10 Video Games That Wasted Their Ludicrous Budgets On Terrible Levels

3. Gears Of War €“ Burnt Rubber

Vehicle sections in shooter games are generally a bad idea and Gears of War features one of the worst. Burnt Rubber is a chapter near the end of Act 2 and sees Delta Squad using a junker (a really, really rubbish car) to cross the city of Ephyra at night. Trouble is, in a world overtaken by the Locust forces, night is one of the worst times to be travelling due to the presence of the Kryll. Small, winged creatures (slightly resembling bats), the Kryll can tear a man into shreds in seconds but only in the dark; the light will burn them to pieces; good thing then that your junker in Burnt Rubber is equipped with a light turret. The sheer volume of Kryll turns the whole level into a sequence that you simply have to memorise as you move through the level; the audio clues given by your squad are almost useless. In co-op, you might think it would be a breeze with one person driving and the other shooting. Small problem €“ you can't shoot and drive at the same time as the Junker doesn't have enough power to do both. So to shoot at the Kryll chasing you, you need to stop completely and turn into an open-top buffet. On lower difficulties, it's possible to drive through without stopping. On Insane, you need to stop and eliminate every chasing Kryll pack; not doing so will result in constant deaths and restarts. It's an unbelievably stupid and annoying level €“ what the hell were Epic thinking here?