A little while back a game was released for the Xbox360 under the title "Gears of War". Now, you may actually have heard of this game, few who regularly use this site haven't. Gears of War was a game that combined the third-person tactical put-your-back-to-the-wall-and-take-cover type gameplay of Ghost Reacon, Rainbow Six and other tactical shooters and tweaked it in a way that allowed an almost run'n'gun type feel. This created a game that you cold almost say took advantage of the old "best of both worlds" idea. You still have the cover system, teamwork, etc. of many tactical shooters, but what you don't have is the sometimes painstaking planning/mapping that usually comes with it.

My first experience when playing this game was a literal "wow" feeling. It was such a unique feel that I was immediatly hooked. I've always loved tactical shooters, most especially for it's cover based gameplay, but was also a little put off by the many times that you have to stop to give orders, send a drone in for recon, etc (think of the map system of GRAW, especially GRAW 2 for PC.) Gears of War gave me what I loved, and took what I didn't. I had been waiting for someone to do that for quite a while.

Now no one can deny that GoW has made some serious money. So much, in fact, there's rumours/talk of a trilogy. I can just imagine the business men in thier fancy suits at thier fancy tables in game developers headquarters around the world. Thier noses probably twitched and they thought "I can smell money being made! We must be in on it!". Therefore, it doesn't come as a suprise that we have a certain game by the name of Army of Two on the way, which is almost exactly the same concept. I am sure that we will see more of this. I am not sure weather this is a good or bad thing. On one hand, we could see many more of this(shall we dare call it a new genre?) type, with each improving on the last. On the other, it could become like the standard FPS today, been there, done that.

I suppose only time will tell in the end. This is quickly becoming my favourite genre so I can only wait with fingers crossed.