Ugh, crap. I HATE fighting the same things over and over again, if I saw one more robot/warrior thing in Prey I was going to bust my 360. I think I'm at least hoping that the atmosphere in FEAR will be immersive, I couldn't care less what happened in Prey (mainly because it made no sense), and I felt like getting my $28 bucks out of it and get through it. Glad to hear it about the healthkits, at least that's encouraging.

I think part of my hesitancy is that I don't think all games begin and end with HALO. I mean, it was fun, but it's not on the top of any lists for me. And Gears of War seems like the next HALO-type installment where if you're not calling it TEH GR8TST GME EVR!! there's something wrong with you. I think I'll be satisfied if GoW turns out to be a good looking, fast paced (mildly interesting) shooter.

I'm in like Flynn.

I keep going back and forth on the hype. The game looks sweet, i love sci-fi storylines and it is getting great previews. However i hate 3rd person shooters (for the most part) and 8 people to a game just doesn't cut it for me anymore. I have some pre-order money on the game but i may or may not pick the thing up at release.

CoD3 on the other hand is paid off in full and i'm chomping at the bit for it. I did just realize though i'm going to be out of town the weekend of the 14th and 15th which is the weekend after CoD comes out right?

Well, FEAR is nowhere near as atmospheric as say Condemned or Silent Hill. FEAR is more of a Doom 3 style game with a "monster jump out at you" kind of thing. Also, EVERY level in FEAR is set in either an office building or warehouse. There is no level variety like in Condemned with the library, school, abandoned house, farm, etc. FEAR is still a good game if you like fast paced FPS, but it does get rather repetitive after a while with the monotonous levels and enemies.

Oh, you know you're going to cave like the princess you are and get GoW like the rest of us.

That and CoD3 will be a blast online.

The 14th and 15th of November are a Tuesday and a Wednesday. COD3 comes out on the 7th along with GOW

And Guitar Hero.

An expensive week coming up.

Good thing I have a Gift Card, a coupon and some reward zone certificates.

Word!! xmiyux must have missed the day in preschool when they teach you how to read the Date and Time. Sad part is the future of America is learning from him.

GH2, GOW, and COD3 all in one day has my head spinning. What to play first??!

Alright i was looking at the wrong month. My trip out of town is the 10th and 11th (not this weekend but the following one). That being said it finishes up 1 of the two stupid grad courses i'm taking for the semester.

And i'm still in the air on GoW - i think the majority of my time will be taken by CoD3 and still Halo.

And then Rainbow Six Vegas comes out the 20th...

I have no plans to buy it. I might get it way later when it drops to say $39.99 but there's no rush, and I have seen the videos. It looks cool, sure but it's not something I am drooling over.

I feel the same way about Halo 3. Big deal. I know people will be crapping their pants when this comes out, but I could care less.

I'm getting it, but not for $60. I'll wait till I can get it for about $40 used. I have a feeling there's going to be about 8 hours of single player and the 4 vs 4 multiplayer isn't too exciting to me.

I'm in. I've got GoW, and F.E.A.R. paid off with trade-in credit. The one I'm on the fence about is CoD3. I play CoD2 still ocassionally (although I haven't ran into any of you online) although I'm not all that great at it I do enjoy it. It holds a special place in my collection, since it was the only launch title I picked up with the system.

CoD3 might be what I spend my BestBuy Bucks on if I hear good word of mouth, since I passed on PSU.

Gears of War is the best looking game i've seen. I can't imagine anyone looking at it and thinking that it's only "average" from a graphical standpoint.

You sure about this? Your new fiancé may want a new toaster oven or something.. May want to swing that by her.

Looks average to me.. but I'm more interested in style over technical merit.

I already have a nice toaster, thank you very much. She's not moving in for 3 more weeks, so I've got 2 weeks to play the hell out of all the new stuff!

So if the graphics of Gears is average, what games do you think look better?

Besides Crysis.

the promotional shots and the photoshopped pictures all over the net look awesome, but the in-game movies on gametrailers just look like completely ordinary graphics. It looks nice, dont get me wrong. It does look fun.
But for some reason, everyone thinks this is the messiah of computer games and that its going to turn the xbox world upside down.

My bet is that this is the one game that MS decided to pour all its big time ad money into, and people are buying into the hype hook, line and sinker.

Personally i think COD3 graphics look better than GOW.

I've played all those games (except Gears of War). I wouldn't put Prey in the same league as FEAR. The thing that made FEAR great and gave it variety was the enemy AI, it is the most impressive AI I have seen in a game. One of the best moments I had was trying to gun down a clone soldier while running at him, only to have him crawl underneath a big rig to the other side to get away from me. Enemies push over stuff for cover, and will go around alternate routes to get behind you. With a really good AI the game is no longer so repetitive. Prey on the other hand was very repetitive, and reused the same spirit walk puzzle over and over. the only thing Prey had over FEAR was more interesting levels. FEAR could have used some different level types, other than warehouses and offices and some different enemies, but I still wouldn't compare it to Prey. I thought the Halo games were better than Prey, but I enjoyed FEAR more than Halo.

To me it's just that it looks primarily like the same "browns & grays" solider and terrain graphics that almost every shooter has nowadays.. same goes for what I saw of Crysis with a quick Google Image Search. They might be technically marvelous (I'm not going to argue that) but I'd rather see something that looks like there was actually an art department behind it.

Colors other than browns and grays are definitely not the strong suit of the gaming industry.

I think what threw me over the edge on Prey was when you're doing the wall walks and a portal would open and the robot soldiers shot you off the wall. It just seemed cheap and unnecessary, felt like there was nothing I could have done about that.

I'm getting more encouraged about FEAR and GoW the more I hear. After all of the great reviews and press that Prey got, I was blown away by how underwhelmed I was. I would barely say it was enjoyable, let alone fun. And I thought Halo was great, but not the be all/end all of gaming. I think the hype is going to backlash a bit on GoW, but it's still the same price as everything else, so I don't feel like I'm getting ripped here if it's only 'really good' instead of 'greatest game ever.'

Unless you're Nintendo

Nope. Not big on shooters, and all I've seen and read on this game has done nothing to get me hyped for this one.

It does look great graphically, but the hide and shoot, hide and shoot, repeat ad nauseum gameplay looks pretty dull to me--again as a person that usually hates shooters.