"Sucks to be them."Really now, does it? The two other hulky man-beasts on my team, stuck down in the sewer, a place probably devoid of any monster encounters whatsoever -- does it really suck to be them?
The answer doesn't matter. What does matter is that this scene in the Gears of War is the second-most cringe-worthy out of any conversation between stereotypical gun-toting muscle-freaks I've ever seen. See, they're on a mission. A mission to save humanity from alien-yet-strangely-human-like creatures who have bad complexions and also are on steroids. They're going below ground. Like, under the ground. And they're gonna blow the shit out of these aliens. And they eventually do...with a speeding train armed with a bomb. Boom. Just like that.
No, Gears of War isn't literature -- it barely meets the criteria to become comic-book worthy material. Instead, the game relies on its mechanics (the "pop n' stop" gunplay) to ultimately become one of the best shooters on the market and something I want to come back to time and time again, regardless of lines like, "We want your ammo on our location!" (On a side note, you'd think that with a massive budget, these game makers would actually get some real talent on the script, but...I guess not. It's not like your playing this game to stimulate any intellectual thinking, now, are you?)
Unlike other games this generation, Gears of War is a place I can go back to time after time and still have fun -- I think Resident Evil 4 and F-Zero GX were other such games where I could just jump into a firefight or a race or escape from a giant statue of a midget (I commend the designer who came up with that idea) and still enjoy myself, no matter what. Maybe it just all comes down to the fact that I might have ADD and that I can't enjoy something unless it delivers "fun" in quick, intense bursts. "Slow" and "meticulous" are words that have not entered my vocabulary until the moment I just used them in this last sentence -- this might also mean that "college" (a word that also just was inducted into my vocabulary hall-of-fame) might be out of the question. Such is my dilemma.
This rollercoaster of a game begins in a jail, where Marcus Fenix is saved by his friend, Dom. In this scene, we not only are able to vaguely see our protagonist without a shirt on (just how inhumanly muscly is he?), but we also get the privilege to hear the word "shit" used just for hell of it. Dom and Marcus fight through swarms of aliens, narrowly escape a giant underground bug that appears out of nowhere to devour our heroes, and fly away on a helicopter.
Here, Marcus has an IMPORTANT CONVERSATION with a helmet-clad soldier named Carmine:
"Hey," says Carmine to Marcus, "are you the Marcus Fenix? The one that fought at Aspho Fields?"
Marcus looks grumpy. "Yeah."
In the most horribly voice acted line in the game, Carmine responds, "Wow, cool!"
And what does Marcus think of this praise? Does he thinks it's cool?
"Not really."
You, the person reading this blog, who actually isn't reading it because no one reads this anyway; you who theoretically dropped out of high school to pursue an acting career and now only star in Kentucky Fried Chicken(TM) commercials; you who once asked the waiter in an Apple Bee's restaurant whether or not it felt better to walk through glass with shoes or go barefoot, and if so, does that come with onion rings -- you, you magnificent bastard, you could have written better dialogue. Start living the good life, son, because you'll make it as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer in this here Videogames Industry in no time.
I want to tear my hair out whenever I watch this scene. I want to club baby seals and steal candy from 7-Elevens whenever I watch this scene. I want to smash my hand with a hammer, I want to beat myself over the head with a spiked club...I even want to *gasp* go read Anna Karenina instead of watching this shit. (Note to non-existent reader: I used "shit" instead of "crap" or "trash" because, like Gears of War, the more profanity I use, the better everything gets. So shit. Also: shit.)
But the majority of the time, I skip this scene -- in fact, I skip most of the scenes, because frankly, they're awkward, poorly written, and not very well-shot.
Surprisingly, I like Gears of War, though. I've played it through all the difficulty levels and found all the dog-tags, and right now, I wouldn't mind playing it again. It's just...when people argue over whether or not videogames can be taken seriously, as in, on the level of other forms of popular media, I just think back to Marcus Fenix and his conversation with Dom.
"Sucks to be them."
Oh well. Back to Anna Karenina, I guess.
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