Senseless shooter with loads of make-up and some attempts at making a real game, but boy what make up it is - worth it
Starting with the graphics, Gears of Wars has absolutely brilliant graphics with some great effects. The only let down in this bit is that the graphics of the immediate surroundings are good but nothing too wow, and there isn't much interactivness with the items around.
However, this is a straight up shooter, kind of like Painkiller (the game) where you kill , kill , kill and kill some more. So, having pretty interactive objects isn't of much use.
The enemies are hard to beat even on casual difficulty. I'm very glad I played it on casual. One of them alone can kill you on a face off shootout, if you only make a mistake or two.
It takes approximately a full charger on avergae to kill one enemy and with a few enemies around it's not nice having to recharge all the time but this doesn;t cause to many problems in the game.
So, I just wanted to let future players know that this is not a couple of bullets kill such as you can find with First person shooters such as Half Life for instance.
The storyline is rubbish, because you just get out of jail (rescued) and start fighting. You have no idea on anybody's background, not even yours and they keep talkung about your father. None the less, the developers really put their minds together and came up with a reasonably good gameplay and following storyline, which in turn made it fun to play, and I was never bored for more than a few seconds.
The gameplay is unusual because of the game mechanics because you have to find cover all the time which is actually refresshing compared to aim-all-the-time shooters.
There is cover everywhere and you have your squad so it is more fun because you feel as if you are brothers in arms fighting together, although they are of very little use. You can even control them although this aspect is useless, but hey at least an attempt at diversifying was made.
As for the linearity of the game, it is completely linear and you follow the path and that;s it. A couple of times you can choose whether to go left or right which is not much of a choice, but personally I think that if the choice is so limited, then it may as well only appear a couple of times.
There is some degree of innovation in the sense of controls and some other bits and bobs of small ideas but nothing really too major.
Immesivness - for me, this is how well you get into the game and starting identifying yourself with the character. There is some extent of this but limited, but still better than many and I mean many shooters. Your character actually talks which is nice and you can see him shoot and run in the between segment video clips.
As I said, I didn;t get bored, especially since the length of the game is not too long. I finished it in two days although not playing whole two days but for about 7 hours per day effective play tops. So it is not too long, but shooters rarely are and the timing for it to end was just right because such senseless shooting can to most people be entertaining for only so long.
All in all, a very nice shooter, but that is all it is, just a senseless shooter with a bit of spice, to differentiate it from most other seneless shooters increase the bar for all such FPS senseless shooting games.
This means that it didn;t thrill me and I think it deserves between 8 and 8.5. I gave some games that required less programming effect an 8 so I think this one may deserve 8.5 but then again those games that got 8 managed to thrill me with other things such as storyline, innovation or other bits. That's why it is so very hard to judge this game because in some aspects it deserves a 9 but in some a 7 or perhaps even a bit below.
I forgot to mention the sound. This is pretty standard. Interesting voices but nothing too extravagant.
Anyways, back to business. I will have to give it 8 because even though I disliked the controles in the begining but was thrilled with them later on, I still prefer a game with more essence to it not just an aim and shoot shooter with loads of brilliant make up and some attempts at drawing you into the game.
Don;t get me wrong, this is an excellent game, and congratulations to developers., but it could have achieved so much more had more thourhg been put into the storyline rather than just the looks.
I don't play multiplayer so I cannot judge this aspect of any game and I think multiplayer should be a separate review for each game.
My marking system is as follows:
10 - Absolute Legend
9 - Must Be Played
8 - Excellent and Worth Your Time
7 - Worth playing if you have nothing else to play
6 - worh playing if you have nothing to play and are incredbly bored and have not got absolutely anything else to do. (Barely playable/enjoyable).
I don't give marks 1-5 as if a game starts sucking I don't finish it, so I only review the games that are barely playable (6) to the absolutely amazingly incredible ones (10)
I will also probably keep my reviews short as I don't like discovering too much about the gameplay. I only like to give my quick opinion and get on with life.
Best Wishes to everyone
Zak