Jeremy Duenas

Ask some web designers about Dreamweaver and most will tell you that anyone using it is a web design noob that wouldn’t last a minute without their precious little WYSIWYG editor. Well I’m here to say they’re dead wrong. Sure, there’s tons of people out there that got ahold of the program and created a million table-based designs that look like crap, but there are those (myself included) that use or have used Dreamweaver as a way to learn. A year or two ago, a friend of mine gave me his copy of Dreamweaver MX 2004 because he already knew how to code everything by hand and at that point, I couldn’t code to save my life. Because of my inabilities, being able to create a website by just clicking here and there was a Godsend. And being told by my highschool’s computer teacher that “Most web designers these days use Dreamweaver” was even more reason (or so I thought) to use it. So in one night I created six or seven table-based templates to put on OSWD using nothing but Dreamweaver’s design view (absolutely no code is involved with design view. Just clicking and typing your content). I sent them off to OSWD, but they got rejected because they didn’t validate (something I had never even heard of). So after a while I came to realize that I really needed to learn how to hand code. So I downloaded all of Andreas Viklund’s templates from OSWD and played with the code through Dreamweaver. In a couple of weeks I had taught myself XHTML and a CSS.

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Note: Updated June 22, 2008

There’s a lot of hype about this game. It has won a ton of awards from a ton of different video game magazines, sites, companies, etc. and all for a VERY good reason. The reason is that this game is amazing. From the time I picked up the controller to the time I put it down (which I admit was only like 10-15 hours later), I was amazed. This was my first XBOX360 game, and I went the extra mile and bought the collector’s edition (or was is special edition…I can’t remember). And boy am I glad I did, because if I hadn’t I would have no idea why the hell I was fighting ugly orc-like things that crawl out of the ground.

Now you may be wondering what I mean by that. What I mean is that unless you read it on wikipedia or buy the $70 version that comes w/ a little book, you’ll have no idea what’s going on. The game does little to unveil the shroud that covers the main character’s past, the planet’s past, the locusts’ past, etc. That being said, you don’t really need a background to know that these locust guys are a pain in the butt and its your job to blow ‘em up. And that’s definitely something you’ll be doing a lot with this game. The main argument against this game is length. With enough dedication/food/caffeine, you can beat this game in one sitting….on easy. But that’s what the other difficulty settings are for.

The game comes with three different difficulty levels, each one much more difficult than the previous. When you first play the game, you can choose between the easiest mode and the middle-difficulty mode. Beating one of those two modes will unlock the third and most difficult mode. That, added to collecting COG tags, getting achievements, etc. makes for an okay-length game. Another argument against the game is online play. To me online play sucks. It pretty much consists of either jerks that are REALLY good at the game pwning you left and right, or 12 year olds who found the shotgun or found a sniper rifle/good snipers nest that call you a noob. Between the two you’re not left with much fun to have. That being said, online has a good half- Co-Op.

Co-Op is a LOT of fun. Especially during big battles against a lot of enemies or against more difficult enemies that require strategy. All in all, Gears is an excellent game. the graphics are breathtaking and if they’re any indication of what’s to come later on in this generation, we’re all in for some awesome gaming.

I gave it an 8.8/10 at gamespot.