Gears of War has been a long time coming. A solid 2 1/2 years in the making, Microsoft has been counting on Epic to make them a 2006 holiday winner. Microsoft got what they wanted from CliffyB and the rest of the Epic team.
Gears of War is easily one of the best games of the year, very few games look, play and sound as good as this.

The premise is simple: the planet is being taken over by the “Locust”. They come from below ground, they’re really ugly, and really big. You are Marcus Fenix, a one time COG (Coalition of Organized Governments) member who was put in jail for leaving his post to save his father. The tide of war has drastically turned and Marcus’ old war time friend, Dom, springs him from jail. From there it’s 5 Acts of near non stop action. It’s like playing inside of a Hollywood blockbuster movie.

A good 10 hour game through your first playthrough, Gears is a so called “stop and pop” 3rd person perspective gunning experience. You have to take cover or you’re dead. This isn’t Doom, or Half Life or Halo, staying in the open is a 4 second death wish. The controls are based on this, the “A” button does pretty much everything. It makes you run, makes you take cover when near a wall and lets you jump from cover to cover (and over cover) easily. It takes a good hour to get really comfortable with the controls, to learn the distances that make the cover sensitive button to engage and how to really maneuver through a level easily. Another terrific feature (and one that will be copied) is the Active Reload. When you reload your weapon, a meter appears that has a small highlighted area. When the line goes from left to right through this meter, you are reloading. You can wait for it to go all the way across to reload your weapon or if you time it right and hit the button again on that small highlighted section, you reload much faster and get a damage boost for a limited time. Miss that mark and your gun jams, eating into precious time (a huge factor in multiplayer).

Speaking of weapons, there are few but they’re all very useful. 2 types of handguns, 2 types of grenades (smoke and frag) a sniper rifle, grenade launcher, the torque bow (explosive tipped arrows!), a shotgun that is fantastic for close encounters and 2 types of assault rifles. One is the Locusts’ which is more powerful than the COG’s version but lacks one of the greatest weapon ideas of all time: the chainsaw. The COG rifle has a chainsaw on the end of it. Sneak up on fools and unleash the fury! By far one of the most unique features of the game and a riot to see. That’s the melee function of the COG rifle (just hit “B” when close), the Locust rifle is a melee shot with the butt of the gun, same with the rest of the guns. But, with the frag grenades you jam it into your opponent and have about 3 seconds to get away from them or you’re dead too. Also, if you down an opponent to their knees you can run up to them and hit “X” to curb stomp their head like a ripe melon.

The single player is a great time, each Act brings you and shows you something new. One of the greatest features is online co-op through the campaign. One player is Marcus and the other is Dom, you battle it out through the game together with voice chat so you can split up and conquer the alien invasion and help your friend when they’re downed. Also part of the XBOX Live experience is online multiplayer with 8 people.

The online modes are really where it’s at. 2 teams of 4 battle it out on the 10 maps available. Terrific strategy takes place when you get better at the game. There are 3 modes of play for this and a ranking system in place. Multi is really where this game comes into it’s own.

The Unreal 3 engine is really amazing. Very few games out right now can come close to it’s visual splendor. Insane detail, awesome animation, solid framerate, it’s all there. It’s a game to show off the 360 (HD is obviously the way to really see it work). The soundtrack and effects are equally good. The game has a real sense of weight behind every gunshot, hit, explosion, chainsaw and sick head crunch. It’s a very visceral and satisfying game. It’s certainly not without its faults though.

First, your teammate AI stinks. You’ll see Dom and the other computer controlled players do some really stupid things. Most of the time it’s best to leave them down when they’re shot because going to get them will get you killed 9 out of 10 times. If you can clean out the baddies they respawn anyway. Next is the online features. While I did say it rocks, and I stand by that, there are not enough modes to make this last as long as it could. The 3 modes are basically the same thing. One you can die anyway, Execution you have to be finished off (if your downed you just can’t be shot from far away. Gotta be a curb stomp, head shot with a pistol or chainsawed) and the last you just need to kill the specified team leader to win. Slight variations to the same thing. Plus, and my biggest gripe, the lobby system is completely stupid. Starting a game and getting people isn’t the problem. It’s the fact that you are stuck with what you pick when you make the lobby that is the problem. If you want to change the map rotation, or change the round amount or any of the available options you have to close the lobby, kicking everyone out and make a new lobby. It’s insane that this made it to retail. It boggles the mind that a game which was going to have such a huge focus on multiplayer had such an amateur lobby system. This also extends to team ranked matches. With the lame excuse of “No one is interested in it” or “To cut back on cheating” you can’t do ranked matches with a team of friends. Right now if you want to do a ranked match that ranks your skill, you have to play with random people (there is actually an exploit, but it’s stupid and shouldn’t be necessary). It’s a TEAM based game, who the F doesn’t want to play against other put together teams for ranked play? Halo 2’s lobby system really set the standard for the kinds of options and ease of use, Epic should have just used the same thing.

But all is not lost, the fans have made their voices heard and Epic has always supported their games extremely well after release so those above complaints could very well being worked on right now. They are defiantly making more maps for multi, but no date has been given yet.

Even with my complaints I love the game. It has it’s faults but the good far outweighs the bad. Everyone needs to play it………9 out of 10.