This is my piece to juxtapose two of the best Xbox games yet...Gears of War and Halo. Both have sold in excess of 5 million copies and have established a strong pressence in the gaming industry. Halo, being the system launch title of the original Xbox has gone on to spawn many sequels/prequels, novels and other media (toys, etc.), where GOW is new to the Xbox (Xbox 360 to be exact) and has only one sequel to date, and ambitiously making its way into other media.

I have done this piece to see where my alleigance lays, and to help you decide where yours may lay. This will not be exhaustive, but will touch on several categories...

Story: In Halo,humans are space-port jumping around colonizing the universe. You encounter a race of baddies called the Covenant, who decide you're bad for their religion and declare a jihad on your ass. In an attack by the Covenant, you blind space-jump and find a ring (or Halo) which is inhabitable. Upon landing, you quickly learn that the Halo has some sort of super weapon, which the Covenant (yes, they followed you) plan to get. Accidentally, the Covenant release a parasitic species called "Flood" and you have to escape and prevent their spread through the galaxy. A robot called Guilty Spark wants to activate the Halo to destroy the galaxy to ensure the Floods destruction, but is undermined by your effort. You escape, destroying the Halo by self-destructing your original space vessel, the Pillar of Autum...game over. In Gears of War, you're in prison...don't know why (something revealed about an unfair trial), and freed because the Locust have overrun the prison. You are ordered to find the Locust's underground location, deploy the resonator (to map out the whole network) and high-tail outta there. You get the resonator down there (after three chapter) just to find out it doesn't do the job. One of your team-mates realizes that at your father's estate there is a map of the underground network. You haul-ass there, get the data,fight your way onto a train back into that abyss, deploy the Lightmass bomb and BOOM. Full points to Halo here, I don't know about bugs who learn metallurgy, develop guns and live under humans without detection, but hey...no more likely than lizards who develop spaceships and colonize the universe I guess. But aside from the realism of the story, it felt like Halo had a very well thought out plot with firm character development. I was really interested during each cut-scene of Halo, whereas in GOW I couldn't skip through the cut-scene and was thoroughly bored through each one. POINT HALO

Gameplay: Both games have an element of you go where you're told. GOW tried to make it interesting by giving the player the option of left or right. Novel, but utterly useless as it doesn't really change what happens. One thing I really hated in GOW was that you couldn't skip the cut-scenes, as well as when there were transmissions you couldn't do anything but walk around talking into a walkie-talkie. In GOW, it was impossible to fall off ledges, which some may prefer, but I found it to be a little juvenille. For instance, when fighter Shriekers and they swarm you, you recoil trying to get a bearing on them...I think it would have added to the intensity if I also had to worry about falling off the edge. I like in both that there is a regeneration aspect (GOW'sI feel is better); in GOW you regenerate all health, in Halo you regernerate shields, having to pick up first aid kits for health. In Halo, there is A LOT of back tracking, in GOW though some areas may feel repetitive, they are not. POINT GEARS OF WAR

Control: I did not like the 3rd person aspect of GOW. I like my shooters 1st person (maybe that's just me). I like the weapons menu for GOW though. I found it easy to switch through all the weapons. I found the cover-method a little inconsistent, but thoroughly enjoyable. I especially enjoyed the removal of a jump button. I find jumping in 1st person shooters clumsy at best (not to mention the ridiculous translation into multiplayer matches). Also, I liked the "Y" button access to view where something has occured, as I also loved the reloading mechanism. POINT GEARS OF WAR

Graphics: Halo was pretty stunning for its time, and has aged well. But GOW is absolutely awesome. The water effects, fire effects, how bullets smolder in concrete, pretty thorough. I don't especially like the "Unrealesque" character models, but am willing to put up with it for the great graphics. POINT GEARS OF WAR

Sound: If it wasn't for Halo's theme music, the weapon effects would win it for GOW. POINT HALO

Online Content: Halo was barely able to be online-compatible. Times have brought the Franchise online, but barely. Apparently it's pretty tricky to do, involving a bit more than you're willing to do now, maybe a couple of years ago. GOW has maps, tourneys and more online. POINT GEARS OF WAR

Characters/Villans: Halo, the Covenant rule...then on top of that, the Flood enter just past mid-way in the game. You watch the Flood go after everyone...FREAKIN' AWESOME! In GOW you fight Drones, Shriekers, Boomers, Beserkers, Corpsers, and I forget the rest...zzz. I would give the point to GOW for the Shriekers, but Halo's Elite's, Hunters and Flood are too awesome to fight...and you don't need a Hammer of Dawn either (geesh - I'll explain). POINTHALO

Weapons/Vehicles: The Hammer of Dawn is a signal finder for a satelite which blasts the rocks off your opponents (after a few shots, really, imagine?). Instead of it being a plus, I found it to really interupt the gameplay, who doesn't want to fight a huge boss-like monster with their reflexes and accuracy...like fighting a Hunter with a standard-issue pistol? I don't like that you can carry only two weapons in Halo. I really like carrying two light, two heavy guns in GOW (then I can have machine gun/sniper, or machine gun/shotgun), I never like an ultimatum. However, that being said...I did not like the weapons of GOW. The sniper rifle was VERY limited, just one scope sighting, not the zoom of Halo's. The rocket launcher tea-bagged in GOW, as did the pistol and shotgun. I liked taking the Covenant's guns in Halo with the exception of the nigh-useless "Needler". I always found them powerful enough to take on prey, and in great supply (the overheating feature was dually appreciated). Of the four weapons of GOW though, one in grenade, one pistol, and two heavy. Therefore you really only get one extra gun, I felt I had to say that. POINT HALO

Looks like a tie. I think Halo was the bomb when it came out, and still is. But if these two titles came out at the same time, I think all the subtle differences of GOW would beat out Halo. I mean there is a lot more than what I have written, I did try to keep it short:).I recommend you play both (if you haven't already), and add your comments here to voice your opinion.