Gears of War is the pinnacle of dazzling design, and the first game that can whole-heartedly be called "next gen.&q
Gears of War follows the (mis)adventures of an ex-con named Marcus Fenix, a brutish fighter considered by superior officers to be a traitor and considered by comrades a welcome addition to the fighting force. Currently a race known as the Locust--who had before lived and remained underground--has emerged from the earth's crust in attempts to wipe out the life on the surface. A group of hard-hitting but greatly outnumbered soldiers, Fenix included, are part of the resistance to the barbarous invaders.
The story is interesting yet hardly thought-provoking, and still it manages to provide the backdrops for a lot of the little details that make Gears so spectacular. The war-torn cities, displayed in spectacular and beautiful detail, are reminiscent of what might have once been a marvelous and grand society. Everything in the game, including these backdrops, are both exaggerated and still within possibility. When applied to gameplay, this principle is part of what makes the action so viscerally intense--despite your hulking size and powerful weaponry, you're up against an enemy sized to crush linebackers. The weaponry used is conceivable, sure, but the way it looks and handles are meant to be primarily fictional. The blend of exaggeration and realism is a startlingly smart one, which brings me to the next important piece of the gameplay.
I consider there to be five levels of shooters, on a spectrum. The first is cheesy and easy (like Max Payne) all the way to military tactics (Rainbow Six). In the middle you have run-and-gun, stop-and-pop, and a mixture. Gears leans somewhere between a mixture and stop-and-pop--the cover dynamic used in the game is extremely important to success. Strolling around and firing left and right will get you laid out, plain and simple. The third-person dynamic, cinematic cinematography, and emphases on interaction with team and environment mean that being careful is necessary to play Gears. On the same note, it is entirely possible, given the right tools, to storm into a room guns blazing and not cost yourself a single drop of blood. This versatility is quite welcome, and it's one of the few games that can appeal to even the most stubborn light-weighted players. After playing Gears of War for a while, you can figure out how it might be considered similar to some of the more vibrant successes of recent action gaming. Take the instant classic Halo and the horror hit Resident Evil 4 into consideration. During play, you'll notice that the perspective is third-person, yet the camera shifts when you aim, and also that you must hold the other trigger before firing (though you can blind-fire without aiming). A lot of what grabs players' attention, too, is the no-barriers, almost even emphasized blood and gore, and it's the same type of attention-getting that RE4 utilized perfectly. Though in terms of gameplay it actually borrows very little from Halo, the sense of scale seemed quite similar to me, and from both games it's definitely one of the more distinct lasting impressions.
Despite these things that you might recognize, you may not recognize them at first simply because the folks at Epic managed to do them so well. You won't remember RE4's sense of perspective because the audiovisual presentation of Gears is one of the first to truly feel next-gen. While I was most certainly impressed by the graphics of all my previous 360 games, none of them managed to absolutely astonish me like Gears' did. Aside from these scattered, recycled elements that you will inevitably find in Gears, there's a lot of material that can be called original. A shooter is simply the sum of its details, and Gears has a lot of little details that are quite appealing.
First is the active reload system. Reloading is one of those things in a shooter that developers do because it's realistically necessary. For the sake of gameplay, it may punctuate your bursts or add a little suspense, but overall it's something that the player and the character would prefer not to have to worry about. Here, it's a little different because for once the player gets involved. Pressing RB initiates a reload "mini-game" where the player matches the sliding line over a certain area of a line segment to get different results. It's genius because it's very simple, yet it adds a touch of realism and a potential bonus for staying sharp. Screw it up, your gun jams and your reload takes longer... hit the perfect zone and you reload much faster, along with powering up the new bullets in the clip. There's other little details, like how the Y button is used to look to key things in your environment--being able to look at your teammates without having to find them, or knowing where your enemies are coming from, or even just noticing little details about the surroundings in your downtime adds a certain sense of perspective for the player (after all, in real life, we can look at something in our periphery almost instantly). It's also helpful in battle.
Then you have combat design. Not only are your enemies good at keeping you on your toes, but the weapons and tactics you fight them with are quite fun. The weapons, though artistically interesting, are mostly renditions of the same old thing--or at least they would be if they didn't have so much pep. And I know you're thinking of it right now... some sadistic genius at Epic got the idea to put a miniature chainsaw on the end of the standard-issue AR. Not only does this flesh out the gory details of Gears, and give the player a hell of an adrenaline rush, but it means that you have a defense against up-close-and-personal attacks, and that you can take down your average opponent--who is huge--with one drive of a whining chainsaw rather than an entire AR clip.
There's a ton of these little details all throughout the game. The 10-hour campaign has enough room to fit them comfortably, and the interesting level design means that, though occasionally your missions will be slightly repetitive, the campaign is highly replayable. If you're a 360 achievement guru this is a necessity, since a good number of achievements are single-player. This brings me to the final segment... the weaknesses of Gears.
As I just mentioned, Gears can end up being slightly repetitive in places, especially in the first third or so of the game. Thankfully, it really picks up afterwards and doesn't stop until the conclusion. The next problem with the title is the simple fact that we know almost nothing about our opponents... sure, you're not always supposed to understand the opposing foot soldiers in shooters, especially when you end up killing thousands of them. But there is only one central enemy in the game, who has not one real line, and who looks intimidating but whose connection to the game is never explained. The closest thing to personality is the excellent female voiceover that appears twice throughout the campaign, who with absolute, emotionless conviction says that the Locust victory is "only a matter of time." Still, it's not enough.
Any other flaws are few and far, and the impressions the title leaves on you will deafen you to complaints. One of the things that you might expect in action games like this is problems with difficulty, but here it's a non-issue since every difficulty is noticeably different, yet none are too easy or too hard. Gears doesn't ask much in terms of learning how to play, and yet it offers so much to the player should they be careful. Another potential problem is that a lot of action games get old fast, yet Gears offers a lot of replay incentive, respectable multiplayer, and reasonable achievements to keep the player going.
So, how do I rate Gears of War, as a whole? It's absolutely mind-blowing. This isn't just a good game that modestly offers more entertainment. It's the whole experience next-gen gamers have been searching for, complete with awe-inspiring presentation, simple and gutturally intense action, and even a good sense of personality. If you haven't had the chance to play it, you're really missing out. This is where the next generation of games truly begins.