I finished Gears of War yesterday and I have to say I'm disappointed with the length. It took me only about 9-11 hours to finish the game on the easiest difficulty setting, including dying a lot in some very frustrating parts of the game. But those were nothing compared to the very annoying final boss fight with a locust called general Raam (picture above). Or more specifically the stupid bat/bird creature things that protected him. I died like 30-35 times before finally managing to beat the son-of-a-bitch. Out of those only maybe 4 were by the hands of the general himself and 2 by the squids floating around.

I was also disappointed to find out that there was *spoiler alert* no other special tactic or trick required in killing him, except making the bats go away for a while by shooting Raam with the torque bow before spraying him with led. *spoiler end* I wonder what the boss fight is like on insane difficulty... insane ? But all things considered it's a great game I can highly recommend.

Today I got the chance to play this cool game for 3 days via a free pass given to me by a friend (thanks again if you happen to read this ) who bought it a few weeks ago.

At first it was a bit frustrating to get killed so easily compared to lets say Team Fortress 2, but after I got acquainted with the controls, weapons, maps and stuff, the kills and victories started rolling in and I had a lot of fun. Unfortunately it took me some time to find a good server, because most were either empty (despite a lot of players showing in the server list) or full of people who spoke only French or German… or had one or more team killer cowards in them. But when you finally find that good server, this game is awesome.

Maybe I’ll buy it someday… just too bad that its only available through Steam, because I’m an old fashioned guy who likes to have that DVD case on his shelf . It would be great if instead of giving away my extra copy of Half-Life 2: Episode One, I could trade it for a game like Day of Defeat: Source.