Ok to start Gears Of War is an amazing game. If your not easily offended and don't have it
already go out and buy it because you will not be disappointed.
For those who don't know Gears Of War is a third person shooter from
Epic; who are best known for FPS's like Unreal Tournament. The game is
set on another planet where humans have colonised and a load of aliens
called the Locusts have invaded. The game takes place years after
emergence day which is when the Locusts first invaded. The story is
pretty much non-existent. Nothing really happens and the ending is
surprisingly unsatisfying. That said Gears of War still has a great
premise and interesting characters in which Epic can develop in the
future.
Gears of War is very different from other first person shooters in the
way that when your running around you don't get a crosshair, you have
to press the Left Trigger in to aim up which is perfect because about
80% of the game you will be diving around behind cover, shooting over
it and going from one cover to the next. This adds to the intensity of
the firefights. The animations for this all look amazing but the
downside is that all of the rolling/diving actions and going behind
cover are all mapped to the A button. This means that you will from
time to time accidently roll somewhere when you didn't mean to but this
doesnt really matter. The guns in the game are incredible and pack a
lot of punch. The coolest by far is the standard assualt rifle with a
chainsaw bayonet. You rev up your chainsaw by holding B then run over
to someone and by doing so allows you to drive the chainsaw straight
through the middle of your foes in an amazing display of blood and
gore. This never gets old.
The sound effects in the game are great especially the chainsaw and you
really feel that your firing a high powered weapon. The music is fairly
atmospheric and works very well but it is not at all memorable.
The graphics in Gears Of War are quite possibly the best graphics ever
seen in a video game. They look stunning but this comes at a price. You
will not be able to explore your surroundings and you often feel like
the game is like walking down an never-ending alleyway because you can
only go one way through nearly the entire game. There are a couple of
exceptions where you will have to split up with your team but these are
very rare.
Gears of War also has a great Co-op element to it where you and a
friend can play the entire single player game Co-op over xbox live. It
could well be better than playing single player because of being able
to revive each other but the Co-op also comes at a price. When playing
through the numerous times on each difficulty I noticed a large amount
of glitches. This is most likely because the Co-op was rushed to get
the game out before Christmas but there were quite a few times where i
couldnt get behind cover and died or when climbing over cover i got
moved somewhere across the map and died, but that was very rare.
Gears of War isn't a very long game which is a great shame. There are
however 3 difficulty settings, Casual, Hardcore and Insane. After
playing through on Casual and Hardcore i had just about got everything
in the game so i was able to complete Insane in one sitting. On average
the story would probably take you 6-10 hours the first time you play
but you will want to play through it again on the harder difficulties.
After that theres the multiplayer. The multiplayer aspect of Gears of
War is one of the games major strong points. The game modes are pretty
much variations of team deathmatch but the maps are designed perfectly
for 8 players so that the games are always intense and always fun.
Gears of War may not be the best game of all time but it comes very
close and is a flag ship title for the Xbox 360. There are some
problems with Gears of War but every single one can be overlooked
because of it's amazing presentation and superb gameplay. If you own a
Xbox 360 you need this game in your collection.
