Being as I find myself home alone (more on that later) I have decided to be frivolous and carefree for the entire duration. Kind of like Lennon’s lost weekend I will do all those wild and wacky things that I could never do under the constant 24 hour observation of my wife. One of these things (and as rock and roll as I get these days) was to join Xbox live. I put it off as much as I could and, to be honest, I wasn’t in the slightest bit interested previously and still really wasn’t as I plugged the LAN cable in. I’m old school dun and I figure that games should be purchased from a shop, put into your console and then played. Multi-player? Go find some friends and sit on the sofa playing Mario Kart or something. Games were always self encapsulating experiences and had all you needed in the cart or disc. What other way was there? Well I seem to have missed the boat and now what is on the disc is only part of the package. So yesterday, kind of skeptical, I plugged my 360 into the internet just FOR THE HELL OF IT AND BECAUSE I CAN.
Setting the config was pish easy and there I was…ON LINE. So, I had a look around and it seemed quite interesting, downloadable content and a very clever way of milking the customer for more money. Firstly you need to pay a monthly subscription fee to play other people on line (my first month is free courtesy of Bill Gates) PLUS you can add more stuff to your already purchased game via downloadable content . You can even download old games and films (?) and music (??) at a price of course. It’s all done very well and quite seamlessly. I decided to test out this multiplayer lark that EVRYONE keeps talking about on the one game I know best – Gears of War. Now, as a grown man, I cannot find it within myself to wear a headset in the house or whilst playing games. There is no way. Never. You will have to kill me first. My headset still lies wrapped in the Xbox, er, box. I wondered if this may have a detrimental effect on my online experience. Clicking the multiplayer option in GOW I was logged in with other players and bingo, online death, carnage and spills. It was impressively done and very much like playing any multiplayer game with your friends but alas alone. I was stunned. The weird thing is that the other people you play HAVE decided to put on their headsets and you can hear them talking to each other THROUGH YOUR TV. All the people I played with/against were yanks and invariably men and invariably young men. Geeks in other words. I was a mute stranger and my GOW skills were cruelly displayed as I was trashed by the geeks. Single player GOW I have completed and re-played a few times and, although it looks gorgeous, it is in reality quite liner and cumbersome in the controls department.
Multi-player I was struggling but the geeks were throwing the COGS around like true veterans. How long do these guys spend playing these games? Days? I was bored after a 30 odd minutes but it WAS fun. I managed to kill zero people in the first few games and felt genuinely lame. I needed to pick my head up and battle on lest I be mocked by these computer game maestros. Third game in (each game lasts ten minutes) and I could feel the howls of derision coming from the US to HK. I was trying my best but kept getting killed or shooting my co-players which was NOT COOL. It seems Mike from Texas had seen enough and I WAS DUMPED out of the game. That’s right UNINVITED. I was livid/humiliated. I turned the console off in disgust. A new feeling of lameness crept over me and I needed time to recover. I reason that GOW SUCKS.
Seeing as that day I had purchased Halo 3 (my review to come) I decided to see this in multi-player mode. It is much much better than GOW Multi-player and as close to Goldeneye multi-player that I have found. I spent two hours playing it online yesterday without touching the solo game. Who cares about solo missions anyway? Xbox Live is THE SHIT.