Yesterday I was watching the E3 press conferences from the big 3 consoles makers, which of coarse the Microsoft conference is the one I paid most attention too, since I own a 360. I also own a Wii but to be honest, there’s not much on the Wii that interest me. A little way through the Microsoft conference is where they showed Gears of War 2. While I owned the first one, played it, and liked it while I played it, I hadn’t picked it up since I finished the game.

The weird thing, I got a familiar feeling while watching the new GOW2 demo. A feeling that I hadn’t had while watching a game demo in a long while. You have the game itself, which seems like they have got the whole feel of combat down to a science. The cover system, the weapons, the atmosphere. You can tell that this game has its own life beyond just being a game. Then you have Cliff Bleszinski (Cliffy B), talking about the game. You can tell he is proud of his game, and have a lot of confidence and excitement. He knows he has worked hard, He knows he is setting trends, and he happy to tell you all about it.

Then it hit me what game in the past has given me this same feeling.

Quake 2

The Quake series in the early days had the same technical, trendsetting feeling. And John Carmack had the same confidence and excitement that Cliffy B has been showing about GOW2 (and GOW1 and everything else he does). Also, if you look at the impact the first GOW has had on gaming, there are a lot of games that has followed some of the same gameplay aspects of GOW, just like in the past a lot of games tried to mimick the Quake series.