Review
Release Date: 11.07.2006
Platform:
Xbox 360Developer:
Epic GamesPublisher:
Microsoft Game StudiosReviewed by
Samuel Altersitz on 11.13.2006
| Review Rating: 10/10 | User Rating: 8.76/10 |
I think most of us remember the little itty bitty trailer shown at the E3 '05 Microsoft press conference for
Gears of War, mashed in as around 5 seconds of footage in a montage of other games with some huge monster bursting through a wall and charging some soldiers. I know I sure as hell do. Granted, I knew about
Gears a bit before that, but I'm sure people remember that little bit of footage.
Then there was E3 '06, where Cliffy B. actually demoed the first level of
Gears as the opening of the
Microsoft press conference. Anyone on the fence probably changed their minds once the chain-saw bayonet was shown off in all of its bloody glory. They either decided to hate the game, or to love it right then and there.
Well, now the game is out, and into our grubby hands for playing. And praise whatever deity you worship, if any. Because this game is nothing short of fantastic on almost every single level.
Gears takes place on an alien planet, named Sera, that has been colonized by humanity. It really looks like a slightly fantastical alter-Earth, overall. Trees, rivers, birds, they're all here, along with an old European-inspired architecture mixed with a slight taste of the future. Giant Renaissance-like statues and fountains litter certain areas. Greco-Roman columns on buildings, as well as more new-age-classical style simple pillars with decoration used as statues in gardens, are seen quite often in the game. Other areas seem more reminiscent of war-torn Europe during World War II, with domed buildings, destroyed vehicles, and what look like bombed-out areas. But, then there's the hint of the future, with coded computerized door locks, holographic imaging technology, and robotic helpers able to assist in mundane or military life.
Sera, however, had its problems. War raged across the land over scarce natural resources used for energy. That is, until a new energy source was found under the surface of the planet, one with huge potential and that seemed nearly limitless. Once the need for natural resources for energy was removed, the governments of the planet formed a new governmental body, the Coalition of Ordered Governments as a new world-wide governing force. Peace seemed assured.
Until Emergence Day.
On the day that became known as Emergence Day, the Locust Horde broke through the surface of the planet, and rained death and destruction down on the populace of Sera. Entire cities were massacred, even down to the women and children. The COG decided on an ultimate course of action, gathered what people they could to a safe zone city, and then unleashed their own rain of destruction down on their own cities from orbiting satellites in an attempt to destroy the Locusts. They succeeded in destroying most of the cities, but failed in ridding themselves completely of the Locust Horde.
Gears picks up fourteen years later in a military prison. Your character, Marcus Fenix, a military prisoner serving a sentence for a rather undisclosed crime, is broken out of his cell by his former squad mate, Dominic Santiago. And right from the get go, you get thrust into the action of
Gears of War as you have to fight your way through the Locusts invading the prison.
Gears of War is an action-based third person shooter with its main focus being on smart use of cover and flanking to succeed.
Epic Games has termed the overall design and game play approach to the game as "stop and pop" gaming; meaning you stop at cover, and pop out to shoot at your foes. Although this sounds like it would get boring rather quickly, the pacing of the game, along with the large number of things that can be used as cover keep it from getting to that point while playing through the campaign or in multiplayer.
The controls are simple and effective. Like most third person shooters (and first person shooters) the left analog stick moves you, and the right looks around. The right trigger fires, and the right bumper reloads, while the left trigger puts you into a more focused zoom mode for increased accuracy when firing your weapons. The left bumper is used to command your squad-mates with three simple commands. The X button is used to pick up ammo or switch weapons out for other weapons dropped on the field, as well as to activate switches or kick open doors, curb stomp enemies bleeding out, revive fallen squad mates, and use turrets and such found throughout the game world. The Y button is used as a special camera button which is often context sensitive and appears on your screen when there is something of interest to look at or one of your squad-mates needs to be revived. The directional pad is used to switch between your weapons (down is always pistols, up is always grenades, and the weapons assigned to left and right can be switched out on the battle field). The B button initiates melee attacks, and you hold it to activate the chain-saw bayonet.
The A button is your main action button. If you hold A down while in the open, your character will crouch and do a faster run, with the camera following in a CNN war-cam style; as a note, it is harder to turn your character while doing this. Push A near cover, and your guy will move to that cover, with a variety of context sensitive options available from there depending on which direction you push on the left stick, as well as whether or not there is other cover available nearby. For example, if you are behind a short object, pushing up will give you the option to hop over your current cover; or if there is cover to your left or right, pushing in those directions will make you move to those new cover spots quickly. Double tapping A will make you do a rolling dodge move in the direction being pressed; if you're near cover and pushing towards it, you will slam yourself into the cover.
It should be noted that Epic decided to put in something to make reloading more than just routine. If you just let your weapon run out of ammo on its own, or press the right bumper once, your weapon will auto reload, which takes approximately two seconds. There is also a colored bar on the reload timer. Pressing the right bumper while the time indicator is in this area will activate what is known as active reloading; where your weapon is reloaded much faster than normal. Doing this correctly can mean the difference between life and death in many cases, especially in multiplayer. Successfully utilizing the active reload system not only lets you get back into the fire fight faster, but it also has an added bonus of giving your next few seconds worth of shots an extra boost in power. If you do the active reload perfectly, your entire clip is more powerful, otherwise, only a select portion of the clip blinks and is considered the more powerful shots. The effect fades if ammo is not used in a few seconds, however.
Beware, though. Should you mess up while attempting an active reload (pressing the bumper outside of the grayscale active reload bar after a reload has been initiated), your gun will jam, taking even longer than the normal reload to become unjammed. This can sometimes mean death in the single player mode, even moreso in the multiplayer modes.
While it becomes second nature fairly quickly as to how to get at least a partially successful active reload going, getting a perfect active reload every time takes much more effort.
The entire cover system used in the "stop and pop" game play is also pretty intuitive, and has some neat facets. For instance, almost anything can be used as cover: walls, doorways, dilapidated vehicles, and even furniture. Also, not all cover is as effective as others. For example, some smaller walls, or pillars, will still leave you partially exposed, allowing the enemy to hit you while you are taking cover. Also, most furniture can be destroyed by gunfire, rendering whatever cover it provided useless.
Then there is the fact that on rounded areas used for cover, your character will automatically just follow the curvature around, in most cases. Or how if you are on top of one of the pillars in a set of cover that consists of a short wall and a bunch of pillars, as you move along the cover you auto duck or stand depending on what type of cover you are behind at each step.
The combat action in
Gears of War probably sounds like it would be pretty boring, all this running for cover stuff. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The combat is fast, furious, and unforgiving. The enemy AI is really good, and almost none of the combat sequences are scripted beyond the first second or so. So, if you end up dying on a certain fight, each time you fight it, there will be differences in enemy locations, and how they react to how the fight is going. The enemies also use cover just as much as you should be.
And, yes, if you do not use cover, you will not get very far in
Gears of War. The cover system is there, so use it. Running around out in the open, or trying to circle-strafe enemies like in other shooters will simply get you killed faster than you can imagine.
The health system in
Gears is pretty forgiving. Your character can take a ton of shots from the machine guns and still live... but so can all the Locusts. However, if you see a gear begin to form on your screen and fill with red, find cover, for when it gets full, you're pretty much dead. Simply staying out of the fire fight for a few seconds will remove the gear from your screen, and you will be back at full health. This allows for you to expose yourself for short bursts of fire (the pop part of "stop and pop"), and not always feel like one more hit will kill you, which would make you play more conservatively than you should.
You also don't have to pop out to fire from cover. If there are too many enemies around, you can opt for blind-shooting at them, just putting your gun around the corner or over the top of the wall and firing that way, by hitting the R button without the L button being held in. It's not accurate, but it can help in certain situations.
Then there are the up close and personal attacks. Each weapon has a melee attack with it, initiated by pressing B. The Lancer gun, however, has the weapon everyone knows about, whether they have played the game or not: the chain-saw bayonet. If you are able to get right next to an enemy with the chain-saw bayonet charged, you will automatically slice them almost in half when you get next to them, with a gratifying spray of blood onto the game's camera as well. Be warned, though, if you get hit while charging the chain-saw bayonet, you must begin charging it again. An interrupted chain-saw attack often leaves you vulnerable to counter-attack, or getting yourself chain-sawed.
The other up close and personal attack is the curb stomp. Sometimes you will do enough damage to the enemy that they will fall to their hands and knees and begin bleeding out. If you can get up next to them while they are like this, and press X, then you will simply crush their head beneath your boot. While you may get a few opportunities to curb stomp someone in the campaign mode, it is much more common in multiplayer.
Truthfully, neither the chain-saw bayonet nor the curb stomp attacks ever seem to get old. Ever. Because you will often not be in situations to perform these instant kill moves, they are just as satisfying each time you pull one off as the very first time you performed one.
Gears of War is a graphical tour de force. Utilizing the power of Epic's new Unreal Engine 3,
Gears is able to show us a world in strikingly amazing visual quality. The level of detail will probably have you looking around at the environments just as much as you will be shooting Locusts. Textures never get blurry and distorted, even when zoomed in, and far away enemies and structures have a natural blur to them (though you can zoom right in on them with a sniper rifle and see all the textures). This game earns its M rating based on the graphics alone, as the blood and guts in the game are slightly over the top, but in a good way. The insane level of detail in
Gears makes you say to yourself, "This is what next-gen gaming should look like."
The sound is equally as impressive. The weapons sound powerful, without being over the top. Ambient sounds permeate the levels. And all the character voices are done well, including the Locusts. Yes, the Locusts speak in a language we can understand. The game also earns its M rating based on some language used, though it is used appropriately and not in excess. Still, those who do not like profanity should stay away.
To sum that all up, the overall presentation of
Gears is simply breathtaking.
The game also has three difficulty levels. Casual is the easiest setting, Hardcore is the middle setting, and Insane is the hardest. Casual and Hardcore are open from the start, and Insane is opened up when you beat the game once. But, do yourself a favor and never play it on Casual if you are a fan of shooters. It's just too easy to beat the game on that setting, and doesn't require the cover tactics quite as much as the other settings do, which can make the game seem a bit boring.
Moving on, we come to the muliplayer aspect of
Gears. There is split screen co-op and co-op over Xbox Live; as well as multiplayer team-based killing fests.
The co-op over Xbox Live is absolutely one of the best parts about
Gears of War. It is smooth, changes the dynamic of the game in certain parts, and is insanely fun when you are playing with a friend.
The other online mode is your expected killing-the-other-team games. This mode supports up to eight players, with four of them on the human team and four of them on the locust team. There are three modes of play in these team deathmatch-style games, which follow a
Counter-Strike-esque method of rounds and only having one death per round. Warzone is your standard kill the other team before they kill you game. Assasination has one player on each team become the leader; you win by killing the opposing team's leader; with the odd twist that until your team's leader picks up a weapon type, the rest of your team can't pick up that weapon. Execution is probably the most fun out of the three, where the only way you can kill your opponents is to dismember them with your weapons, or curb stomp them when they are on their knees bleeding out. Shoot your opponents all you want with machine guns, they can't die unless you blow their head off with a sniper, blow them apart with a rocket or torque-bow shot, chain saw them, or curb stomp them... they can just mash the A button to get back up from the bleeding position and begin fighting again.
The multiplayer maps, though limited in number, are all varied and intricate, offering many opportunities to flank your opponents, or be flanked by them if you aren't careful.
Besides the limited number of maps, the lack of an easy way to keep a team together through multiple matched games is also a slight disappointment. But, hopefully Epic is going to release a patch to help alleviate this problem, as they've already said they're working on new multiplayer content.
With all this gushing, though, I do have to bring up some bad parts about
Gears of War, though most of the bad in this game does not impact the fun factor of
Gears overall, and doesn't usually detract from the game in any way besides being slightly annoying.
First of all, there are some glitches present that can be pretty annoying to downright game-breaking depending on when they hit. There are times when your chain-saw attack will simply not work, most often while on stairs; you can be fully charged and right on top of an enemy, and the chain-saw will just sit there humming away in revved mode and not kill your opponent. There are some sound glitches that can pop up here and there. There are times you simply can't pick up ammo or grenades, even when not full on them, even though the game is prompting you to do so. And an odd co-op glitch had me unable to fire one of my weapons for a short time, and gave me the grenade arcing targeting while using a ranged machine gun at the same time I was unable to fire my other weapons, though this cleared itself up in around 30 seconds.
The story is also somewhat "meh," overall, since Epic didn't really decide to go into Fenix's back-story too much and make him more of a fleshed out character you would enjoy playing. He's just rough and gruff, and that's about all they end up doing with him, even though one part of the game has you going back to his father's house; a potential perfect time for some back-story and fleshing out of the character.
The biggest problem I have had with the game, though, is your own squad-mate's AI. To put it bluntly, as the game goes on, the squad AI just seems to get worse and worse (while the enemy AI gets better and better). They'll step in front of your shots (including running in front of grenade throws or other explosive shots), run in plain view of all enemies and get mowed down by gunfire, not accept orders to regroup in areas you need to be together for sometimes, and generally need to be revived way more times than they're worth. Thankfully, after each battle, they auto-revive... so you're often better off letting the idiots get knocked down in most fights and just dealing with the Locusts yourself. Most of the time, they don't need to be on their feet for you to complete the section you are in, but there are a few times where you do have to protect them, because if they go down, then it's game over.
In the end, though, these problems never really take away much from the overall game. The sheer fun you will have playing through the game is very high, if you're into shooter games, and for shooter fans
Gears of War really is a must-own title for the Xbox 360. It's probably the best game released this year to date for shooter fans, and it's going to take quite an accomplishment in game design to overcome it in the future.
