Gears of War

How often does a game live up to loads of hype? Rarely. And Gears of War has been hyped for ages, ever since its debut at E3 2005 where it stole the spotlight from its peers. In every appearance since, it has managed to impress in small doses and incrementally build-up steam. That is a lot of lead-up, a lot of time to build expectations to an unmanageable and unrealistic level. Somehow, however, Gears of War manages to live up to expectations. With a combination of solid gameplay, a stunning and gritty presentation, and online co-op and adversarial multiplayer, Gears of War emerges as Xbox 360’s first killer app.

Gears of War is raw, violent, and gory. Touches such as clever documentary-style camera tricks, context-sensitive cinematic moments, and rivulets of blood ejecting from shot characters all contribute to this dark motif. It is a vision of great consistency and coherency. That is a good thing too since the narrative is as barebones as it gets. You, as Marcus Fenix, are a typical bad-ass military type caught up in a mission to deploy a weapon of mass destruction that will completely destroy the Locust. That’s really it. Along the way many questions are raised but none answered. It’s clear that this first entry in what is certain to become a franchise is just the tip of the iceberg. In this way Gears is much like the original Halo: a small slice of story set in a massive universe.

The gameplay in Gears of War is by no means revolutionary. It is a third person action shooter that makes robust use of a dynamic cover system as its gameplay “hook,” so to speak. In fact, the cover system may not even be particularly innovative either. A few previously released games on the 360 have introduced cover dynamics into gameplay well ahead of Gears (such as the cover system in Perfect Dark Zero and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter). Therefore, there is nothing new here. Regardless, Gears of War manages to nail the cover dynamic and make it both adequately sophisticated and compelling.

The fact of the matter is that you need to stick to cover as, if you spend an unreasonable amount of time in the open, you will end up dead. On the opening page of the manual, lead-designer Cliff Blesinzki answers the question of how to make the cover system interesting: “make it real.” Indeed, that’s what makes the cover system a completely necessary aspect of gameplay, because of the rather realistic notion that being pounded with bullets will actually kill you. This provides a palpable sense of tension throughout the game. Mind you, on the lowest difficulty setting you can take a bit of a beating, but up the difficulty to either “hardcore” or “insane” and death comes much more quickly.

There’s also a welcome level of sophistication to the cover system. While most actions taken during and while entering into cover are completed with a simple press of the “A” button, there is an impressive amount of maneuvers that can be accomplished with this simple scheme. You can hurdle over obstacles, dive out of cover, swat turn across open space from one cover point to the next, and swing around cover points while running crouched (roadie run), for example. You’re also able to blind fire and peek out of cover for more accurate reticule assisted fire. At some point, you are going to need to employ all of these skills; as the enemies become more aggressive, as they begin to outsmart and outflank you, you will be madly repositioning in and out of cover points to save yourself and better leverage an offense.

Your enemies (the Locust) are typically vicious and frequently employ clever tactics to gain the upper hand. You’ll often see them move as you would, in and out of cover in an effort to preserve themselves, and flank for the kill. But they’re not always about preservation, and will frequently charge your position. The Locust also have the tactical upper hand because of their ability to appear anywhere from “emergence holes” that tear open from the ground below. Emergence holes will eventually close up, but until they do, they will continually spawn Locust unless you close it yourself by tossing in a grenade - a risky proposition since lining up a grenades’ trajectory will leave you exposed. Different types of Locust are slowly introduced as the game progresses, offering up some behavioral variety. Your dime-a-dozen drones are complemented by much larger “Boomers” who brazenly stand out in the open and wield devastating rocket launchers. The female of the species, Berserkers, are huge, blind, charge you by tracking sound and smell, and cannot be killed with conventional weaponry. There’s more, but I’d rather not ruin the surprise. Suffice to say that the pacing of new Locust, and thus challenges, is expertly executed. As a result, the game stays interesting and, most importantly, tense.

You have your standard bevy of weapons at your disposal: pistols, automatic rifles, shotguns, grenades, etc. While each is effective in the expected manner, they’re mostly inconsequential unless you’re playing at the highest difficulty setting. Unique weapons to the Gears’ universe are the Hammer of Dawn and Torque Bow. The Hammer targets ground locations for orbital satellites to blast, but is only sporadically available. The Torque Bow is much more useful, especially at the higher difficulty settings: it operates much like an actual bow and arrow with explosive projectiles traveling further the longer you “torque” the bow, and will actually pierce and stick to objects and enemies at its full power for an instant kill. Otherwise, the star of the show is the Lancer, an automatic rifle equipped with a chainsaw bayonet…yes, a chainsaw bayonet! By revving up the chainsaw and walking into a Locust drone, you will drive the chainsaw into its chest while it violently thrashes and torrents of blood splatter in every direction. This is one of the greatest kills of all time – one that isn’t easily pulled off as being hit will cause the chainsaw to sputter out and getting it back up to speed takes a few seconds. So, when you do pull it off, it is an incredibly satisfying experience. I literally clench my teeth and growl every time.

It’s not all perfect, of course. You will always be accompanied by computer-controlled teammates. You can issue squad-based commands, but whatever use they were originally intended to have must have been lost somewhere during development; using them doesn’t seem to make a lick of a difference. Also, while these guys are typically great at creating atmosphere and contributing to battle, they’ll occasionally rush head first into certain death. Likewise, the Locust might be clever, but they’re prone to incredible stupidity from time to time; every once in a while a Locust drone will ‘take cover’ on the wrong side of an object leaving them completely vulnerable to a pummeling. And lastly, the controls aren’t quite where they should be; during tense moments you’ll likely fumble with the cover system and using the roadie run to get into cover quickly will sometimes result in completely missing the cover altogether due to reduced agility. Despite some niggling shortcomings, the gameplay is solid. What gameplay annoyances do exist are completely smothered by the phenomenal presentation.

This game is graphically stunning. Sure, you could nitpick all day: some textures don’t look so hot, the shadowing on your character doesn’t look quite right, the friendly characters outside of your teammates are noticeably less detailed, slowdown does occur from time to time, etcetera. No game is without its visual quirks, and Gears is no exception. But Gears is an immediately noticeable visual leap beyond any other game that has come before it. Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 is flexing its muscles in a big way here. For the most part you’ll be traversing the cities of Sera. The architecture is grand in a Romanesque way, but everything has been torn to pieces from years of incessant warfare. The overall effect is both breathtaking and sorrowful. Draw distances are phenomenal, lighting is second to none, and character detail is downright spectacular; character faces reveal craggy mugs that have been through more than their fare share of beatings. You’ll likely spend half the game just gawking at the graphics, especially during Act Three and Act Five. It’s during those sessions that the game steers towards the fantastical, taking you out of the cities and below ground and hurtling along on a train respectively. It’s only mildly disappointing that more time wasn’t spent exploring the more bizarre side of the Gears universe since that’s where the game truly knocks you over.

The sound design and musical score are equally incredible. I’d even go so far as to say that it trumps Halo 2 in this department, and that’s really saying something. The entire soundtrack is fully orchestrated, with the score ranging from subtle and beautiful to powerful and aggressive. The music is also cleverly and dynamically introduced at all the right moments. There were a handful of moments I was completely taken out of the game not because of a flaw, but rather because I was completely struck by just how great the music was. Voice acting was perfectly cast as well. You’ll play alongside three other teammates, each with their own distinct personality and clever dialogue to boot. A notable stand out is Gus, voiced by Lester “Rasta” Speight, who brings so much affable personality you wish he was your friend. The interaction between characters is raw and biting and, much like the graphics, sucks you further into the experience.

On top of it all, Gears offers full campaign co-op play and multiplayer via Live. Co-op is surprisingly great fun. Portions of the single player campaign were specifically designed with interesting co-op scenarios in mind; you will be frequently split up from your teammates and play out supporting roles on separate branching paths. The ability to play alongside a buddy and dynamically strategize through real time chat is definitely worth at least another play through of the campaign, not too mention that the difficulty also seems to be tailor adjusted as well to keep things challenging.

Online multiplayer includes, at this point, simple variations on standard deathmatch: Warzone is your typical team deathmatch, Assassination is kill the leader, and Execution is deathmatch but players can only be killed by a special execution. Despite these limited options, the multiplayer is surprisingly great fun too. There are enough new features in Gears multiplayer that it feels fresh and original. In any of the modes, if you are “killed,” you will actually be immobilized until either a teammate revives you or you are shot further or executed. This simple mechanic adds some depth and tension: should your risk your own neck to either save your teammate or rush in on a downed opponent to finish them off? The visceral thrill of the chainsaw kill is carried over here, along with the ability to ‘curb stomp’ a downed opponent. Both of these execution-style kills are the third-person shooter equivalent of a ‘fatality’ and are phenomenally satisfying. The maximum amount of players is four on four; while low, the player count makes for a much more intimate experience. The maps themselves are correspondingly small yet full of complexity, offering plenty of opportunity to strategize and put the cover system to good use. Remarkably, the 10 multiplayer maps are just as beautiful and in some cases actually better looking than the single player campaign.