You know what really grinds my gears? A boring game with the mentality of a 12-year-old-boy.
I've played through the entire game. I put in the hours and beat it on the hardest difficulty. I gave it as much of a chance as one possibly could. So please, if you have not gone through this game yet, take my word for it: you have been here and done this all before.
You play as yet another thick-neck-steroid-injected-tough-guy-in-a-space-marine-outfit with the personality of a door knob. Your buddies are slightly different versions of you and your enemies are angry, ugly, orcish monsters. The motivations for both sides are equally muddy, but I suppose being a human is enough to sympathize with these generally unlikable characters. The only mildly memorable character is "Cole Train" voiced by Lester Speight in what essentially adds up to a recreation of his Terry Tate character. Which is a good thing, no matter how wildly inappropriate it might be in this context of monsters and chainsaw rifles.
If you haven't already guessed, the story sucks. The voice acting is actually pretty good, but when your script reads like a rejected Spike-TV pilot, it doesn't matter if you have Brando doing the lines. It's yet another pseudo-military exercise in boredom. Did I mention that you get your missions mainly through radio voice overs and that there's some tough-guy-my-balls-are-bigger tension between you and your commanding officer? There's no groan in the world long enough to express my reaction.
As you waddle along with your buddies through wrecked cities, destroyed buildings, and caves, you really can't help but feel you've done this a million times. The only way the level design could have been more clichéd is if there were a train level and a damned mine cart chase...OH WAIT.
I know what you're thinking. I've talked about all the peripheral stuff, which is always secondary to the gameplay. I mean, that is why we're all here. You have to understand, I mention the other things first because their failures are so great in comparison to the gameplay, that the gameplay almost seems good. Key word: almost.
Have you ever played (or stood awkwardly waiting your turn around) one of those Time Crisis arcade games? You know. Where you step on a pedal to control whether or not you're in cover so you can pop in and out and blast enemies with your plastic gun? Of course you have.
Did you ever play that and think: "Wow, if ONLY they could make this into a 3rd person action game with more awkward controls...oh! oh! And use such overdone saturation that the game has no color left in it, that would be really awesome."
I wouldn't think so, but apparently many people did because the following that this game has is insanely large. At the end of the day, this is a game of duck-n-cover paintball. Your buddies even tag you back in once you've been shot. For every level, it's practically the same exact strategy. Kill as much as possible without getting shot while trying to make sure your buddy stays alive. If you both get shot at the same time...it's back to a crappy checkpoint. Yes, this game uses a checkpoint system just to drive home that feeling of monotony and repetition. There are a handful of interesting set pieces, but not many. Mostly they just remind you how plain everything else is.
You would think that the weapons would be cooler seeing as how there is a chainsaw rifle, but actually they're embarrassingly generic. Pistol, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, tossable grenades...that's 75% of the weapons RIGHT THERE. A game like UT3 puts that weak level of firepower to shame.
It's getting to the point where this almost goes without saying and I should only mention it when this is NOT the case...but here we go again. Speaking specifically of the PC version, this is a pretty shoddy port. The specs on my machine should have blown this out of the water, but there were times where the action felt clunky and sluggish. The GUI is ridiculously basic and playing over the net with a buddy (with an equally good rig) wasn't the smooth sailing that it should have been. We got it done, but it was still choppy at parts and felt very unoptimized.
That is one thing I'll give the gameplay. The way it incorporates team work is to be applauded since it is designed to be played with a buddy. And maybe that's part of the reason for its popularity.
Unfortunately, it's also partly because misery loves company. As a PC gamer you aren't restricted to poor excuses for shooting action like Gears of War. Do you and your friends a favor: play Left 4 Dead instead.