Gears of War: Good game, yes. Great game, no.
This game is a third-person shooter, so the story takes a backseat to the gameplay and graphics. Gears of War takes place on a planet named Sera, a world taken over by a subterranean race called the Locust. Gamers play the role of Marcus Fenix, a soldier who was sent to prison for disobeying, and now is free because the C.O.G. (Coalition of Ordered Governments) is running out of soldiers.
Just because the game is a shooter, don’t expect to run around and blast everyone away, unless you’re playing at the easiest difficulty level. At the default difficulty, Gears of War doesn’t play like a normal run-and-gun shooter, but more like a stop-and-pop shooter. Trying to stay in the open and fight the Locust without finding cover will cause a lot of suffering for players, as the A.I. in this game is competent for the most part. They use cover, advance when they feel they have an advantage, and fall back when they are overwhelmed. Similar to Halo 2, if too much damage is taken, one can hide behind cover and wait for a few seconds until health is completely regenerated, adding to the game’s more methodical pace. It expects you to find cover when the Locust appear, and then pop your head out and shoot when you see an opening until they’re all dead, and repeat this for the majority of the five acts the game provides you for the campaign mode, which could be played by one or two players cooperatively, through split-screen or Xbox Live. For most people, it should take around ten hours to get through the game at the normal difficulty level. For some people, this more tactical take on the genre might turn off some players, but for some willing to try something a little different, the game for the most part will be a blast to play. Even though there isn’t a whole lot of variety in the action, it’s broken up nicely throughout the course of the game, notably through a mine-cart sequence and several boss fights with a monstrosity called the Berserker.
However, the cover system Gears of War uses can be problematic, as it tries to do a lot of things with the A button. Not only is the button is used to get behind cover, it is also the same button for diving, doing SWAT turns, jumping over cover, and is the run button if it’s held down. A situation that has happened on more than one occasion is when I want to run from cover area to another area further down the level, I sometimes jump over the cover instead of turning the corner and running straight down, causing some headaches. In trying to make the game more accessible, Epic actually made the game more cumbersome to play than it should be. The campaign, while fun, lacks replayability since the enemy placements never change, but that seems to be a problem with shooters in general.
The game was designed with teamwork in mind, in both campaign and multi-player modes. The campaign always has Marcus and his buddy Dom together, with Dom being played by either the A.I. or another player. If both characters are controlled by people, one can revive the other by pressing the X button near the downed player for a limited time before they completely bleed out and die. This makes the campaign mode significantly easier, but also more fun, because if the game’s A.I. controls Dom, he’s going to die so much, along with the fact that the computer-controlled Dom cannot revive Marcus if the played gets shot down, that it’s bothersome to play the game’s campaign solo.
The camera takes it cue from Resident Evil 4, a game that Epic designer Cliff Bleszinski cites as an influence for Gears of War. Instead of the camera being directly behind the character, it’s over the character’s shoulder, showing more of the environment and enough of the character simultaneously, while creating a more cinematic effect. It works well, and it shows off the game’s impressive graphics.
The active reload system is an interesting idea which gives players another technique to master. When a gun reloads, there is a bar at the top right corner of the screen with a small white area, and a larger gray area around it, and the rest of the line is a transparent area. When players press the right bumper button at the white area, the gun reloads faster, and bullets gain a damage bonus. When a player presses the bumper button at the gray area, the gun reloads faster, but there’s no damage bonus. When the button is pressed in the transparent area, the gun gets jammed, and the reload time is longer, and there’s no bonus on top of that. There will be times when things heated that a player would miss the reload window and get himself into even more trouble. Multiplayer is another big part of Gears of War and up to eight players in teams of four can play. The game initially came with eight maps and three multiplayer modes: Warzone, Assassination, and Execution, with the latter two being variations on Warzone. Warzone is basically team death match, and a single bullet can kill a downed player. In Assassination, each team is designated a leader, and no one but the leader can grab a weapon on the map before another person on the team can use it. Whoever kills the leader is designated the leader for their team the next round. Execution has one difference from Warzone in that players can self-revive if they press the A button can a certain amount of time has passed the host has chosen, from five to up to 60 seconds. The teamwork focus is more pronounced here, as one player would often lose if he or she is up against two or more people.
Problems in multiplayer are the same as the campaign, as well as several major problems, most notably the lack of variety in the game modes and levels. The game modes in multiplayer aren’t very different from each other, and a game without a free-for-all death match mode is inexplicable. Even with the recent downloadable content that was just released to raise the number of maps to ten, most of them are small and symmetrical. This wouldn’t be a huge problem, except that because most firefights would be in close quarters, the majority of players use the shotgun as their weapon of choice. Matches then devolve into players running circles around each other and see who would blow the other away. While there are other effective weapons, such as the sniper rifle and torque bow, which is a mechanical bow with explosive arrows, they are much harder to use, and the aforementioned level size makes sniping a less viable option. While the component is still fun to play, these problems hamper the game significantly.
Without question, the reason that the game got all the publicity that it did is because of the graphics. Using the new Unreal 3 engine, Epic created what is the best-looking console game out in the market right now. The post-apocalyptic world that Gears of War takes place in looks so incredible that even the debris that lie around the various levels in the game catch your eye’s attention. The game makes great use of numerous technical graphics terminology such as bloom lighting, normal mapping, etc. The characters look great, with their hilariously preposterous musculature, and the deaths of the Locust with some game’s weapons are incredibly gory. A special note goes to the Lancer, an assault rifle with a chainsaw bayonet. The first time a Locust gets sawed in half will be a moment of joy for many of the more sadistic players, as the screen gets covered with massive amounts of blood, and the accompanying buzzing sound of the saw through flesh is an incredibly visceral experience. This game is not for the weak of stomach. Speaking of sound, Gears of War is absolutely stellar in this regard as well. The sounds of the guns and explosions are crisp and loud, and the music is epic as well as haunting. The dialogue between the characters is the cheesy, over-the-top action movie variety, but since this is an action game, it fits the game perfectly. There is no question that Gears of War is a fun game, despite its problems, especially in multiplayer. Its lack of significantly different game modes and the abuse of the shotgun in multiplayer reduce the replay value of the game, and its more methodical pace could turn away some players. It does do a lot of things right, but most of it is on the graphics and sound side, and they do not cover what the game lacks in the gameplay department. In short, Gears of War does not live up to the hype, but very few games can ever live up to the press coverage that this game has received. Just consider it the equivalent of the summer big-budget action flick: It looks and sounds great, and leaves a great impression, but it will be forgotten about over time.