Gears of War
November 14,2006 -

When the Xbox 360 was released last year, many believed Rare’s Perfect Dark Zero would act as the platform’s killer shooting app. While it was not bad by any means, it certainly wasn’t as fantastic as many had made it out to be, especially Microsoft. It is a new year, however, and in the wake of Microsoft’s shortcoming comes a new kid on the block: Gears of War. While there was always hype surrounding the severely violent third-person shooter, things only got more hectic when CliffyB, the game’s lead designer, played a portion of it at the Microsoft press briefing at this year’s E3. Displayed in glorious high definition at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd., there was no denying Gears’ beauty and thankfully the visceral experience translated flawlessly to the living room.

It’s almost impossible not to compare Gears of War to Halo. Both shooters were published by Microsoft Game Studios and were hyped to a point of ridiculousness. One last similarity is that both lived up to the hype. Gears of War is the best shooter to come out for consoles since Halo 2. Epic Games did a fantastic job with Gears and credit must be given. In the game you take control of Marcus Fenix, an ex-army officer and convict. Thrown into prison for defying orders and going AWOL, Fenix is finally set free when the Locust Horde overrun the penitentiary and his expertise is needed to fight the alien threat.

The Locust Horde acts as the primary enemy in the game. The Horde tunneled underground, gathering their numbers under every major city on the planet, waiting for what is referred to as “Emergence Day,” which marked their ascent to the surface destroying cities and killing countless innocents. You come in following these events and take control of the battered and bruised Fenix. For the most part, the rest of the game’s story is left very much in the air.

Although the white-knuckled action makes you almost entirely forget about the story, there’s certainly room for a dash more narrative. The game is broken into five acts, starting with your break out of prison, and follows Fenix and his team of comrades as they attempt to find and deliver an underground mapping resonator to the sublevel tunnels that the Horde use for transport. And that’s where the story ends. The entire storyline is based on lugging around a huge electronic device, about the size of a backpack, underground; that’s it. The campaign also doesn’t take very long to complete. Although brilliantly paced, Gears’ story mode last only about six, albeit strong, hours of gameplay. And during this time the characters are developed very minimally. So while the rest of the game makes up for these deficiencies, they must be noted.

Gears is a tried and true action game. Everything about it screams war; from the extensive use of cover, to the chainsaw equipped Lancer. The Lancer is the primary weapon of all Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG) soldiers. Fully automatic and outfitted with a chainsaw bayonet, the Lancer Assault Rifle gets the job done and in the messiest way possible. When you’re not using the context sensitive commands to duck behind and rush to cover, you’re on top of an enemy cutting up the living daylights out of them. Using the chainsaw, whether in single-player or even more so in multiplayer, is quite possibly the most satisfying experience one can ever have in a shooter.

There’s a difference between pistol whipping and sawing someone in half. Even a long distance headshot can’t compare. Watching the blood splatter on the screen as you hear the final shrieks of your adversary over Xbox Live is wholly fulfilling.

As aforementioned, the use of cover is what Gears is all about. And that concept will quickly become drilled into your brain, as you won’t last very long on any of the three difficulties (Casual, Hardcore, and Insane) if you run into the fray Rambo-style. In fact, you probably wouldn’t make it through the tutorial on Insane if you didn’t use cover. The context sensitive commands come up on-screen so there’s no guesswork when it comes to protecting your hide, and thankfully the system has all been integrated with the simple press of the A-button. Considering how much can be done with the A-button, the development team did a great job of keeping things simple and versatile. You can slip out of, hop over, and roadie run from cover to cover, all with the use of the A-button. The lack of convoluted controls makes Gears extremely inviting to casual and hardcore players alike.

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