Discriminating Gamer

I beat Gears of War on Insane difficulty this afternoon… because of a glitch. What’s worse, I went into the final battle knowing it was the only way I’d beat General RAAM. I’d read about possible RAAM glitches and even ran into it on Hardcore difficulty, so I figured I’d just keep plugging away until it happened. Fortunately, it happened sooner than expected. Hey, I’m not proud of it, but I’m sure I’m not the first gamer who took advantage this particular programming error. The best part was the glitch was extremely helpful and hilarious. In a nutshell, my normally useless AI companion Dom carried the day for me… involuntarily.

Anyone who’s fought General RAAM on any difficulty should be able to follow this series of events: Dom’s doing his normal bullet-sponge routine. He gets immobilized almost immediately in the alley in front of the cover you find in the cut scene entering the train car. He’s down between the stack of pipes running down the center of the car and the first crate to the left. General RAAM takes his customary route: down the middle in the distance, makes a right around some cover, then right down the center again.

You see where I’m going with this. As RAAM is advancing on my position like he always does, he gets caught on Dom’s hunched over, bleeding near-corpse. For some reason General RAAM isn’t programmed to kill ‘downed Dom’ the way a Berserker does. As soon as I realize this, I’m delighted to wait until he sends his protective Kryll minions after me (to no avail, since my cover is lit), then blind-fire torque bow bolts into his gut. Every time a bolt exploded, Dom would bellow in pain. Amusing and pathetic, all at once. I like to think Marcus explained to Dom afterwards in the Raven that in certain situations you gotta to take one (many, actually) for the team.

So, there you go. A win’s a win, and I’ll take it. My ‘Achievements’ say I’m good enough to beat Gears of War on Insane, but you know the truth.

(Note: I stumbled upon my glitch to get General RAAM stuck, but apparently it can be done fairly consistently. Check out the General RAAM glitch video below to find out how. The video is helpful, but it’s definitely a lot funnier when RAAM gets stuck on Dom instead of a block.)