Look past the glitches and flaws and you have the best game on the 360.
Story: You play as Marcus Fenix. The game starts off with Fenix in jail. And he is released from jail to help fight against the locust which are taking over the planet Sera. At first you start off by trying to find the Alpha Squad. And when you do it pretty much just goes from there. The story isn't the best in a video game but it is enough to get you interested.
Gameplay: Gears of War's gameplay is simply outstanding. It sounds simple find cover, pop out and shoot. But the game's cover system is actually not as simple as it sounds and alot funner too. The controls are really smooth and the learning curve is about 10 minutes. The enemy AI is very good even though sometimes they will just run past you and take cover behind you. But that happens on rare ocations. The multiplayer has many glitches mostly because of something called host advantage. It was never intended by Epic but it happened. Pretty much you try to kill the host usually you will end up lagging and he will kill you. Or one of the dumbest ideas Epic has thought of is allowing the host to boot you for no freaking reason. Say you are winning in a game and you pissed the host off because you killed him multiple times guess what...he can boot you. Also Gears online's community is not very good and when the games are being listed they only show some of the games.
Graphics: Well what can I say this game was released in Nov 2006 and it still is one of the best looking games on the 360. And when you see it on hi def it is just a wonderful experience. However on standard definition the lighting is a bit messed up and you can mistake a character like Marcus Fenix for a locust since they are both gray. Also the gray has a little too much gray so if the graphics were more colorful then that would be a alot better.
Sound: The voice acting is very good. And the soundtrack and sound effects are amazing. But on the multiplayer mode annex when the match is nearly over the game will play this very annoying and loud sound. Also on multiplayer while playing as Cole he will keep on shouting cheesy one liners like "Ride the cole train!".
Value, tilt: The game is now worth $39.99 so it really is worth the money. Also you might wanna play the single player before the sequel Gears of War 2 is released Nov 2008. Anyways this is a wonderful game that I would easily recommend to any 360 owner looking for something to play besides Halo 3.