Gears of War is a different and refreshing take on 3rd person action games.
You take control of Marcus Fenix, in prison for betrayal. Your friend breaks you out of prison and you must fight and survive the locust horde that is attacking the planet. You get back into Delta Squad and must search for Alpha squad who have access to a powerful weapon that can be used against the locusts. Gears of War is a cheesy over-the-top action story and larger than life characters. It's not something you play for a deep storyline, that's for sure. But the story manages to entertain and its cheesiness is fun.
The gameplay is fantastic in Gears of War. If you think you can just run and gun halo-style, enjoy your funeral. Taking cover is essential in this game. Basically, you take cover and take a few shots while leaning above cover and leaning below again and repeat. Some may call it no more than a fancy game of Hide and seek, but I call it a hell of a good time. The artificial intelligence puts up a good fight and makes sure the game is never too easy. The controls are easy to get a hang of, though the character feeling of weight takes awhiile to adjust to. Most of the game, you're part of a squad of either 4 or two. If your squad goes down, you can revive them by pressing the x button.
Gears of War includes multiplayer co-op split screen and over xbox live and is probably the best feature of the game. There's nothing like taking down a boss with another human players instead of the A.I. Competitive multiplayer for up to 8 players is also included. 4 players on each team and on 8 maps, as well as typical team deathmatch and capture the control point modes are included. Personally, I just never found the competitive multiplayer that great though. It works, but the learning curve is steep and the biggest issue these days is the pros owning new players.
Visually, Gears of War is stunning and was cleary the best lookng early xbox 360 game. Textures are mostly great and the character models still look good. But it's the lighting and scope of the environments that steal the show. The massive structures showcase massive destruction and it just looks great. The frame-rate is mostly silky smooth with minor slow-down in spots. The audio is equally impressive with an amazing musical score. Sound effects are fantastic and the voice acting is good, cheesy as they may be.
It's easy to see why Gears of War became such a popular gaming series. The graphics are amazing, but it's the fantastic gameplay that steals the show here. The game proves you can do something a little different with a shooter.
Visuals- 9
Audio- 9.5
Replay- 8
Gameplay- 8.5
Multiplayer- 8
Overall- 8.5