Last weekend I finished Gears of War on my Xbox 360, this was the first games that I completed on Xbox 360. This was also the first action game that I had played on the Xbox 360, before this I had just played Mass Effect and Guitar Hero 3.
Anyway I really enjoyed Gears of War, it was the first first shooter game that I had played in a while that I actually enjoyed. I generally tend to play for strategy and RPG games rather then shoots or twitch games. After I got us to the controls which took a couple of hours, I have played major shooters but always on the PC. So I am very much use to the keyboard and mouse rather using a controller. This was made worse since I was still getting use to the Xbox 360 controller at the time.
The graphics in Gears of War are pretty amazing and so is the sound. The controls are pretty smooth for the most part; there was a couple of time that I ran into the some clipping issues.
Oddly enough my main complaint about Gears of War is actually not the game play but rather the complete lack of story. The game starts out with you being sprung from prison by your army buddies and after a short tutorial you go straight into the action. You never really find out where the Locust Horde, the bag guys in the games come from. You get some short video clips of the world being destroyed during “emergency day” but that is about it.
Even in the manual there is no real letting of what happened and where the enemy game from. Is this a big deal in the overall game? No it is not but still it would have been nice to add to the feel of the game.
Some other little oddities that I noticed in the game is you have futuristic weapons and armor and yet you still throw your hang grenades. Yes it is very well done how your throw grenades, probably the best I have seen in a game, but still a grenade launcher would have made sense. There is also times when things happened that really do not make any sense. The most glaring is one of the final levels when you are on a train fighting your towards the front of the train. When sudden a berserker appears behind you that you to deal with? Where did it come from, apparently it materialized out of thing air. Again not a big deal but it is annoying when the rest of the game they are careful in making appear in reasonable and logical places.
Gears of War is one of the first cover first person shooters. Meaning that unlike games like Doom or Quake where you run into a room and shot enemies. In gears you have to take cover behind things and return fire. This is a more realistic to real life and is a nice change of pace. Gears of War is also the first FPS (first person shooter) where you do not have a life gauge. Instead as you take damage a symbol appears in the middle of the screen and if you take cover your regain health. It is different then the traditional life gauge but it does make the game a lot easier.
Gears of War also has a lot of online content that to be honest for the most part I will never use. I do not enjoy getting my butt handed to me by a 13 year who plays the game eight hours a day. But it does have co-op mode that allows you play the single player game with a friend. This is extremely fun and I will plan on playing the game through again on all skill levels. To get the game points and also but the game is just fun especially when you playing with a friend.
All in all I really enjoyed Gears of War and I am looking forward to the squeal that is in production. The Fact that I am planning on playing through the game again really is a testament to how good a game this is. It is extremely rare for me to replay a game let along a first person shooter.
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