Gears of War is an amazingly fun game with a great setting that is fun to battle through alongside a friend.
In Gears of War, you play a Gear, in other words a soldier, no a planet that has been devastated by a subteranean invasion of enemies called the Locusts. This creates an amazing setting for the game; bombed out buildings, dirty streets...just imagine Stalingrad mixed with Greek architecture during WWII (bombed out and destroyed) and you get a good idea of what it looks like.
All this rubble lead to one of the most noticeable gameplay elements of Gears of War, and that is the amazing cover system. Unlike most shooters where you basically just walk along and blast things in your way, Gears of War lets you take cover to avoid taking excessive damage. This is especially important since you can die relatively easy. Other than the cover system, gameplay of Gears of War is fairly average, but extremely well executed. Oh, and without giving too much away, there is a chainsaw bayonet that is so much fun, it almost seems like it alone is reason enough to buy the game.
Visually, Gears of War is potentially a beautiful game. I say potentially because, as with all next-gen console games, you need an expesnive 720i or higher TV to fully enjoy the visuals. Even so, you wont be disappointed on your standard 27 in TV in living room. Enemies and characters are beautifully rendered, and lighting effects and other graphical bells and whistles are very well done.
Sound is amazing as well. Whether its the buzz of your chainsaw and the screaming of your enemy getitng split from head to groin, or the smartass chatter of your three squadmates, it all adds to the immersion factor of the game. The only problem I see is that your squad can get a little excessive in the one-liners: I love corny action as much as the next guy, but when your football-star squadmate with the 40-inch biceps is spitting words out his mouth every 20 seconds, it loses whatever novelty it had. My biggest issue concerning gameplay is that you can basically play the game using three weapons, even two weapons 98% of the time. First, you got your awesome machine gun. This will be your main weapon literally from beginning to end. Sure, you may get other guns and they seem cool at first, but youre limited to two weapons so you cant afford any of the "luxury" weapons such as the rocket launcher or the explosive-bow thing. Second, you need a grenade or two every 10 minutes to flush out a machinegun nest or close an emergence hole. Third, you need the Hammer of Dawn, an orbiting satellite lasergun used to get rid of the scripted boss fights. Outside of that, there really is no reason to carry any other weapon, which is a shame because they are all very cool. Still, things could be worse....that machinegun could not, for example, have a chainsaw on it.
Gears of War is what every high-temp third-person shooter should strive to be. It has amazing atmosphere, likeable characters, an interesting enemy, stunning visuals, and best of all, top-notch gameplay.