Gears of War Insane Difficulty Comments

The second time I went through Gears of War, I started on Insane difficulty since I had already won on Hardcore. I thought I'd be ready to handle it. I was wrong. I was barely able to get past the prison facility and dropped the difficulty back down to Hardcore.

However I was determined to ultimately play through the game on Insane, mainly to earn the Gamer Picture you unlock with it (the same as the Commando Achievement icon). To that end, I decided to give Insane another go this past Sunday, and I won the game in about 24 hours, all Single Player.

The major difference in my play style from then to now is that Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter taught me to be patient, and I also made excellent use of blind fire. These key changes in the way I approached Insane Difficulty allowed me to trounce the Locust opposition with little more difficulty than my last play-through on Hardcore, and Insane is now my preferred difficulty for Gears of War.

Not only have I achieved ever Single Player achievement that Gears of War has to offer save Clusterluck (killing 3 enemies at the same time ten times), but I also earned my Gamer Picture, which you'll be able to see on the right tonight once Xbox Live and the official Xbox website are finished undergoing maintenance.

My major frustration with Gears of War on Insane difficulty is the same as my major gripe with the game in general: the Checkpoint save system. However since I've ranted and raved about that in many other posts I'll save you from reading a repeat.

The only other huge issue was General Raam. My tactic from Hardcore was no longer working, and after about 20 tries I consulted the official Xbox forum to see what other players have done. There I learned of a path finding issue that could happen with Raam (it's not a guarantee) which I was finally able to a) achieve and b) take proper advantage of, after about 20 more tries. Words can not describe my satisfaction once that cheap fucker finally died.

Overall, Gears of War is a great game, though playing through it here for the third time really has driven home how bloody short it is. I won it in about 6 to 7 hours of play time; say roughly 1.5 hours per Act (Act V would have been a lot shorter had it not been for the Checkpoint system and Raam).

Even taking that into account, however, it still is a must have title for the Xbox 360.