Your unit is under heavy enemy fire, and to guarantee victory you need to advance to a key position to give your fellow Coalition of Ordered Government (COG) forces the edge. You blindly blast out some covering fire, and then you run as if everything depended on it. And it does. You sprint ahead, but come up against a low bit of wall and, before you can blink, you snap down into a huddle and take cover rather than pushing straight on to the linchpin position.
This is how real men learn how to swear.
By the time Gears of War opens, the Locust menace has decimated the populace of the planet Sera, leaving a wake of chaos and destruction, and delivering a battle of horrific ferocity to the COG. Early in the war, Marcus Fenix – the game’s protagonist of focus – was court-martialed and imprisoned for disobeying a direct order in an attempt to save his father. Fourteen years of horror have passed with Marcus locked in a cell. But the decade long conflict has now arrived at his cell door, which has been opened, and a gun has been thrust back into his hands. Old friends and enemies both demand Marcus answer the call to arms yet again.
Lifting the best notions from classic action films, Gears of War is light on the narrative while still being incredibly thick on subtext and implied character development. Rather than being laid out in a long, elaborate, melodramatic cut-scene (everyone wave at Halo 2!), Gears of War instead hints at a back story, but its emphasis is on action, throwing Marcus back into the war with a handful of quirky and detailed characters who know exactly what the fourteen years of his imprisonment have been like. Indeed, this isolation from exposition serves to enhance the feeling of detachment that years of imprisonment would undoubtedly inculcate. In war, everyone has their own reasons to fight, and this is a vein that runs thick through Gears of War.
The game itself is a tactical third-person shooter. Conflict orients itself around the idea of cover and suppression tactics. Progress through the game hinges on using cover effectively, and advancing to key positions to press the battle on the enemy. As some cover is destructible and even inflammable, there is an impressively large strategic element to the game in selecting your cover and exploiting its advantage to the battle. Even on the easiest difficulty levels, you’ll feel that battles will hinge on your ability to be in the right place at the right time.
While your armaments are by and large incredibly straightforward, Gears of War offers them up in a manner that can only be described as tactile. You feel your weapons, you love your weapons, if you had to sleep in this game you’d gleefully tuck them under your pillow and kiss them before bedtime. While the Lancer Assault Rifle seems almost entirely straightforward, you will develop a relationship with this gun bordering on the romantic. Even though Gears has a full array of armaments, including some hilarious Locust technology, the default firearm is so deeply ingrained in the fundamental elements of warfare as to be perhaps the premiere basic firearm in the history of games. This notion is only enhanced by the chainsaw bayonet (I said “almost entirely straightforward”, remember?) that offers some incredibly vicious and effective melee damage.
In single player, the game revolves around a mix of atmospheric survival-horror style levels and large-scale open battlefields, delivering in the end a provocative and compelling experience. Just like the best in action films, Gears of War shows rather than tells, and while the narrative could be considered a bit light this is not really a criticism but an observation. Gears exists in the best league of video games, where you experience rather than are shown, although some people may find it a bit too literal in that regard.
However, too often single player campaigns in action titles are treated as perfunctory elements necessary to sell the games’ multiplayer, but here the campaign mode is an absolute treat that can be played over and over again. Difficulty settings range from the oblique to the obscene, and while it could take 10 hours or so to complete on the easiest settings, double or triple that as you turn the difficulty up. And to its credit, the advanced difficulty doesn’t come across as cheap or manipulative, but a deeply gratifying experience where you are combating an ever-superior multitude and, if you emerge triumphant via diligence, patience, and a little luck, you will feel like the sun rises and sets from your Xbox 360.
This is made even better by co-operative multiplayer, either via split-screen or over Xbox Live. This is comparative to other games featuring co-operative play, however the reliance on co-operation and the integration between cover and suppression fire make co-op mode in Gears of War feel like an entirely natural fit. If not the best co-operative game, this is certainly among the best.
In terms of technology, it is arguable that Gears of War is the best looking video game on any platform this holiday season. Offering the highest caliber of visual and audio effects, this game simply looks and sounds amazing in every way. Moderately destructible environments send rocks and dust across the screen while bullets whiz past your ear. While I’m not in love with the over-bulk aesthetic, there is no denying that the execution is simply the best thing I’ve ever seen.
There is only one thing to dislike in Gears of War, and that is the over-use of the A button. As presented in the introduction, A is used to both run and find cover, so when one runs past some cover occasionally one tends to be surprised when the character stops doing what was intended (running) and does something else (covering). This is easily overcome with a bit of forethought and learning, but it would have been even easier to overcome if Epic Games had thought this through. But if you’re looking for the dirt on Gears of War, that’s as bad as it gets.
If we drew the line at the above, Gears of War would already seem a compelling package that almost every Xbox 360 owner should own. Anyone who has ever enjoyed any type of shooter will absolutely be taken in by Gears’ atmosphere, attitude, and immersive qualities that present an entirely new take on well-trod ground. To put it simply, it is a must buy. To exploit a nasty and over used phrase, this is a killer app. People will and should buy consoles just to play it.
But there’s more, as we’ve not delved into the competitive multiplayer offerings of Gears of War, which may look limited in name, but are designed to capture the essence of the game’s mechanic and translate that to extreme fun. Up to eight players, in two teams of four, can compete in round-based combat. Though there are only a dozen or so maps and there are only a few configurable options, Epic Games has done what they could with the tools available to offer the best multiplayer experience possible. The limited formats may or may not affect long term play, but in the short term Gears of War offers an unparalleled experience over Xbox Live or System Link. Admittedly, local competitive multiplayer (limited to two players) falls a bit flat.
Gears of War is exactly what the Xbox 360 needed to remind gamers that while the PlayStation 3 has just recently become a retail reality, this holiday season is not all about the new Sony monolith. It is a shooter of unparalleled grandeur and scale, featuring graphics that put the PlayStation 3 launch lineup to shame. Gears of War is without question one of the most significant games of 2006, and is a definite contender for prestigious Game Of The Year accolades. It features absolutely unique game play, atmosphere, and an incredibly high fun and replay factor. While Epic Games really could have polished out the one grievance I claim, it is an incidental one that is easily worked with and does almost nothing to detract from play. If you buy one Xbox 360 game this season, well, then something is wrong with you. But if you had to, Gears of War would almost certainly be that game.
Score: 97%
