well to be perfectly honest with you, this sounds like a thread made for flaming, but anyway heres my blog on the topic that I wrote a while back.
Well the Halo 3 beta was over and I had no idea what to do. So I went to gamespot and started reading the forums and I started reading all these posts saying that Gears was better than Halo. I remembered Gears, it was the first game that I bought with my Xbox 360, but I had remembered it being just alright, and nothing all that great, but I hadn't played it in a while. So I popped it into my Xbox and jumped right on in to some ranked verses, and let me tell you, boy was I wrong. The Gears of War game play was a refreshing delight after playing Halo 3 for so long. I must have chainsawed over 50 people today (whoever thought of the chainsaw bayonet should be given a freaking metal) and each time I experienced a sick joy from killing my foes with it, the same kind of joy you get from burning ants with a magnifying glass. So I continued to play it wondering to myself how I ever thought that it was "nothing all that great". It wasn't until after I met a fun group of people on my team that I realized why I preferred Halo to Gears. We were all joking around and having a good time; I was getting the most kills on my team, only using the chainsaw bayonet (fun times), and after the game was over we sent each other friend requests. I then proceeded to host my own ranked match and invite all the people that were just on my team when I realized that I couldn't send them an invite to the game.
I looked up why I couldn't do this and found out that the reason that they [Epic Games] don't want you to be able to team up with your friends in ranked games because they are concerned that a small group of people will get really good at the game and dominate the top of the leaderboards. I didn't even know that Gears had leaderboards until that article and I truly believe that, that is a terrible reason for not being able to team up with your friends in a game. It's punishing the majority of players for a couple of eccentric players, but I have to ask why would that be so bad anyway? Is it really terrible if people work together and strategize and earn the #1 spot on the leaderboards? Whatever happened to the old Xbox Live slogan "Its good to play together"? This made me realize why I've always preferred Halo to Gears:
The Online Setup and Support.
The online setup in Halo is just flat out superior to that of Gears and this is the main reason why I enjoy Halo so much, if it didn't have this then I don't know if I would support the idea that Halo is better than Gears. With the matchmaking (a system that allows you to quickly be matched up with people at a similar skill level as you in a quick manner), diverse modes of game play (double team, team slayer, team skirmish, team snipers, and team hardcore, big team slayer, big team skrmish, and team swat), frequent updates to meet player demands, and the ability to party up with people is something that, I believe, can really make a difference in replay value in a game. The fact that I have to play the same game type (warzone) with random people every time just doesn't appeal to me as much as being able to get together with a group of friends and play multiple types of game play. Come on, you know that it would be cool to play a team snipers game with a group of friends against another group that is near equally skilled would be fun in Gears. Now I know that you could just play in player match if you wanted to do something somewhat similar to what I just stated, but it just wouldn't as convenient, quick, easy, or even the same for that manner.
Now you could argue that Gears still has better game play then Halo and you could bring up valid points. (I personally believe that each game has its own strengths and weaknesses, but that's just my opinion.), but I believe that the online setup and support truly makes Halo a better online experience than Gears. Don't get me wrong, Gears is a fun game, I just feel that Halo is a better all around experience.
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