Destroyed Beauty (Gears of War (Xbox 360))

Member Name: Stunt 101

Product:	Gears of War (Xbox 360)
Date:	30/09/07 (183 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A beautiful, incredibly fun tactical shooter.

Disadvantages: You can't fight a Brumak!

Gears of War. The concept is simple; the game is a tactical shooter where ducking, rolling and hiding behind stuff is the key to success. The game is full of shootouts that in other games may seem repetitive. But the way Gears of War executes this is what makes it truly outstanding. The graphics and sound are brilliant-this game pushes the 360 to the limits and still is smooth. Yet, I can’t deny that there could have been a bit more single player action. I also can’t deny that the multiplayer could last you until the sequel…

-(The Story)-
You are Marcus Fenix, a traitor to the Coalition of Organized Governments who is an army of soldiers defending the world of Sera. Marcus is currently in prison for his crime, but when a member of Delta squad called Dominic Santiago breaks him out of jail, Marcus goes on a ride he won’t forget. Armed with guns, he and his squad must fight hordes and hordes of these evil creatures called Locust, who are terrorising the world and putting it close to extinction. The plot, like many big action films, is pretty much irrelevant to the game and doesn’t really matter. Yet, I found I grew to like the people in Delta squad like Marcus and Dom, which I don’t think I’ve done in a very long time. One thing about the plot is that the plot itself could have done with more exposition. I feel that there could have been a more compelling story here had Epic explained a bit more. You like the characters, but there’s little explained about their past. Though if you invest in the Limited Collector’s edition, you get a book which explains some things like why the War even began or how Marcus was jailed. Still, it’s not quite enough to give you the details.

-(The Controls)-
The game has great controls, as the game lets you do things easily like take cover, reload and more. The game doesn’t control like most shooters though-rather than having the X as the reload button or having shooting with the right trigger and throwing grenades with the left, the controls are quite different, but they are easy to adapt to. If I was playing, say, Halo, I’d either have to use a lot of bullets so the game automatically reloaded for you, or try and quickly move your thumb to the x button. In Gears of War, that’s not how you do it. You can wait for it to automatically reload for you, or you can reload yourself. But rather than having to move your thumb quickly to the X button, I can just quickly press the Right bumper, which is right in front of the shooting button. It seems most of the buttons on the right side of the pad are used for things like looking at points of interest or interaction. The only button that you use for attacking is B and that’s to do a melee attack. Even zooming in is different, as rather than clicking the right stick, you hold the left trigger. The controls are responsive and easy to learn.

-(The Gameplay)-
The gameplay itself is excellent. It may sound simplistic and repetitive, but the way Epic has done this makes it shine. The game is like hide and seek with guns. Taking cover in Gears of War is your most useful mechanic. If you ain’t behind a slab of concrete, a pillar, a wall or a burnt out car, you may as well shoot yourself in the foot and then in the head. This is not only because your enemy is so tough, but because of the health system. Gears of War has a health system where rather than having health meters and health packs, the game has a symbol which tells you your health, or rather the health you’re losing. When you start to get hurt, a faint gear will appear on the screen. When you get even more hurt, it will start to get less faint. Once you see a gear with a skull in it, you’re dead (it should look like the picture on the front of the special edition box). This is great as it adds to realism by taking away health meters, but also takes away the hassle of searching for health packs. It’s also good for notifying you when you need to get into cover. You recover health quickly, meaning the pace is fast and never gets boring.

Getting into cover is pretty easy. You simply press the A button and you should stick to a wall. The mechanic isn’t perfect though. For one, the rolling mechanic is also mapped to the same button. So you’ll either roll when you want to take cover and die while rolling, or get stuck to a wall when you’re trying to roll under fire. Still, the mechanic is responsive and this only happens rarely. When in cover, you can pop up and shoot. You can either shoot in or out of zoom-in mode. You’ll mostly shoot while zoomed in as shooting out of it is pretty useless. The game just shoots in the direction you’re aiming, rather than being able to quickly turn around and shoot. So, when in cover you can zoom in and shoot. You can still get hit though, but it’s easier to take cover and recover from hits when you’re already in cover. You can also jump to another place you can take cover if you are near to one. Other games have had a focus on taking cover, but none have done it this exciting. Enemies can easily open fire on you when you pop out of cover, making it a risk to come out of cover and really exciting.

And yet, the concept is really simple. Gears of War’s single player campaign is mostly a lot of large gunfights, save for boss battles and some well done vehicular sections in the game. The game may sound repetitive, but the game is actually really unpredictable. You never know what will happen next. There are a couple of moments in the game when you have to make a decision whether to take a left path or the right one. This is really cool, as something different happens depending on which way you take. You could run into enemies or something like that, or have to defend your squad. In Gears of War, you usually have other guys with you. You can give your team commands, like attack of cease fire, but this rarely is needed as the team usually just does what you want them to do anyways. Sadly, the team isn’t too bright, as they seem to die quite a bit. Luckily, you can revive them by simply going up to them and pressing X. This comes to play in the co-op play…

…which is one of the best things about the game. Co-op is fantastic, online or off. Basically, player one will still be Marcus, and player two will be Dom. Like Perfect Dark Zero, it’s nice to see they didn’t just duplicate Marcus as co-op play. This also comes into play with the choices of going in different directions. This is probably more frustrating when on co-op and you and your partner will be separated. This means if one of you dies (and for some reason, the team mates who are controlled by A.I. can’t revive you), then you have to restart. It can get immensely frustrating, as it means if one of you dies, the other has to restart as well. Aside from that, though, the co-op is brilliant thanks to the sheer fun on the single-player mode when you play it alone.

There is also a team based multiplayer to play with, which will probably give you the most value from Gears of War if you play it on Xbox Live. The local multiplayer isn’t much, considering you can only have another player with you. System link could be fun if you can be bothered to set it up, so Xbox Live will probably be the best place to play multiplayer. There are three main match types. Warzone pits two teams (one is human and one is locust) against each other, and the first team to kill all the members of the other team wins the game. It’s good fun, especially if you like to keep things simple and play alongside other people. Assassination is hard to explain. Basically, each team has a leader. When someone from one team kills the leader of the other, they become the leader the next round. Its pretty fun when you understand it, and it adds an interesting twist to the team deathmatch formula. Execution is pretty much the same as Warzone, except here when you die you have to revive yourself. You can do this faster by tapping the A button. You can kill someone in the game by going up to them and doing a close-range kill. The game isn’t much different to Warzone, but its still fun if you’re bored with the other modes. Overall, multiplayer is great and is obviously popular as it topped Halo 2 on the most played Xbox Live game. We’ll have to see if Halo 3 overtakes it, though.

The weapons in Gears of War are fantastic. There are about six weapons in the game, with your standard pistol, assault rifle and shotgun. The weapon you’ll mostly use in the game is the Lancer assault rifle. It’s best to deal with enemies while in cover, and has an excellent melee attack. Most of you have probably heard of it already, but the Lancer has a melee attack called a Chainsaw Bayonet. It’s pretty cool that the gun has a chainsaw on it, but what’s better is how its done. Basically, if you can rev it up, you can then completely chop someone in half. It sounds simple, but the way it looks is so satisfying. Blood splatters all over the screen and the sounds are spot-on. It’s so gory yet so excellent. The other cool weapon is the Hammer of Dawn. You won’t use this often, as there has to be an open space and it needs to be online, but basically what it does is that you lock onto an enemy, and then when you have a huge laser comes down onto them and burns them into hell. It’s best to use this on big enemies, as it’s the only way to get decent damage done to them. But you can also use this on multiplayer against opponents, which is pretty cool. Plus, when you use it on the standard grunts, they explode, so it’s pretty satisfying.

Another nice trick is the reloading. Basically, you can manually reload like normally, which takes the amount of time and is standard. But then there’s the quick reloading mechanic. Basically, when you reload a meter comes up. There is a little white section, a grey one and just black lines. If you press reload when it’s in the grey area, you reload quicker. But if you reload in the white area you not only reload quicker, but you also do more damage with your bullets you just put in. But if you do it while in the black, your weapon jams and it takes even longer to reload. It adds an element of excitement, as while it sounds easy, it’s so chaotic on the battlefield you’ll probably screw up.

The A.I. in Gears of War is good. The enemies use cover, and they don’t come full throttle at you. Except for moments when I was about to finish them, they seemed to charge at you. Maybe it was a last effort from them to kill you, but it sucked. And it made it easier to finish them off. Also, the team A.I. is a little disappointing. Sure, they take cover like you do and attack from cover, but they die just way too many times. Though you can revive them, it’s easier to just leave them as not only does it leave you out in the open when you try to revive them, but they also revive by themselves anyways after you’ve cleared an area, so you’re better off finishing the fight by yourself.

One thing that really could have done with some polish is the game’s difficulty level. Gears of War is a hard game, even on the easiest difficulty. That’s fine. What’s not fine is the difficultly difference between the three difficulty levels. The game lets you play on the first two difficulty levels on the get go, which are casual and hardcore. The third difficulty unlocks if you complete the game. Casual isn’t too punishing, though you still die quite a lot. Near the end of the game, if you’re playing it on casual, the game cranks up quite a bit and becomes quite hard. But on hardcore, the game goes insane and really frustrates you. Imagine how hard it is on insane!

Also, the boss fights are a little disappointing. These huge things called Berserkers come up a couple of times in the game, which aren’t too hard as they’re like Bulls, all you have to do is dodge them and they won’t hurt you. You lead them into light, use the hammer of dawn a couple of times and they’re dead! Easy. But the worst crime is the boss fight with the huge spider you may have seen in the adverts. I finished it in about five minutes because it was so damn easy. The thing put up little of a fight and the way you defeat it was rather simplistic. And this was half way through the campaign. One thing I will say though, that last boss was freaking hard! Damn, I had to retry about fifteen times to defeat it. But aside from that, the bosses could have been better. One thing that really annoyed me though is you don’t fight a Brumak. This is a huge, huge, huge creature that looked cool and could have had the potential of an epic fight. Not to be though, as you only see a cutscene of it, only to flee from it. Pussies…

The game is rated 18+, and for good reason. It’s very gory, what with lots of blood, limbs flying everywhere and other gruesome stuff like that. It’s also got droppings of the F bomb, and other language. There are also a couple of scary scenes in the game, like when you kick a door down, only to see a few corpses hanging in the air. Eww. I’d also say it’s for adults because it’s very hard. Kids will get angry at this game, unless they have experience with games. So, I’d say I’d agree with the 18+ rating. Kids, stay away…

-(The Graphics)-
Graphically, Gears of War looks incredible. This sets the bar for graphics on the 360. Character models look fantastic. The amount of detail is excellent, and it’s nice to see their clothes are thick, rather than having it stuck to their body. The environments are gorgeous; the war torn battlefield is striking as buildings are wrecked, the ground is cracked and everything is destroyed. ‘Destroyed Beauty’, as is the name of the artbook you get with the collector’s edition. The weapon models and effects are excellent too, as they really give off a sense of power. Plus, when you use the chainsaw bayonet, it just looks awesome as blood splatters onto the screen and limbs fly everywhere. And there are some spectacular lighting effects, textures and more. The animation, especially in cutscenes, looks fantastic and realistic. There are a couple of ugly things, like sometimes textures take a little bit to load up and look blurry, and cutscenes can chop up a bit at times, but the game runs smoothly through the gameplay. Oh and I was playing this on a standard definition TV.

-(The Sound)-
Soundwise, the game is also fantastic. It’s like an action movie. The cinematic music really helps to add atmosphere, as is the creepy silence. If you don’t like the music, you can always play your own music stored on your hard drive. Also, the voice acting and dialogue is excellent. It’s all macho stuff, so if you don’t like dumb dialogue then you won’t like this. But who doesn’t? Also, the acting is top notch, with some excellent performances for Marcus, Dom, the Cornel, and the locust. It’s pretty funny with the heated conversations that the two other squad mates (Baird and Cole) get into. The gun effects are also excellent, mostly because of sound effects that happen when you shoot. In particular, the chainsaw sounds delightful.

-(The Replay Value)-
The value is great if you don’t have Xbox Live, brilliant if you do. The single player will take you a good 10-12 hours to complete, though that may be a bit due to the hard difficulty. You’ll play it at least two times, one by yourself and one with a buddy on co-op. The achievements also add value. You get an achievement for completing acts on each difficulty. You also get it for doing a quick reload 5 times, killing bosses on certain difficulties and playing as Dom (player 2) for missions. It adds at least 15 hours of gameplay. And if you do have Xbox Live, this could last you until the Xbox 720. It’s also worth getting the collector’s edition, as it has an artbook, which is pretty cool, and a bonus DVD which includes a behind the scenes look of the making of Gears of War. Considering I saw it for nearly the same price as the standard version, it’s not a bad deal!

-(The Score)-
Controls- 10
Gameplay- 9
Graphics- 10
Sound- 10
Replay Value- 10
Overall Score- 9.8

-(The Ending Comments)-
Gears of War makes for an outstanding game. While its gameplay sounds simplistic, the way Epic executed it makes it truly superb. There could have been some improvements, like better boss fights, tighter difficulty and better team A.I., as well as better offline multiplayer, but this is still an incredible game. It also has brilliant visuals, superb sound and lots of value. If you love shooting games and own an Xbox 360, then you owe it to yourself to buy this game. And if you’re not a particular fan of shooters or are worried about getting an Xbox 360, Gears of War could convince you. As close to perfect as a game can get.

-(The Extra Info)-
This was published by Microsoft Game Studios and developed by Epic Games
This was released on November 17th, 2006 and is coming to PC soon.
You can buy this from Amazon for £29.97

Thanks for reading. Stunt 101

Summary: The 360s killer app.