the only fun way to play ranked, or anything online, is with friends. Why would I possibly want to jump into a room with 7 idiots and try to develop some sort of teamwork? It never works..

That's what player matches are for. Ranked shouldn't allow for one team to have
an outside advantage over another.

Yeah I thought Ranked makes you break up your room after each game? Oh wait, that's Rainbow Six...

I'm looking for someone that wants to play coop

My gamertag is demontooth.

"Try and sneak around her, quietly." I watched a friend play this part and was seriously creeped out!

The idea with the Trueskill system and ranked games is that it's testing your individual skill and ranking you accordingly. Not how well you can play with the help of your friends. Player matches are designed for playing with your friends. Ranked games are for testing your individual skill. It's the only way to have a level playing field for the scoreboards. If Epic wanted to create a third type of match strictly for clans with it's own leaderboards, that would be fine. As it stands now in ranked games (pre-patch) you have experienced 4 member groups playing against 4 random people and that gives the group of friends an unfair advantage on the scoreboards. It's as simple as that. Epic's just trying to make the scoreboards a little bit more reflective of individual player skill.

I'm playing on Hardcore and I'm at Raam. I'll say it again, the 1st time I beat Raam was pure luck and if I beat him again, it will be the same. They put some chicken shit rules on Raam and I know this level is glitchy. At one point all the Kryll flew away from him but he still had that black cloud...with no Kryll present. I'm pretty sure he was invincible while that was happening and I'm sure there are other chicken shit things that happens like that and that fuckin' sucks....

Just finished the game on casual. I'm sorry, but why are those last two chapters so short? I couldn't believe the game was done already. Act 5 could be completed in a matter of minutes if it didn't take me so damn long to figure out how to kill RAAM.

It's this reason that I never play a game on casual/easy. Always start on hard or hardest if you want extended game time.

Oh, I found the game plenty challenging at parts. I just thought the last two chapters were very short, compared to the earlier ones. I'll try it again on Hardcore soon.

Lately I've been thinking about starting 360 games on hard or the next level up instead of "normal". I was thinking that I should've jumped right to "insane" on GOW when I first got it. Anyway, although I'm not the best gamer I never start on easy. But then again this whole achievement point thing makes me want play all levels of difficulty just to get as many points as possible.

I think i'm the opposite, I don't want an insanely hard game to play right off the bat, or else i'll probably be turned off by it after I get my ass kicked over and over again. I'm playing Gears on casual and finding it enjoyable enough. I'm sure i'll play hardcore and insane afterwards while i'm more accustomed to the gameplay.

Agreed. I have nothing against clans and think Epic should make a 3rd kind of match type just for them. But I really hate the fact that they can play in regular ranked matches. They always force people to join the other team or else the host closes out the whole lobby. And there is nothing worse then joining a lobby that has 4 people and seeing 3 of them waiting in the center. Sometimes it takes me a good 10 minutes to just find a game that is not a clan.

I'm not feeling the achievement points yet. I guess because I only have 495.

achievements are the epitomy of lameness

This is the way I feel also. I still haven't got past that mother fucker on the horse in Ninja Gaiden. I stick it back in every couple of months and give it a try but I just can't get past him.

Troll much?

nah, should i start?

It's not buggy. Sometimes he sends the kryll to attack, and you can scatter them by hitting him with a torque shot or a frag. Then you can hose him down with the lancer or snipe him. The hard part is timing the part where you mantle your cover and run past him to get away, but he turns and aims slowly, so once you get a feel for it, it can be done pretty reliably. If you have the magnum, you can blind fire it at him when he gets too close to snipe, and that can wind up saving you a couple of snipe shots.

Sheesh, no doubt edstein, no doubt.

I disagree with the first part of this entirely. If Gears had a straight deathmatch mode then yes the Trueskill system and not allowing parties would make sense. However, since it is a squad based game then it should judge you based upon how well you play with your friends.

Say what you will about Halo 2, but at least it got the damn online system and groups done correctly on a console. Now if others would just follow suit instead of screwing up a blindingly obviously popular and well crafted system.

I don't know man. I realize that he sends the Kryll to attack and I know about using explosives like the T Bow and grenades to make them leave Raam. But what I saw just the other day was Raam covered in the same black cloud that covers him when the Kryll are around, yet the Kryll had long flown away.

Like I said, I was only thinking about it. I do the same as you.

Got the maps downloaded this morning. I saw them at 6:30am EST when I checked.

The map download was around 94 megs.

That may be a bug, but I took multiple tries to beat him and did not see the cloud on him when the kryll were away, and it took me a lot of tries to beat him.

The fight seems to be designed to be dynamic, and as a result, sometimes it will give you a better opportunity than others. It seems like you usually get a lot of good shots at him before he charges your first position most of the time. Occasionally he does not.

It also seems like Dom usually gets killed immediately, but is occasionally useful (by the way, I love how that slacker spends the whole fight sprawled on the ground and then pops up to leap from a moving train onto a helicopter as soon as the machine-gun wielding bad guy goes down).

But the standard technique seems to work.

However' they've patched in a new achievement for killing him with the mounted Troika gun. Has anyone done this? It seems almost impossible to do on hardcore, because the troika position is too exposed.