COD 4 is a good example of why Devs should focus more on a single player experience. After hearing how short it was it went from my definate buy list to my definate rent list. 5 hrs on normal is unaceptable one night and the game was done. I was able to play through the majority of the game on vetran playing off and on in the week that I had it.As fun as it was  If I would have bought it I would have felt riped off.

10-12 hr campaigns are aceptable to me for a shooter thats typically the sweet spot just before repition starts to get on your nerves. I sure there are plenty more out there that feel as I do. In my case it would have resulted in a sale instead of a rental.

I have to say people over hype the importance of live. Currently there are 1,124,091 individual accounts associated with COD4 on live. Compare that to the 6.8 million in sales the 360 version of the game has accumulated. Now take in to account multiple gamertags per system and silver memberships. So thats about 5.6 million owners left after a short campaign going WTF thats all there is? I gues I better gets some friends together to play split screen if I want my moneys worth. There are a lot(close to half) of 360 owners out there that dont use live at all.

Split screen is fun and I still play it every now and then at a friends house but when we get more than 4 players together COD4 gets put away. Have to break out GR2 and unfortunatly Halo3 when its split screen lan party time.

Anyway my point is that if you are going to have both multiplayer and single player experiences there needs to be a balance between them. One should not suffer for the other. A fully polished product can do both well and please both player types.

What Gears 2 needs is a far better realized story. The plot of Gears 1 was extremely generic and if it was in the form of a film or novel it would be the laughing stock of critics and audiance alike. They hired a professional writer this time to achieve that goal but from what I have seen and heard so far it doesn't appear to much improved over it's predecessor. Though not much is known at this time so my opinion could obviously change.

I think the Gears story did a decent enough job of fitting the gameplay.  It doesn't have to be War and Peace.  All it needed to do was supplement the action.

I have no hopes for CoD3.5 to be anything other than a disappointment.  I'll wait around for CoD6 when Infinity Ward is back at the helm.

I give that post a 9.1.

Gears of War 2 doesn't need a story. I enjoyed the hell out of Gears of War 1, and I had no clue what the fuck was going on. Especially the bit with Marcus' dad having a map of the Locust tunnels for some fucking reason. But I didn't care because the game was fun.

But Gears of War 2 could do with a longer single-player campaign. Gears of War 1 and COD4 were both too short. I beat COD4 in probably 7 hours, and GoW 1 in 8 hours. GoW 1 on hard, and COD4 on Veteran. For me, the perfect game length is right around 12-15 hours.

Strip away the gameplay and the story of Gears 1 is incredibly shallow, incapable of standing on it's own. It doesn't have to be War and Peace but the characters should be original, well developed with an established plot that is more than just an excuse for shooting. You could tear apart the plot for all it's holes, lack of logical developments and explanation for events if you wanted to. That is simply sloppy writing at best.

it is unfortunate that the industry is leaning towards the online community experience. I have a feeling that single player games are going to get shorter as more and more gamers are going online (i.e. look at Halo vs Halo 2 and 3 campaign lengths) My personal feeling is like yours, I want to see extended single player modes as well as multiplayer improvement. Time will tell.

Yea, there is your problem right there.  Most people enjoyed Gears of War for the gameplay.  That being said, your own standards of a good story are already in question with the affections you lavish on MGS' increadibly convoluted and horrid storytelling.  Considering you think that anime stories are better than anything Hollywood puts out.  It seems that, in general, you like your stories convoluted, devoid of any and all subtlety and the point of a scene must be delivered to you wrapped around a brick so you dont miss it (this describes 99% of anime).

For those that think I'm attacking DTG, please search not only his thread and posts but also those of "billy07", which was his old name.  It makes for some entertaining reading.

I give this post a 9.5.

Are you sure thats not just players in the last 24hours who played the game.  Becasue on the PS3 version our scores list goes well above 2mil accounts.  Add in about 250k at the very max for double accounts or what ever and it looks like most people like to play the game online.

Convoluted is often mistaken with complexity. I prefer a storyline I must rewatch several times to fully comprehend to a generic high school action tale such as Gears 1. While most people play it for the gameplay in this day and age with HD technology and the revolution of cinematic games there is no excuse for video game storylines to be any less captivating and developed than that of movies.

MGS' stories are definitely convoluted. The pseudo-intellectualist arguments are presented forcefully and in a shallow manner; the excess of terminologies makes the player's focus deviate from the plot itself. Worst of all is the abuse of cutscenes and the lack of storytelling through interactivity.

They're supposed to be games, not movies.

And videogame stories are not worse than movies'. They're simply different mediums, with different ways of storytelling.