Badass game with non-stoppable action.
All right, what do we have here? Gears of War? Ok, what does Gears of War has that makes it so good? Well, it's a game that does everything right. It's beyond solid, it's a great game that anyone should play, no matter how much they like shooters or not.
First things first, a shooter is a shooter, so you shoot things, it's not nice and it's not pretty; and so isn't this game, unless you think of pretty as being something pretty amazing or pretty good. This game is not cute, this game is badass. And that's how these kinds of games should be, you have a protagonist manly as hell, along with three crew members you wouldn't like to face against in a fight, each holding big guns and shooting anything that moves - and you're gonna love it.
There's an interesting story happening along with all the action, like any game of this kind it can be easily skippable, and probably will be. The atmosphere is overly dark and generally opaque, this doesn't come even close to a horror game and you won't feel much suspense in the air, with some exceptions of course, the non-stoppable action will dictate the pace, but still, the atmosphere ends up being very obscure. Not much stealth too, the system is focused on covering and shooting, so you'll basically walk past some places and reach a determined battle zone, there, several enemies will be grouped to attack you. As you won't go too far trying to sneak past them you'll mainly have to take cover behind one the various cover places found all over each area, due to the high number of enemies in some zones you will hardly survive if not protecting yourself from the large amount of shots coming right at you.
You have quite an arsenal at your disposal, the average of course, rifles, sniper, grenades, but also a a bow and a chainsaw, which is a secondary weapon of one of the weapons. The voice-overs are excellent, the voices really fit the characters, especially the protagonist Marcus Fenix, with a very deep and imposing voice. The dialogs are well-constructed, to a point of some of them being especially memorable, others entertainingly funny; certainly after you finish the game you will remember about some lines said throughout the game that have stayed in your head and probably will stay for quite a while.
The perspective is in third-person, and the controls are pretty solid, with the covering system it would be senseless for this game to be in first-person and the third person fits perfectly in this case. The game lasts the right amount of time, the average 10-20 hours for an action game depending on how skilled or how desperate you are to see the ending; you can then increase the difficulty level or go right for the multiplayer if you think you're ready to play some online multiplayer action. The multiplayer is great and has a considerable number of players online, it shouldn't take long for you to join a match and fight against other human players with all the awesomeness of Xbox Live.
What you get with Gears of War is an awesome game that will captivate you no matter how much you like shooters or not. With great scenarios, a dark atmosphere of chaos and slightly brief moments of suspense followed by large amounts of action, you'll feel more than satisfied with the single player experience, After you're through with the single player, you'll find hours and hours of fun with the online multiplayer, if you're interested, of course. But the greatness of the single player campaign shouldn't keep you away from buying this even if multiplayer isn't quite your thing.
