Man, they aren’t kidding about the HC difficulty, although it’s the “medium” one of the three available–despite the fact that Insane isn’t really available at the beginning. I picked HC because I figured Casual would be too easy, but soon ran into a bunch of things I just couldn’t beat without dropping back to casual.
eh, it’s not that tough once you get used to it, co-op is also helpful, as you can be revived. lemme know if you want to play
Aye, Gears is pretty much built for co-op. The difficulty starts to get a bit unfair and imbalanced for a solo player when you start playing on Hardcore.
You know, I pretty much suck with any “hard” games, but with Gears, I had no problems even on Insane. Except for a few parts. Like the pumping station. Raaaaaaaaaagh.
As others have stated, there are less headaches with co-op because the computer controlled Cogs are dumb.
The only time I really had to co-op on Hardcore was against the last boss, and that’s only because I had no idea what I was doing. The rest of the time I just co-opped for fun, and goddamn is it fun.
Here’s a difficulty reference for ya:
Solo:
Casual – Easy
Hardcore – Difficult
Insane – Basically Impossible
Co-op:
Casual – Pointless
Hardcore – Easy
Insane – Difficult
This was pretty universally recognized by everyone I knew that played the game. Which is fine for people ‘in the know’, but it’s just plain dumb for anyone who’s new to the game.
Developers need to make difficulty levels relative to the number of players. How am I supposed to know that “Hardcore” actually means “Easy” when I happen to be playing co-op?
In the case of GoW, there are only 2 difficulty levels that are remotely feasible for any given number of players. So why didn’t they just label them ‘normal’ and ‘hard’, with those being balanced for the number of players in that mode, stripping out the pointless 3rd option in each case?
Halo 3 made this same mistake. You add a 2nd player in co-op, and the game becomes way less than half as difficult, because of the infinite respawns. And in the case of 4 players, you’ll almost never have a full-party wipe on any difficulty level. Yet players are expected to know (for example) that ‘normal’ is suddenly completely trivial in this situation? That you need to check some secret matrix somewhere to see what the right difficulty is for your number of players?
I thought the art of game design was past this.
I finally started playing the PC version, figuring that Hardcore couldn’t be too bad based on the descriptions when you choose, and I’d just like to say that Lambent Wretches can GO TO HELL.
Otherwise, I’ve been able to steadily progress at least, even if it might take a handful of deaths per checkpoint.
(360) I tried Hardcore just after finishing it on Casual. Stopped before I had finished the first level/chapter. Way to Hardcore for me…
Hardcore is hard as balls. A lot of trial and error for me to get through it, and it drove me crazy quite a few times. I got through it by myself and honestly it might have made more sense just to do some parts co-op. And once you get to General RAAM - yikes!
I agree with this, and its kind of the reverse of way games are going. For the most part now, medium is the new easy.
Except for when they split you up, and either person’s death causes you to have to start over :(.
I wouldn’t say “Hardcore” is easy because of moments like that by any rate. Of course maybe the people I played with were just impatient.
I did HC for two playthroughs. One solo, one coop. It was actually slightly harder on coop. I died more during the regular battles when solo because I couldn’t be revived by teammates but we also had some really painful experiences with the coop where you split up. The second where you are in the mining carts comes to mind. It’s basically a timing game – you just have to learn where the enemies are going to come and time your shots well. One or the other of us would always screw up and it took us way longer than it should have to pass that. There was another section underground that took forever because of this issue.
Argh, I’ve made it to Act 4, but it’s really starting to annoy me now. Lots of cheap instant deaths due to snipers and torque bows out of nowhere, and the checkpoints seem to be a lot farther apart, making me redo a couple other fights just to get back to where I keep dying.
Pre-post edit: After getting a bit further it doesn’t seem quite so bad, but man, the act’s first half-dozen or so fights…
I dunno, I played through Hardcore without too much trouble. Insane is pretty tough to solo, though. Much better for co-op.
Yea, hardcore just felt like normal to me, aside from certain areas, ie. Lambent Wretches in a narrow hallway. Who the fuck’s bright idea was that shit?
I’m not if it was because it was my first run or not, but I found single player insane to be much easier than single player hardcore. General Raam being the only exception. I have yet to beat him.
I finished it today, but I’m not sure if I got it legitimately or not. The first few times I tried RAAM, I failed to find a good spot to run to when he got too close. On the last try though, he kept firing from a distance and didn’t get too close, so I could just stay at the starting barrier and wear him down. Walkthroughs have mentioned some kind of ‘glitch’, so maybe I accidentally triggered that somehow.
Oh well, I’ll take it anyway…