Gears of War

 When "Gears of War" was first shown at E3, it blew many people away with its superb graphics, but a question that came to mind was if it would live up to the hype. The answer is yes! Gears of War is a third person shooter from Epic Games. The game lacks a compelling story, but that dosen't matter because you will barely pay attention to it due to the excellent gameplay.

What Gears of War lacks is a good story, and a lot of the time you will get confused on what is going on. Apparently there has been a war going on between the Locust horde and the humans. The Locust are a bunch of ruthless monsters that gathered under every large city, and launched and attacked. On Emergence Day, many have died. Humans used all the weaponry they could find to neutralize the Locust. The main character that you play as is named Marcus Fenix. His story is not revealed much, except for that he defied orders in order to save his father's life at the East Barricade Academy, but he was too late, and was charged with derliction of duty and sentenced to 40 years in a maximum security penitentiary. The game starts off with Marcus's friend Dom busting him out of prison to help fight the war against the Locust. You fight in a rag-tag squad of soldiers. They aren't very warm to Marcus because of his past. These guys aren't the normal every day soldiers you may think of. They're huge, bodybuilder-looking guys. Not very smart either. The humans' goal is to retrieve a special item that may turn the tides of the war.

The characters that you see in the game are badass and cool, but you won't really care about them much because the story dosen't really compell you. That's alright, because the gameplay is so fun that you won't really even pay attention. The game has cutscenes to space out the action a little bit, and you'll look forward to seeing each one, even though the story isn't so good. The game focuses a lot on taking cover. You won't make it out of a firefight alive if you're not behind a nice juicy slab of rock, or object that looks sturdy enough. The A button on your controller is your best friend. You press it to get into cover when next to a solid object. When pressing a certain direction on your analog stick, and hitting the A button, you'll perform a dodge/roll. These are very important for getting place to place because you'll be fired at....alot. When behind cover, you can peek out, and fire by holding the R button, or you can just blind fire. When you blind fire, there is no cross-hair, and your shots are very innacurate. This is mainly used for throwing your enemies off guard. When throwing grenades, it shows you where your grenade will land, so you can alter that using the right analog stick. You can also blind-throw a grenade. Very innacurate, but theres always a chance you might hit someone. When controlling your character, you can hold the A button to run. When you enter the running sequence, the camera focuses on your character from the lower back, and it kind of shakes. This is used to put you into the action more. It does a great job of it too! Gears of War like all other shooters, has weapons. You will use a variety such as the shotgun, pistol, grenades, sniper, etc., but the center of attention is the Lancer aka chainsaw gun. It's just the way it sounds, it's a automatic rifle, with a chainsaw-bayonet on the end. This is used for close combat. When the enemy gets close to you, you can hold the B button, and you will chainsaw them. Once the chainsaw touches them, this results in an instant kill. You will see a little sequence where the chainsaw touches the enemy's flesh, and literally cuts right through their body. Blood flies everywhere, and it's a very satisfying feeling. Gears of War is one of the goriest games you may ever experience. Other weapons besides the Lancer also have melee attacks, but they're not nearly as cool. All they do is just smack the enemy with the gun. There is a weapon in the game called the "Hammer of Dawn", which can only be used when the sattelites in space are aligned, and you are outside. When you aim it on a certain point on the ground, or on an enemy, it will make a few beeps, and a massive particle beam will come out of the sky, and do a lot of damage to the enemy, usually killing it in one hit. This is used mostly on bosses, and you won't be able to use it often in the game. It actually gives the enemy a funny death animation.

The enemy AI is very smart. The enemies can, and will take cover just like you do. Sometimes the enemy gets a hold of a Lancer, and will chainsaw you. Sometimes they will melee you with other weapons if you're close enough. They know where you are when you're hiding, and will do all they can to kill you. Very unpredictable. You will notice that the enemies with snipers are very capable of getting headshots on you. The AI gets smarter and smarter on the higher difficulties. Gears of War is a hard game. Even when you're on the easier difficulty. There is a problem in the difficulties of the game. The difficulties are from easiest to hardest, Casual, Hardcore, and Insaine. Casual is considered the easy difficulty, but many people will consider it to be medium. Hardcore is the medium difficulty, but many will find it to be hard. Insaine is considered the hard mode, but it's very hard. The enemies are ruthless in insaine, and you will die..alot! This applies to Hardcore mode too. You will find yourself dying a lot. Gears of War is very forgiving because if you find yourself in a spot where you just keep dying, you can always just quit, and load your last checkpoint, and choose the easier difficulty. You can change the difficulty whenever you want. The game saves at checkpoints, and they are pretty evenly put. You're not alone in your battle against the Locust Horde. You have a whole squad with you. Most of the time you'll have your buddy Dom with you, but in other missions, you have even more of the squad along with you. In single player mode, your squad won't do much except for provide cover fire, and distract the enemy. You'll rarely see them getting kills, and they die very fast. When a partner is hurt and falls to the ground, you can run up to him and hit the X button, which will revive him. This only works when your partner wasn't ripped apart, or in a condition where he is permanently dead. If your partner permanently dies, you will get him back after you finish the objective. The way Gears of War is meant to be played is by doing Co-op. You'll see this because in most games when playing co-op, the second player assumes the role of a clone of the main character. In Gears of War, the second player assumes the role of a character that plays a crucial role in the story, Dom. When playing on co-op with a friend, the game becomes significantly easier. Whenever you get badly wounded, your friend can revive you, and vice versa. On single player, if you are badly wounded, it's a game over, and your teammates can't do anything about it. You can also tackle the campaign with a friend over Xbox Live. The game has numerous boss battles, so having a friend for support helps a whole lot.

The graphics of Gears of War are perfect. Something that you may notice in a shooter is that the textures get all blurry when you come up to an enemy very close. This never happens in Gears of War. The visuals stay fluent. You will sometimes catch yourself just staring at the environments of the game. You will see the ruins of past human life most of the time, and every part of the environment is somehow destroyed. The cutscenes will have you gazing at them with your mouth open. The lighting effects used in the game really bring out its destroyed beauty. It's really hard to find a single flaw with the visuals, because they are just astounding. Along with the beautiful visuals is the sound. Everything just sounds so real. The voices of the squad are very deep, and it really just fits their physique. Hopefully won't ever have to hear the sound of a chainsaw tearing through human flesh, but the way it sounds in the game, just sounds so real, and just the way you'd imagine it. You can hear the character's footsteps when they're stepping on a hardwood floor, or concrete, or even in blood. The developers put a lot of care into the sound. The game may make you jump at times, and there is a different music that plays when you come across something scary. There is a suspensful music when you're in battle, and it gets calmer when you have taken care of all the enemies.

One of the main things that really makes Gears of War shine is its online play. The online play is incredibly fun, and rewarding. Many of the game's achievements come from the online play. For example, one of the achievements is to use the chainsaw 100 times, and another may be to get 100 headshots. Some of them may be easier, and some of them may be harder. You can have an online mode where you have a team of COG's (AKA humans), and the other team is Locust. You can choose a character model, and try to eliminate the other team with your team. In another mode there is one leader on one team, and a leader on another, along with a few other troops. The objective is to eliminate the opposing team's leader. You will find many more chances to use the chainsaw online, and it adds a ton of value to the actual game. The actual game is around 10 hours long, and lacks a satisfying ending, but the online keeps you playing. There are a few flaws online due to lag, such as when you chainsaw someone, you may see that the chainsaw isn't even touching him, but apparently it's still a kill. These are all little things that you won't pay attention to.

The storyline may not grip everyone, but the gameplay, graphics, and sound will. This is truly a technical achievement, and is one of the best looking Xbox 360 games to date. It isn't hard to pick up on, and will satisfy you all the way through. Gears of War is a thrilling game, that every Xbox 360 owner should own!