A review of the XBOX 360 game Gears of War

Welcome to the awesome world of post-alien-apocalypse-planet-earth.  You play a grizzled and gruff grunt named Marcus Fenix, your mission… uh… your mission is… uh… 

Well to be honest, I don’t really have any idea just what the mission is, or what hell was going on during the entire game.  BUT what I did know, was that there were a lot of reptile ugly looking aliens of whom I had to shoot, explode, and chainsaw through in order to get to wherever it was that I was going.

As you can tell, story probably isn’t the strongest point of Gears of War, but who cares?  The whole point of games like this is to just kill the endless hordes of futuristic alien scum that come running at you.  It is definitely in the alien killing business where Gears of War shines. 

The combat for the game is really fun, and cinematic.  Every pose you character takes when shooting, every time they run, every time they dive and hide and duck out to shoot from where they are hiding, a camera angle has been preplanned to optimize the cinema experience of playing the game.  I have rarely played a game that has been able to make me feel so head first in the action as Gears of War does.  The true testament to the camera work of this game is the statement that I actually found it MORE immersive then an FPS, which is a very hard thing to do with a 3^rd person shooter. 

The immersion into the Gears of War battles succeeds on three different levels, Visual, Audio, Playing.  The game is absolutely awesome looking.  As far as I can tell this game is really the only thing I’ve seen on the Xbox 360 so far which has REALLY wowed me in the way that I expected next generation consoles would when they first came out.  The realism of the characters, the details in the guns, and the camera effects all create a very fun game to look at and operate in. 

The audio of the game is pretty incredible too.  All of the guns actually sound loud and like guns, as opposed to a watered down version of gun, or like the sound of brick being dropped on the floor as some games gun sounds sound like.  The score for the game is good, but nothing particularly amazing I have to admit.  Mostly orchestra sounds that eventually become fairly repetitive sounding and ignorable.  However, with all of the sounds of the explosions and gunfire going on, you’re not really listening, or caring, about the score that much anyway.

The play of the game is also a big shinning spot on this game.  It would seem that the constant use of diving and hiding that this game uses would get very repetitive very quickly, but for some reason it doesn’t.  I think that this is due to the character animations, and the cinema like feel of the game.  Every time you slap your back against a wall, you just want to keep doing it, because you look so cool while your doing it.  The one complaint about the game play however, is that it can also become frustrating and confusing trying to get the character to hide behind the item you whish to hide behind, as when you press down the cover button, the character automatically runs to an item to hide behind.  This often causes for frustrating situations where you end up running and hiding in a dangerous area when you meant to hide in a safer area. 

Over all, Gears of War is a great game, with a great single player campaign as well as great multiplayer functions.  I highly recommend playing this game on coop and with team speak.  The team based combat that the game is designed around makes the coop function a great experience.

Needles to say, spend the money and put a place on your shelf for this game. 

I do have to add in though, with a game like this, the addition of the Metal into the soundtrack could only have made it even more awesome.

Ah well, maybe we’ll be able to hack some in when the PC version of the game comes out (a la Oblivion). 

-Awesome McCrunchFist

Here’s some footage of the game put to the song "Gears of War'" by Megadeth the was posted on YouTube:

Comments (2)

	1. 25-08-2007 03:06
	I agree I agree - this was a very good game. It's not the best game ever made, but it's way up there. Nice review! Report

UberSlacker

	2. 23-08-2007 03:06
	I agree I liked the game although it was defiantly NOT what I thought it was going to be. Every reviewer, fucking EVERY reviewer online gave it close to perfect scores. Although it was fantastic: it was too short, there were only a few guns, and there were like, only two different enemy types. The guns were neat. The explosive arrows that had a delay were pretty sweet, but kind of lame at the same time. Yeah they stuck for a second and blew up...whoopy. I liked the review though and I can't wait to read more. I would give the game a B+. Report

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