User:Br41n1ac

I was playing Gears of War 3 today. I always play Team Deathmatch online, so I joined a Quick Match and was almost instantly tossed into a full team of Locusts on Old Town. I managed to get in quite early, so the score was still only 13-10 Locust-COG. I got lucky and was put on the Locust side. As the ever so awesome Thrashball Drone, I charged around with the Gnasher, and was particularly on my game this match, which was awesome since, lately, I've been in a pretty bad slump. I smoked the COG team, gibbing player after player in Gnasher Battle after Gnasher Battle. I rarely ever do this, so naturally I was particularly excited. I ended the first round with a 9-0 record, so I was pumped for the second round.

The second round began with a bang- I rushed for the Boomshot spawn and managed to acquire the weapon, although shortly after, I was killed a COG player with the Torque Bow. I remembered his name (which I guess I can't use here :p ), so I made it a point, as I always do, to get my Swift Vengeance medal by hunting him down. I charge for the Boomshot spawn and, you guessed it, the genius was standing there watching the spawn point with his gun hard-aimed at the ground. He hears me coming and turns around, but I manage to gib him with my Gnasher before he can get his Torque Bow primed, and he rage-quit instantly. Here's where it got a little weirder.

One by one, in quick succession, players on both sides began dropping out. The score was about 5-7 (Locust-COG), so I don't understand why everyone simply bailed so quickly after the first player left. So, it was just me and the bots. Normally, I get bored as hell during bot matches and would leave, but these bots were particularly aggressive, so I decided to just go for it and hoped more players would join. No players did, and one-by-one, the COG was whittled down to three bots left: Baird, Bernie, and Hoffman. For some reason, these three bots were camped near the Boomshot spawn and were whoring the Boomshot and the Scorcher that spawns up north. Any time me or one of my bot teammates got near that side of the map, we got smoked. Pretty tough for bots, I thought.

Well, the Locust team got cut down to its last five players, and as the rest of the match had gone, my bot teammates charged toward the Boomshot spawn pretty hastily. Three of the bots were smoked, while another approached Baird. I went with that bot and used it as a distraction, and managed to gib Baird from his side as Baird downed my bot teammate with the Scorcher. I went to pick my teammate up, but the Bernie bot charged me almost instantly. In a split-second reaction, I bounced off a nearby wall and attempted to shoot the Bernie bot, but we traded Gnasher kills, which I rarely ever see with bots.

Great. It was Hoffman and my downed teammate. I switched to ghostcam and tried to find out where Hoffman was. Go figure, he was dashing toward my teammate. My teammate happened to get up just seconds before Hoffman arrived, but somehow, Hoffman flanked the damn thing and downed it with a Retro Lancer. Normally, a bot will approach and execute a downed player or bot at the end of a match. This time, it didn't. Hoffman stood over the Locust, as if to watch it suffer, aiming the gun toward the floor in an almost robotic fashion, as you would know Gears bots do if you ever watched them in ghostcam. This is when the glitch kicked in. Most of you probably know about how on Gridlock you can trigger a special Easter egg that plays an instrumental version of the song Mad World. This kind of occurred, as only the first two piano notes of Mad World played and then distinctly cut off, followed by two or three seconds of silence, and a repeat of the same two piano notes, and this process repeated as the Hoffman bot just watched my teammate bleed. My teammate should have gotten up after a few seconds, but he didn't. He just kept crawling against the corner of the walls, bleeding out while Hoffman stood over him. After about three passes of the piano notes and silence, a strange sound started playing. It sounded like it was human, so I zoomed in on Hoffman and the bot. Hoffman was crying.

Though, like Mad World, it was a very crappy sounding clip. It certainly sounded like Hoffman's voice weeping for a couple seconds, then cutting off and replaying immediately. As this crying began, Hoffman started the Ground-and-Pound execution on the Locusts. As I waited for Hoffman to smash my teammate's face in, Hoffman kept punching. I zoomed out to get a better look, and the execution went on. Hoffman must have punched the Locust twenty or so more times than normal, then immediately walked away from the Locust's dying body as the execution went on (the Locust was still flailing, and the punching sounds kept going). This was where it took the worst turn.

Hoffman approached the f***ing ghostcam. He didn't jog by it, he didn't walk around aimlessly...he approached my f***ing ghostcam. With this crying sound still playing he stared directly into the cam and I noticed his mouth moving, though it didn't seem to match up with the crying. I backed the camera away from Hoffman and he charged to meet face-to-face with the me again. I moved again, and so did Hoffman. He followed my ghostcam all the way down to the tunnel by the Locust spawn, and drew a Boltok pistol from his side. It seemed Hoffman was trying to aim it upwards with his forearm only, but since there is apparently no animation for it, the arm began flinching around in a glitchy fashion. From what I could tell, he was trying to aim it up at his own face. Soon after, Hoffman's sound files from the Anvil Gate act from the campaign played: "Goddammit!" and "Bernie!" in quick succession, I guess from "Goddamnit, Fenix" and from one of the times he mentioned Bernie's name. The gun fired.

The head pop animation occurred like it usually does for headshots on Gears. Then, just like in campaign, the red Objective Failed screen with the Crimson Omen abruptly appeared before Hoffman's dead body even had time to hit the ground. Needless to say, I'm about to ruin my pants, and turned Gears of War 3 off. What the hell is this? Some glitch? Has anyone else experienced this?