Fat Ninja

Gears of War has been the most highly anticipated game for the Xbox 360 since it was first announced in June of 2005. Hailed by the gaming community as the 360’s much needed “killer app”, it has been the subject of speculation, adoration, and spite. It’s been the Holy Grail of 360 fanboys (present company included) the internet-over, who have lorded it over the Sony camp with reckless abandon. Despite reassurances from many a gaming journalist, there were fears that we might, God forbid, have another Brute Force on our hands. Tensions and anticipation were soaring as Gears‘ release approached, and in the wake of Emergence Day, the internets are silent. Why, you ask? Because 360 owners are too busy taking on what is, truly, the first killer app on the 360.

Setting the Tone

Set on the fictional world of Sera, Gears portrays a world ravaged by the ongoing war between the planet’s surface dwelling humans and subterranean Locust Horde. Once a place of beauty and grandeur, Sera’s human population lived in a virtual utopia under the leadership of the Coalition of Organized Governments (COG). However, this peace was abruptly shattered when the Locust Horde poured from beneath Sera’s surface on what humanity has since dubbed Emergence Day. Fighting a losing battle, the COG, in an act of desperation, used orbitting weapon satellites to pound Sera’s surface in attempt to finally overcome the Locusts. But once the smoke cleared, the Locust remained and Sera was but a mere husk of its former beauty. With nothing more to lose, the humans are once more pushing their offensive, hoping to retake their fallen civilization. But to do so, they’ll need all the help they can get, which is where you come in. You play as Marcus Fenix, a disgraced soldier turned convict, who’s recently been “paroled” by his comrade in arms, Dom Santiago. Starting in the prison complex you once called home, you’ll quickly find yourself hurdling, diving, blasting, and chain-sawing your way through Gears‘ compelling campaign.

Todays’ Gameplay section is brought to you by the letter A

Gameplay in Gears is exceptional in every respect. With a shallow learning curve, controls are intuitive and fluid enough that you’ll find yourself navigating maps like a pro in no time. You’ll quickly discover that the A-button accomplishes nearly every task you need to rely on during combat. Without going into exhaustive detail on the importance of the A-button in Gears, here are but a few of the ways in which A can help you. Holding it down allows you to perform a hunched sprint between cover. Pressing it while facing a fallen pillar will automatically cause Marcus to press his back up against it. If it sounds simplistic, that’s because it is, but not in any kind of negative sense.

Played from the third-person perspective, Gears revolves heavily around a combination of speed, patience, and all of the rubble strewn in between. If you approach it like every other shooter that you’ve ever played, you will be mowed down in short order, especially on the more advanced difficulty settings. I kid you not. Instead, Gears demands a bit more methodical an approach. You’ll do more flanking than you will charging, and you’ll spend more time rushing to the cover of a burnt out vehicle than you will an enemy. Once you’re crouched behind that delapidated car, you’ll find yourself waiting for an opportune moment to belch out a spray of bullets to keep the Locust horde at bay. However, you’ll need to weigh risk and reward as you go. While ducked behind cover, you can fire blindly over the top or around the corner with the right trigger, but you’ll sacrifice accuracy for safety. It’s a good supression technique, but it lacks stopping power. If you really want to lay into your opponent though, you’ll need to stick your neck out to get in some well-placed shots, which you can do by holding the left trigger to enter an over-the-shoulder view, and then using the right-trigger to fire. Doing this, of course, leaves you exposed to enemy fire, but it is a great deal more effective, particularly at longer ranges.

The cover and firing systems aren’t the only things you’ll need to master. In what is one of the coolest little innovations in Gears, the developers have managed to engage the player in the shooter genre’s most mundane of exercises: Reloading. In Gears, reloading isn’t just a matter of pushing a button and watching Marcus swap out a magazine. Through the use of active reloading, players can use a well-timed press of the right-bumper to determine how smoothly that process goes. Sure, you can just let the system do it for you, but it’s both fun and rewarding to hit that sweetspot. A well-timed reload not only allows you to jump right back into the fray, it also gives you a temporary damage boost. Of course, where there’s reward there’s also risk, and if your timing’s off by the slightest amount, Marcus will curse your ineptitude while scrambling to unjam his rifle. At face value, the active reloading feature seems inconsequential, but when factored in to the rest of the Gears experience, it adds a dynamic layer to the gameplay.

Don’t Go To Pieces On Me

But it’s easy for active reloading to take a back-seat to some of Gears‘ other features. The chainsaw bayonet has overshadowed almost every other aspect of the game, and for good reason. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as reducing an opponent to gory giblets and viscera with a chainsaw; except, maybe, using the flail-like frag grenade in a melee attack to really stick it to your foe. Gears offers so many colorful and creative ways in which to dismember, maim, and kill an enemy, that one never tires of it.

Variations in creature design also help to keep the gameplay fresh as you progress through the campaign. As you move further into the storyline, the opposition builds with your progress, introducing new Locust forms that force you to rethink your tactics. Wretches, for instance, represent the bottom rung on the Locust’s evolutionary ladder. They never use cover, but what they lack in intelligence is made up for in a combination of speed, agility, and tenacity. Locust drones, on the other hand, will use cover fairly well, however they often become a bit overzealous and throw caution (and, consequently, their lives) to the wind when they try to storm your position. Theron Guards command Drones in the field, and as you might expect, they’re a great deal more crafty and intelligent than their suboridinates. This varied assortment of Locust forms works well with both the storyline and the gradual uphill battle of the Gears campaign.

Level design, while varied and gorgeous, doesn’t quite have the same impact on gameplay that creature design does. Most levels, while unique in appearance, don’t really present a great deal of variation to the way you play the game. However, there are a few exceptions. Some levels allow you to choose between two paths as you reach forks in the road. This implementation of choice doesn’t really affect the game’s outcome, nor does it challenge you to play in a different way, however it offers some welcome zigs and zags in an otherwise fairly linear story progression. In addition, there are a few other maps that require a vastly different approach than the rest of the game’s environs. Despite the overall lack of variety in level design, however, the formula of firing from cover in Gears never really wears thin.

Of course, there are some minor gripes to be made in the gameplay category. They are few, though aggravating. Objectives are occassionally ill-defined, leaving you groping in muddled confusion. Similarly, throughout the campaign your comrades will refer to objectives in Gears terminology. So, on that first run-through, when a team mate implores you to “man that Troika” (read: chain-gun), you may be a bit miffed about what in the hell it is, exactly, that he’s referring to. Moments like this are isolated, but they never fail to make you feel like a bit of a bumbling idiot.

With Friends Like These…

Speaking of bumbling idiots, you’ll find that your squad-mates aren’t exactly the sharpest links on the chainsaw bayonet. They’ll often rush headlong into the spit-fire spray of a Troika position only to be utterly annihilated. Then they have the nerve to ask you to revive them. Even when you’re granted command of your squad, they seldom listen. An order to regroup is ignored more often than it is obeyed, particularly when it matters most. They’re not always box-of-rocks stupid, and they often come in handy during a firefight. They’re quite good at handling general damage control. Just don’t expect them to help you in any kind of tactical sense. It never feels like they’re working against you, but it never feels like they’re working with you either. Still, while they fail at squad mechanics, as bullet-magnets, your fellow soldiers do an admirable job of drawing enemy fire long enough for you to make the kill. Ultimately, you’ll often feel like a one-man army.

Save Me. Please.

Truth be told, though, Gears‘ saving system can prove to be your most challenging opponent within the campaign. One might overlook the fact that you can’t save your progress as you go if Gears‘ checkpoint system weren’t so bloody unforgiving. The checkpoints are often too far in between for their own good, meaning you may end up revisiting certain sections of a given level over and over. To make matters worse, poor checkpoint placement can often force you to watch the same cinematic repeatedly during some of the campaign’s more challenging moments. Worser still, the Gears file on your 360’s hard drive only allows for one checkpoint at a time. So if, in frustration, you’ve decided to take a break from a particularly difficult section by playing through the first level, your original checkpoint will be over-written. The fact that these issues could have been avoided so easily does give one pause.

Fortunately, Gears‘ gameplay delivers in every other regard that you will, eventually, come to terms with its unforgiving save system. Especially when you consider that everything that it gets right translates beautifully over Xbox Live; even the campaign. That’s right, folks, Gears allows you and a friend to tackle the entire campaign as Marcus and Dom over Xbox Live. The experience is a wholly entertaining addition to the package.

But the real meat and potatoes of Gears‘ multiplayer component lies in its adversarial play. Featuring everything that makes the single-player campaign so great (including the visuals), Gears‘ four-on-four, Locust versus COG adversarial combat is easily one the most entertaining romps available over Xbox Live. On the one hand, Gears‘relatively easy learning-curve makes it accessible to the casual gamers. On the other, there’s a great deal of room for using team tactics and enough nuances to the gameplay to attract the more hardcore fans out there.

It’s No Smorgasbord, But I’m Full

Sadly, nearly two years after Bungie set the bar for online implementation with Halo 2, we’re still not seeing that standard adopted by the greater development community. While Gears is an absolute riot online, it’s really pretty bare-bones when compared to some of the more robust offerings out there. There’s a reason that Halo 2 continues to dominate Xbox Live, and that’s customization. Gears is rather stunted by comparison. Strangely enough, though, the limited scope of the Gears‘ versus mode isn’t too much of a detractor. The eight-player support makes for intimate, fast-paced matches, while brilliant map design caters to the game’s strengths. In spite of some of its shortcomings, Gears‘intensely addictive brand of gameplay is more than enough to carry it until some downloadable content hits the Marketplace.

A Real Looker

Visually speaking, Gears is sumptuous. I could literally go on for hours hurling superlatives at you about just how stunning the game looks, and I’d still fall well-short of the mark. Character models are incredibly detailed, right down to the ruddy crags of Marcus’ battle-scarred face. There’s also more than enough variety to the Locust forms and their individual representatives to keep monotony from setting in. But it’s really the world of Gears that helps to define what next-generation graphics are all about. The war-torn streets of Sera are brought to life through a combination of detailed models, sharp textures, and dynamic lighting. All of it is held together by a cohesive art direction, resulting in an incredibly immersive experience that simultaneously conveys the former grandeur of the COG civilization and the almost beautiful horror of its destruction.

“I Got Some On Me. Now I Got The Cooties.”

Sound in Gears is another area of note. The well-suited score is an appropriate blend of militaresque and horror themes that swells and fades with the on-screen action. Voice-acting is phenomenal across the boards. In fact, prior to playing Gears, I don’t know that there’s another shooter out there whose voice-acting actually had a meaningful impact on my experience. The hissing growl of the Locust Horde is frightfully unsettling, while the vulgar banter between Marcus and the rest of his men is not only befitting, but hilarious. But it’s the comments that Marcus mutters to himself in the thick of the fight that will often have you laughing out loud.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Gears is the 360’s first bonafide killer app. It’s got everything you were promised when all of this talk of “next-gen” console gaming first started. But beyond establishing the benchmark for what it means to be “next-gen”, it’s also helped secure the 360’s place for the forseeable future. Every console needs a mascot to serve as an ambassador unto their own cause of gaining marketshare. A sort of virtual diplomat to work the madding crowds and sway new users to the individual experience that console-makers are pushing. Nintendo has Mario, the Xbox had the Master Chief. Well, there’s a new-comer to the delegation. But, be warned: Gears of War’s Marcus Fenix is sorely lacking in some of the social refinements that you’ve come to expect from a typical gaming icon. And don’t expect any apologies, either, because none are forthcoming. As the new face of Microsoft’s continued push into the world of console gaming, gruff, gritty and off-color Marcus Fenix is in it for the long haul; and, the truth is, he’s got charisma in spades.

Share This