Gears of war is one of the greatest video games of all time.
Gears of War is 2006's bloody third person shooter. The name of the game in Epic's masterpiece is cover. Take cover using A. From there lean out to the side and shoot guys with precision, or blindfire. You slide around cover (which is practically anything in Gears) fill guys up with lead and make a mess of blood. Duck after taking some damage, heal up quickly, and reload. Now reloading in Gears is special, since clicking RB to start the reload and clicking again when the 2 lines are aligned increases damage and makes the reload a hell of a lot faster. However one can press RB around the second line to increase the speed slightly, or miss completely to fuck up and cost you your life. This is applyed to every weapon in the game except for the Hammer of Dawn. Speaking of weapons, the boys in the COG (the local paramilitary organization left to defend planet Sera) have all the hardware they need to get the job done. Overpowered shotguns, rifles with chainsaw bayonets, head-popping pistols, exploding arrow tipped bows, you know, hardware. One noteworthy toy mentioned above; the Hammer of Dawn, marks a spot on the battlefield for a giant laser to hit from the sky. Pick up ammo using X, melee with B, look down the sight with LT and shoot with RT. A is a whole nother story. Hold is to run, tap it to either take cover or do a barrel roll, perform SWAT turns in cover, and to quickly run around corners. One can wrap their minds around everything in under 15 minutes of playing Gears of War.
This fine looking beast of a game runs on Unreal 3. (it's pretty good lookin', check out some images) and the visuals bring the campaign to life. Basically your this badass Marcus Fenix, and your ready to serve in jail and kick ass, and your all out of jail (I'm hilarious :D) so you tag allong with Dom, and you fight to save Sera. A few bosses, a vehicle sequence and a badass RAAM serve to break up the action and to bring the game to a satisfying finale. Co-op works beautifully well in Gears. A friend or a random kid could join you at any time. Team work is essencial, and it's always fun to have your friendy yelling at you to save him from being downed. Whats this you might ask? Well when you take enough bullets you fall to your knees and bleed out. Any friendly could come over and revive you to 100% health to get you back in the game.This is cool since you could come over and curb stomp a locust's face. Locust don't particullarly like this, so they fight back hard. Hardcore is the medium difficulty, which is just right for gamers. Normal is for the "hey look a video game!" crowed, and Insane is for the dedicated *cough cough* 8 hours is the length of the campaign, and its great 95% of the way through. One annoying mine cart level can frustrate newcomers, but thats nothing campared to the whole package.
The multiplayer in this game is plusgood (read 1984). 4v4 matches with variations of deathmatch and a cool KotH-like mode called Annex make it as much fun as Halo 3's mp or even cod 4's. 2 years kater Epic has moved on to focus on the fail train Gears 2, so all the map packs are free, and plenty of people still play.
Bottom line: If your a gamer and you love your 360, go check out Gears of War, you won't regret it.
