| Product: |
Gears Of War (Xbox 360) |
| Date: |
24.07.07 (84 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Truly unique shooter. Outwit enemies with strategy, teamwork and tactics and not pure marksmanship.
Disadvantages: Slightly slower-paced than the average shooter, gun imbalancing, slight lag, a few bugs.
If you're looking for some seriously hardcore team-based shooter action, then this game is for you. Even now that we're half way through 2007 there still hasn't been another tactical shooter that can topple this masterpiece from the top spot.
Gears of war offers a style of gameplay so unique that it may even look Halo 3 seem unspecial in comparison. From the multiplayer demo of Halo 3 there will be a few new extra pieces of equipment here and there, and the aiming is finally a little more challenging, but apart from that, Halo 3 will simply be an EVOLUTION of shooter gaming, because it's it plays in essentially the same newbie-friendly way as Halo 2, the ease of hitting people being what made the game so popular. What you already have now in the form of Gears of War is a REVOLUTION in shooter gaming.
The single player game is reasonably worthwhile with its cool storyline. (By the way, contrary to popular belief, the game is set not on Earth but on a planet colonised by humans known as 'Sera'. Seeing as the Locust were already there when the planet was colonised, what's even more intriguing is the fact that some enemies in the game call YOU 'alien' when fighting you!). And as you can imagine, these Locust aren't too happy about humans occupying their turf. So they decide to break out from underground through by making holes up to the surface. And within a short space of time, human civilisation on Sera is brought to almost the brink of extinction. Naturally, we need a hero to sort this out, and who better than veteran solider Marcus Fenix? Having disobeyed an order that saved someone's life in a previous battle, he had been imprisoned for many years. Once the locust invasion breaks out though at the start of the game, you see Marcus being cut free from his prison by his best buddy, Dominic Santiago, who accompanies you as well as later soldiers throughout the game, and trust me, you'll need all the help you can get against the Locust. Charging out fighting multiple enemies will get you killed very quickly in this game, even on easy. 'But that's what you do in all shooters?' I hear you say, quite understably. Not this one. Here, you take cover, get your team mates to cover you, provide cover fire for them, flank the enemy, throw grenades to blow up locust to either kill them or force them out of cover to gun them down... This is a game that forces you to use your head, rather than just focus on trying to shoot your enemy's and rely totally on that like other shooter games do. It's a shooter for someone who thinks for a moment about how he's going to approach a fight to maximise his chances of victory. Which piece of cover do I take that protects me from the most enemies? Where is less exposed? Which of the many specialised guns do I use and when and where? You'll find running around shooting only works when close to your opponent, as you can easily turn to face your opponent but your shots are much less accurate. Every weapon has to be aimed to fire with dead-shot accuaracy and forces you to move slowly, so you defend yourself not by dodging shots like in Quake and UT, instead taking cover, popping out and shooting then taking cover again, your core defense technique which the game emphasises even further by giving you a quickly-regenerating health system.
As well as having revolutionary gameplay mechanics, the levels in the single player campaign themselves are varied in architecture, design and time of day. There's even a vehicle driving section that's good fun, where you have to regroup with the rest elsewhere before you're set upon by vicious bat-like creature that can devour you alive. There's replay value as you get achievements for completing each of the 5 acts (divided into half a dozen levels on average) on each of the difficulty settings, and you find that as you do each successively higher difficulty setting, the game feels not quite as more difficult as you think, simply because shooting itself is easy for new players to master, you simply have to know your enemies weaknesses dependant upon their type and guns. The final boss is fun to play against, and rather unoriginally killed Marcus' father, but entertainingly killing him is therefore an act of vergeance as well as one of saving Sera from the Locust by ensuring the Leader dies with the Locust race, which you have to kill by launching a weapon of mass destruction underground after analysing the underground Locust tunnel network, the 2 goals of the game.
The multiplayer in Gears of War is where the game really shines. Even if you're playing single-player, a friend can ask to play with you cooperatively as the secondary character, Dominic Santiago, whilst the host plays as Marcus. Co-op is great, as you have to work together to survive and musn't split up too much otherwise you won't be able to revive the other player if he gets shot down by the enemy.
Examining the multi-player meta-game online at the moment, unfortunately people have noticed imbalances in some of the attacks like the pistol wip and the one-shot kill active-reloaded sniper (an 'active reload' in the game is where you manually reload the gun and if you get a button-pressing timing right, it temporarily increases the power of your gun). Also, with regard to the meta-game and in terms of people's playing style, there is a very strong fashion for people not to work as a team but split off into different parts of the level and charge at each other with shotguns. It appears as though most people simply don't have the patience to play the game as a tactical shooter but seem to treat it as if it's simply a slower-paced original-Quake. An organised team sticking together with a map-strategy, awareness of each other, covering each other, covering all angles, and using the right guns rather than always using the shotgun will absolutely slaughter an enemy enemy team which has all 4 of its members splitting off, using a shotgun only and never coming to help each other or attacking the guy who kill their team member, that enemy being unprepared for you, him being wounded or reloading. Don't be disheartened if you start playing the game online and you are with other players who are experienced at the online gaming and you find yourself scoring few kills. You only reason this is happening is because you're playing the game properly. You're used to playing it how it's meant to be played in the single-player game, taking cover, using a variety of weapons, and aiming, which is lacking online. All the other players will running around getting stuck into the thick of it, be shotgunning each to death, and you'll be left out and possible the last one to die. A slight flaw in the game is that it doesn't record deaths, when it really is the sort of game that ought to, if not force deaths to make you lose points or kills. My advice is that if you're with these players, go with one person on your team and followed him around in support, reviving him, covering him and his blind angles and finishing off his opponents (although don't steal his kills). He may not follow you to begin with, but he may be someone who does take it at least slightly seriously and if he sees you doing so and doing well with him, both of your easily taking down lone shotgunners with double-lancer assault rifle fire, then he might even make the effort to follow and stick with you, and teamwork is what this game's all about.
Overall though, this game has hardly enough problems to not make it worthwhile to any budding shooter enthusiast looking for something new.
Summary: If you like shooters and you're looking for something new, this is it!
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