With the excitement and major hype surrounding the release of Gears of War 2, the few people left that hadn't played its 2006 Game of the Year predecessor were left wondering what was so great about it. A lot along the lines of the success that Halo built, Gears of War has amassed a decent following since it came out. Instead of putting out another Halo (to be honest, even though I love the series it was getting a little stale to me), developer Epic creates a third-person action romp built on the ever improving and impressive Unreal engine.
The story picks up with Dominic Santiago who springs you, Marcus Fenix, from jail. Not much is known why you're fighting, but you're thrown right into the action and it doesn't let up until the final cinematic. There is an invasion on Sera, though rather than an alien race from somewhere else, the Locust actually came from inside the planet. How creepy is it that all your life; this species has dwelled beneath the surface. Other than the will to live, you're not really sure what you're fighting for, but the fight along the way is undeniably entertaining.
Gears of War puts you in the action in the third-person view as you control Marcus and make your way through the five acts. It plays out kind of like a squad based shooter, though your comrades act on a intelligent AI so you really don't have to give them any orders. While you progress your teammates will either follow close behind or if you piddle around in an area they'll make their way towards the next checkpoint. There really isn't a lot of dull moments or pauses in the action, and thankfully the AI do a great job of fighting alongside you. Once in action, your ally AI will actually take points around the firefight. There are actually times where, before you can move past your first couple of kills, your teammates have already cleared out half the room. The only real frustrations come when you're knocked down and need to be revived. When you take enough damage and drop to your knees, you have a certain amount of time to have a teammate come over and revive you. The problem that rises here is the inconsistency that your teammates will get to you, and at times they'd be standing right next to me not doing a thing while I bled out.
In shooter games, it's not necessarily the amount of weapons that really make or break the mold. GOW really doesn't have a great selection of weapons, but for the most part (aside from the pistol) you will most likely use a majority of them equally. You're only allowed to carry four weapons at a time, using the directional pad to switch between them. Aside from grenades and a pistol, you can only carry two main weapons at a time to alternate between. This causes a decision to be made at different points in the game; do you want the Torque Bow (the coolest bow and arrow in a game ever with explosive results), or the Sniper Rifle? Even the primary Lancer Assault Rifle that will most likely be used the most has the coolest secondary melée attack. A chainsaw. As cool (and gory) as it is to cut locusts in half, it's not necessarily the most effective as it has to be revved up before you can saw through anything. The enemy AI aren't pushovers even on Normal difficulty, so while you try revving up the chainsaw, you may be in for some trouble especially when you're around multiple locusts.
As if shooting the sh*t out of a worthy AI enemy isn't exciting enough, Epic throws in the active reload mechanic for good measure. There are two bars of different shades underneath the weapon display in the corner of your heads up display. Those are your target spots to hit. Using the RB to begin your reload, a cursor will start and the goal is to hit RB again to stop the cursor in the greyed segment for a normal reload or in the small white area for a perfect reload. A perfect reload readies you to fight in an instant with an added power perk for a limited time, while if you miss either one of those targets your gun will jam leaving you vulnerable and sh*it out of luck. Active reload keeps things crazy during firefights with the reload timing that gives you a strong sense of accomplishment; over and over again. In multiplayer, active reload will make or break the match.
There is no run and gun segments in GOW that you can effectively complete as the locusts' AI will tear you apart. Instead, GOW uses a cover system that has you ducking behind nearly anything that rises above ground level. You can peak over or around objects you're leaning against to aim at enemies with the left trigger, or if you're under too much heat to show any skin just blind fire with the right trigger. Your accuracy will be horrible, but at least you keep from taking damage. By the time you try your skills on the Insane difficulty, blind fire makes a good bedfellow. But as crucial as the cover system is to successfully play this game, there are tons of control issues that make playing incredibly frustrating at times. Sometimes it will cover you behind the wrong object you aimed for, while other times it won't stick at all causing you to roll out into crossfire (well most of the time they're shooting at you anyway which makes the control more frustrating).
Save for the Insane difficulty, the single player campaign can be easily beaten in one 6 hour power session. After that, the online and split-screen cooperative play over Live extends the life of Gears tremendously. There's also traditional multiplayer games like deathmatch and team deathmatch that I played a few games of, though I didn't get a chance to play a lot. Chances are, most live gamers will take to the old-school styled co-op play in order to tackle the hardest difficulty. Even with Gears 2 out, finding a game to play is pretty easy. As buggy as the new matchmaking is in Gears 2, I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of players sticking with this game for awhile.
Seeing as how Gears of War is two years old, in technology years it's more than double as far as graphics go. Even now, GOW is one of the most spectacular looking games to come out on the Xbox 360. A majority of the environments take place in suffocating areas like old buildings and creepy caverns below the surface, though that didn't stop Epic from adding incredible amounts of detail. This makes dirt on the ground a little more interesting to look at than you'd think. The cinematics and gameplay alternate with seamless precision that helps draw you in to the little background that there is in the story. Epic also developed the Unreal games so it's not really surprising that the character models are slightly exagerrated in their design. For a big a*s mofo like Marcus, he controls with ballerina grace (only REAL slow). The same goes for the amount of gore, expect lots of blood scattered around the floor and walls and some outrageous kills.
What would it sound like if you were fighting to prevent the extinction of the human race? Epic has a pretty good imagination in this department, creating an excellent score to set the tone and completely draw you in to the game. From the creepy Resident Evil-ish creaks and groans indoors to your first encounter with a Therron guard, you can't really ask for a better way to experience the war of all wars.
Overall If you hadn't noticed, I thoroughly enjoyed myself from start to finish. With Gears 2 out already, I'd really only recommend renting this if you haven't played it already for the backstory leading up to the sequel. It may not be the "Halo killer" that gamers hoped for, but who cares? Gears is a damn good game and the start of another great series to add to your Xbox 360 library.
Engaging and disturbing cinematic story Never Fight Alone Gears of War Extras: Map Packs 1 & 2, Theme - Emergence Day, Gamer Pics - Gears of War, Eme...More at Amazon
Gears of War Content includes: Gamer Picture Pack Emergence Day Gamer Picture Emergence Day Theme FUTURE WEAPONS Theme Emergence Day Message from Clif...More at Buy.com
ESRB Rating: M - MatureGenre: ShooterFeatures: A third-person tactical shooter from Epic running on the Unreal Engine 3. Gears of War thrusts gamers ...More at Newegg.com
Ever since the first mention of Microsoft s Xbox 360, we ve been seeing tech demos of Epic Games masterpiece, Gears of War. Now that the game has hit ...More at eBay
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.