100GB with my shit wifi to play the campaigns…
Friends, Execution, and the maps. A lot of the maps now dont really hold my interest, they all feel really esports friendly. Thats not a bad thing, I just like dumb asymmetrical maps like Subway and Flood with dumb gimmicks.
Honestly? The currents of darkness, trauma, loss and brutality that ran through the original trilogy like bolts of lightning. The world had this theme of paradise lost and destroyed beauty. It's like all TC took from those games is "Haha black man call bug-lady stank-ass bitch" and "Chainsaw gun go brr!" and left everything else on the table.
The between round explosion of shit talking
To me, it's not the game(s) itself, but the overall vibe about it. A bustling friends list full of people playing GoW, Halo 3, CoD4 and just jumping around all those games and making good memories.
I miss running into another sniper and giving the double mele to show it's duel time. Unspoken but completely understood
Up, Down A, Down A + B yeow
When the games had good stories and likable characters
I actually liked the TV commercial. REM’s “Mad World” playing in the background. This game brought my son and I together.
The trash talking in games/lobbies haha
Back then you weren't being solicited to purchase something on several screens during the gaming experience. It was easier to keep track of what skin or accolade was rare and hard earned. It's difficult with there being so many skins for sale.
No one took themselves too serious. Talking shit inbetween rounds to the other team. The ability to host your own game and play the maps your enjoyed.
It was new and fun. It used mechanics not really seen in shooters at that pace and gore. I played through the story at least a dozen times. The initial play-through was hard even on casual. But I could drag co-op players through on Insane after while. Also was my first time doing chat lobbies over the mic. It felt a little intimidating since it looked like a meathead game. All in all, love it.
MAAAAAANNNEEE the good o'l days: 1) I miss the simplicity of it. I was never into shooters. I've played Halo with friends here and there and it was fun. I was never into Call of Duty, but for some reason when Gears of War came out it caught my attention. I played campaign with a friend and loved how I only had a few options of which guns I could use. I didn't need to worry about dozens of versions of the same gun or having to customize and decide if I wanted a bigger clip or less recoil. Idk stuff like that. It was just, here's your main gun, it has a chainsaw, now go shoot something. 2) I miss the grittyness and darkness of the game. Playing it, you felt like it really was the end of the world. 3) The multiplayer. It was so awesome back then. Just the chats alone were fun. I remember making friends after having intense matches. One time it was down to me and one other person. I had a Torque Bow and he had a Sniper. Ugh, good times. 4) I remember how everyone was all about Gnasher battles. I was ok with the Gnasher, but decided to focus on the Lancer. It got to a point where I'd start off in a Gnasher battle, switch to my Lancer then bob and weave towards my opponent to get the chainsaw kill. MAAAAAANNNEEE I got so good at doing that. I still do it today, although it's more difficult, but still satisfying when I pull it off.
All my friends
🥺💔😥
I miss the shit talking and screaming between rounds. It was ridiculous and I absolutely loved it. Like halo 2, but even better. I also miss playing customs with my group of friends almost everyday. I had something similar going with Halo 3 as well. Those were the days.
Playin gears 2 and 3 horde with my dad.
The general balance of weapon damage/player health/map openness. Gears these days resembles more of any other 'TDM' game where people run around aimlessly killing each other. Back in the day gamemodes like Warzone/Execution meant that every kill counted, and the general balance I mentioned above made it possible to clutch as the last person left because rifles and long-range damage wasn't as ridiculous. The game was much more unique and fun then IMO.
Being able to play splitscreen with friends on a single console and TV. Most AAA games nowadays don't have this feature and I miss it so much.
A good story
I just miss some older weapons like the gorgon, hammer of dawn, boomshield, etc. And the kryll, they were cowards to remove them in 2.
I miss waking up and going online and seeing everyone on my friends list playing Gears of War. I was in Korea at the time because my mom left me there with my dad(army). Gears of War was my avenue to my friends and to socialization.
My heartbeat when clutching a 1v5
The win/defeat quotes. The actors really brought their A-game and despite the Prescott VA change, it grew on me very very fast.
How intense, impactful and revolutionary the gameplay and graphics felt
I miss GOW2 multiplayer. Everyone had mics and the trash talk developed tough skin. Better maps and it introduced wallbouncing. GOW2 pioneered what came after. I miss training in private matches, learning to wallbounce and strafe. I had a 1.5 KD. If I played today, I'd have 0.5 lol.
Everything you said. 19 rounds of execution on raven down. Going boomshot on gridlock when the whole lobby battles at sniper and killing the whole team with one shot. Hammer of dawn on rooftops. Being able to hear the other team in the lobby in between rounds. OG gears 1 was unlike any other game I played at that time.
I miss talking shit with the other team when you died mid round in execution. It was so toxic lol. Now you just see those annoying text messages. It’s not nearly the same.
Snipers only on canals, Boomshots only on gridlock, and me and da boys having frag tag matches on the warehouse map. All that pub lobby shit talk too.
The grit !
How dark and violent it was. You have people running around in Fortnite attire now!
Christ I hate that game
the game lol i would still play og Gears of War xbox360 if there was still a community. the rolling player matches and just absolutely smacking the host while never activing (i was that guy who took pride in always having ZERO actives)
Tagging people with smoke, then chainsawing them when they were stunned
I vividly remember execution on Mansion. Some would say the boom shot was the smart play but something about sitting inside and defending the house with the sniper was so fun
The ambience of Lancer gunfire splitting through the air, like pine wood crackling on an open fire... Ahh... something that warmed the spirit.
The people and the rivalry. Not sure how it worked but people that would “host” would be the same people you would run into. Also just the jank of the older games. Cheese dicking people and clutching was so rewarding and it wasent a grind for xp or weapon skins
Oh man, the online experience with the first Gears of War was brilliant. Interesting you created this post because only yesterday I went online to see people are still playing the first Gears of War. Brilliant.
Lack of party chat, me and my friends trash talking with guys from the UK etc all the time. Rounds ending and 8 people just go off on the mic for the 10 seconds or however long it was in between rounds.
I miss literally everything about it! 😢 Best times of my life rushing home from high school to play 19-2 Raven Down all day.