Gameplay

Gears of War

Gears of War 2 was my go-to game for many years. It was the only game where I joined clans or where I played competitively. The game always frustrated me because of the latency issues and that the lack of dedicated servers encouraged exploits and cheats. However, these unfair challenges kept me addicted. In addition, the mechanics were amazing, especially wall-bouncing. The game's aesthetics, mechanics, and narrative encouraged an older crowd to play, and you didn't have to deal with little kids as much. In addition, the gore and intensity of gnasher dueling discouraged meek personalities from playing - the game was mainly grimy roughnecks or pathetic scumbags, with the former making for great teammates and the latter being ideal as opponents. This page has a lot of gameplay footage, but I have also done more critical work on Gears:

Gears of War Cinematics
Gears of War Cheat or Elite Game
​Gears of War Written Reviews
Gears of War Documentaries
Gears of War 4 Improvements 

Gears of War - Negative Game Addiction
There is something about this video that would strike many as disturbing. Some, out of social embarrassment may apply a lens of humor in order to understand this content... seeing the content as mockery. I believe that this video is much more serious than that. Video game rage can be amusing, but underlying it is a real social problem perpetuated by the lackadaisical Microsoft, Sony, publishers, studios and the game industry as a whole. These corporations have a duty to monitor and manage their communities, which to date they neglect.

Gears of Lore - Remaking the Sera Universe 
I recorded all the cinematic cut-scenes from Gears of War Ultimate Edition and then added some audio about my plans to write Gears of War fan fiction, and in what ways I would have preferred to have seen the lore of the Gears universe develop. The story has developed with hackneyed conspiracy tropes, and I feel that there was an opportunity to create the Locust as a more pervasively menacing threat.

Gears of War 2 - First Ever 1v Match
I don't ever 1v in Gears 2 because usually the people who are ready to go are ready for a reason - they mod, they lag switch, they IP flood or they bridge off of hotspot WIFI. I don't trust the servers to support a fair connection because Epic has proven over years that their servers will never be robust on Xbox 360. That being said, this player I faced goaded me into a 1v match. I don't regret taking him on. It was a really exciting match.   

Gears of War 2 - Clean Host vs Lag Host
This is just a gameplay video that closely examines the difference between a clean host and, well... a dirty host. Basically, shots register on a clean host whereas laggy host connections lead to players "eating" or "sponging" shots (when players are referred to as "fat" it is because they "eat" a ton of shots). You will notice in the slow motion replays that the sway of the gun when you release a shot matters and that the player's reticule is red also matters. Even still, a laggy host defies the physics that should exist based on what a player sees happening on their own screen.

Gears of War 2 - Hot-Spot WIFI Lag
Playing Gears 2 can be an extremely frustrating experience because there are no dedicated servers and the game developer almost rewards players that cheat through modding, lagging and bridging. Trying to connect to host using the weak signal of a Hot Spot connection can often result in a bridged connection. The Hot Spot connection will siphon connectivity off of other players in the lobby in order to stay connected to the match. 
As a result, at least half of the players will suffer greatly while the Hot Spot connected player runs around freely propped up by the connection of others on the network. It is a form of cheating, because who honestly plays console games using Hot Spot? Kids, don't be a Strafe... lagging opponents out doesn't make you a Tank!

Gears of War 2 - Greatest Game Glitch Skorge Doppelganger
As an old school gamer, I have very low patience for cheating and exploits in games. So I tend to quit out of matches readily the moment that I can confirm I am lagging. In Gears of War 2 this habit led to my discovery of an incredible glitch that I have never seen documented. In social Guardian mode, on the map Avalanche, if you left the match and came back in over and over, and then stayed for the start of the next round, then sometimes you would be playing on the COG team but as the enemy leader Skorge. There were two Skorges! Friendly fire would do nothing but the real Locusts could kill you. I played around with this glitch and it was incredibly fun. 

Gears of War 2 - Disposing a Cheating Nub
I have been playing Gears 2 for a decade now and you can still find a match of Guardian pretty damn quickly. I had Strafe and Viral teach me how to glitch out of maps and invisible glitch because I got sick of cheaters and wanted to fight fire with fire. Notice how the nub in this video was actually playing but just failed miserably all the same. It was worth a laugh. 

Gears of War 2 - V8 Gets Scrapped
V8 clan became a bit of a pet peeve for me in 2013-14 when I got back on Gears 2. The one thing that all the players had in common was that their connections were sketchy and their skills never made sense to explain their statistics. Clans were important when the game came out in 2008 because they represented a group of players that wanted to game more strategically and use tactics in matches. 
However, V8 was really just a band of low-quality cheaters... and oh, you know how I loathe cheaters in video games. You can't get most video game cheaters to admit to it or even acknowledge how suspicious their performance versus their results is. So, I made some recordings to capture one of the biggest offenders and frauds - lLittleMannV8.

Gears of War 2 - Phonies on the Leaderboard
For me, the label of "rage quitter" shouldn't be something that cheaters get to bully skilled players with when skilled players are fed up with the lag cheaters generate in a match. I believe that rage quitting should be understood as when the cheaters quit (which happens all the time). I grew up with games and the only cheating that existed before online gaming was when your friend went to the bathroom and you un-paused the game to be sneaky. It almost never amounted to anything other than a laugh when caught. 

Gears of War 2 - Making Cheaters Rage Quit
Now, in the proto-social era of online media, cheating in video games has become a norm. Players who cheat with mods, IP flood bridge software, lag switches, and the like will justify their pathetic behavior through claiming that it is "competitive". I believe that most who cheat simply cheat because they are afraid to find out exactly how good (or bad) they are at a game that they invest a lot of time in
It is a despicable state of affairs and will be mocked by future generations. As for rage quitting, it is extremely enjoyable to watch tryhard players rage quit when they don't get their way online (I only wish it happened more often). Perhaps the most petulant of the bunch in the late pub era of Gears 2 Guardian were the V8 clan. Frankly, I found these kids really creepy and rotten, but then again the Gears player community is the worst bunch of online gamers generally - just mean, nasty people for the most part and you have to be tough as nails to deal with them. 

Gears of War 3 - Easter Eggs
​This is a little compilation video for most of the Easter Eggs that can be discovered and unlocked in Gears of War 2 and 3. Most of the eggs are from Gears 3.

Gears of War 4 - A Godly Squad
Just cut together some clips of me playing Gow4 with some of my clanmates from Gow2. They are just as good at Gears 4 as they were at Gears 2. It isn't easy playing in their matches because we get matched against full squads of experienced skilled players. When I play solo, I get players with similar experience to myself which is pretty fun because I run through those players.  

Gears of War - Online Multiplayer Gaming = Wasted Time
I've been concerned recently with how multiplayer experience in games is largely a waste of time. It isn't really about cooperation, sharing, and teamwork - that is only a small component and one that can be explored through coop campaigns. Multiplayer adversarial formats for games and all multiplayer formats present a pervasive repetition of events 
That repetitive process is one where skill development tapers off and the player ends up a cog in the machinery of the game instead of an engineer of that machinery. It is troubling in the same way that Marx developed a concern for the plight of the proletariat. Multiplayer online gaming is now more-or-less factory work and oppressive as well. In effect, we are in the era of the lumpengamer - gamers bereft of the intellectual capacity to challenge their gaming experience and take control of it through shifting from cog to engineer.