Much anticipated title by Epic once again delivers
User Rating: 9.5 | Gears of War X360
Ever since Gears of War was announced at E3, people were speculating whether or not the game will be good or it's just a piece of eye candy. What turned out was one of the best games that the Xbox 360 platform has to offer. Gears is a futuristic war game in a setting that we had never seen before from that type of genre. Dark and "down to earth" environments really showcase how this game is one of the best third person shooters ever made and that futuristic warfare does not only apply to robots shooting lasers at each other. The way that Epic approached the control system for this game is excellent. Not only does it make sense and makes it easy to play the game, the controls are also very fluid (95% of the time) and make the game experience even better. The campaign is quite long and tells a solid story of Marcus' adventures with Dom and is very challenging when played on the "insane" difficulty. However, the campaign doesn't offer much for a replay value as when you complete all the achievements for the campaign and find all the collectibles (cog tags) it's very unlikely that you will go back to campaign frequently. One of the best parts of the single player mission has to be the co-op mode and the jump-in, jump-out without ending the game, which is what a lot of developers should look at for their games. If you're not going to be playing single player, the only thing left is multiplayer. This is where of course this game shines. There are variety of modes, Execution, Warzone, Assassination, and Annex. They are all great modes and each mode has something for everyone but there's a feeling that Assassination was not well thought out as it's not a very popular mode that not that many people play. The multiplayer maps are amazing. Although all of them are symmetrical, they don't take away anything, and make a very fun and balanced environment to play around in, as everyone has an equal chance at a power weapon and everyone starts out with the same weapons. Although this game is currently overshadowed by inferior sequel, Gears of War 2, this game should not be treated as bad as it currently is, as it's much superior to it's sequel.
