Gears of War is a Sci-Fi, tactical third-person shooter rather like nothing you've ever seen before.
The plot of Gears of War is a follows. The humans of the planet Sera were going around living normal lives, until one day… Emergence Day. On Emergence Day an evil spawn of monsters called Locusts burrowed from their home underground in Sera and attacked the humans. But because of how sudden and unexpected the attack was the humans were all but whipped out. But the ones that remain are going to fight to the death to save themselves from the Locust threat.
Gears of War isn't your typical, bog-standard third-person shooter game though, no its way, way more than that. Gears of War, is easily the best Third-Person Shooter ever and even challenges most First-Person Shooter's. The entire core gameplay of Gears of War is running, shooting and covering. That's it. You may say 'Oh what's so good about that,' but trust me the gruesome gameplay of Gears of War is fantastic. In fact if you try and go through the game without covering yourself once then you'll probably not complete the game. But that's not a bad point, this is simply down to the fact that Gears of War isn't the easiest shooter you can buy, and its AI is fantastic.
The main playable character in this game is Marcus Fenix. He starts the game in prison because he was sent there for abandoning his men to help save his dad's life in events prior to the game. Marcus is a kind-of dark character. He doesn't let his emotion show and this makes his persona dark. The only time he does slightly show any sort of emotion is a bit of happiness when he kills something.
There are three difficulties to Gears of War's campaign, Casual, which is the easiest difficulty; Hardcore, which is the games second difficulty, but it is a lot harder than Casual; and Insane, which standing up for 5 seconds will mean you will probably die. Because of the enhanced A.I. in this game, it is a lot more tactical than other shooters out, which means you have to defend yourself against the Locust and you'll even have to out think them too.
The Locust come in ten different types; Drones, Wretches, Sniper, Grenadier, Grenadier Elite, Theron Guard, Theron Sentinel, Boomer, Kryll, Berserker. Drones are the standard Locust soldiers with average strength Berserkers are technically the strongest Locust, because the only weapon that can kill them is the Hammer of Dawn, a satellite aligned gun capable of levelling buildings. You have to coax berserkers out side though to kill them or else you can't shoot with the Hammer of Dawn. You technically cannot fight Kryll, but if you venture into dark places they just automatically rip you apart.
The main boss of the Locusts Raam, who is massive early twice as tall as the playable character and the game ends with a brilliant battle against him on a train.
You will probably get through this game at maximum of fifteen hours, which is actually long for a shooter in this day and age. The game is also on the PC, and the PC version has a whole new act to the games story, so the PC version is slightly lengthier than the Xbox 360 version.
This game also has online features where eight people can fight it out on several different game types, on several maps. Online you play Human versus Locust and the game types are: Warzone, Execution, Assassination and Annex (If you get this game on the PC, there is a fifth game type, King of the Hill). But because you can only have 8 people it may put some people off, because compared to other games on the 360, 8 people is a small amount. You can play tactical online if you want to. I mean, you'll still have to use cover, but you can freely get stuck in. There is nothing better on Gears of War, then getting up to someone and tearing them to shreds with the Lancer's chainsaw bayonet attachment. But despite the fact that you can only have eight people in a match at one time the online features of Gears of War are one of the best the Xbox 360 ahs to offer.
Gears of War is a great shooter. It's far from the best shooter you can buy, but as a gaming experience I haven't played a game as gruesome as this that is also as much of a blast as this. I recommend Gears Of War to everyone.
Review by: James Widdowson
Score: 9/10