System Played: Xbox 360
Year Released: 2006
Year Reviewed: 2015
Gears of War is a third person, cover-based, co-op shooter from Epic Games, the main culprit to blame for the waist-high-wall epidemic of the late-2000’s.
On the planet of Sera (which humans presumably invaded at some point?), big scary monster men called the Locust ‘Emerged’ from under ground and started killing everyone. Now 14 years on from ‘E-Day’, not a lot has changed, as the last dregs of the human military drag out a losing battle.
Gears follows the exploits of Delta Squad, a bunch of thoroughly unlikable individuals lead by war hero/traitor, Marcus Fenix, as they “take the fight” to the Locust in a typical military/macho/bullshit kind of way.
It’s big meat men Vs. big meat monsters.
Aiming and shooting in Gears feels stiff and a bit slow, regardless of the sensitivity options present.
Don’t expect a headshot to do the job against even the weakest ‘grub’ either. You will sink a full clip into most enemies before they go down. As such, you’ll need to take cover behind walls and pillars, rollypolly’ing between to find the best position to return fire from.
Moving between cover feels ‘fairly’ fluid though occasionally clunky (they improved it a bit in the sequels).
It’s not uncommon for your allies to get in your way as you vie for the best cover spots, or in tight areas it might lock on a different spot than you’d intended (probably in direct line-of-fire of the enemy). It’s manageable for the most part, the exception being the turd of a final boss, who you have to fight without a lot of room to manoeuvre.
An innovative ‘Active Reload’ mechanic requires you to time button presses just right for a speed and damage bonus, else fumble around and have to wait even longer before you can return fire.
It’s implemented well, and can make all the difference in a tough fight, but this is about as innovative as the mechanics gets in Gears of War.
There isn’t a great variety of enemies or weapons, highlights being the famous Lancer gun/chainsaw or the one that targets enemies for a satellite in space to shoot death lasers at.
Knees it seems are the main weak spot of the locust. If they ever got a hold of some kneepads then we’d be in real trouble!
Regenerating health keeps you going, and you get into the rhythm of popping out, shooting at the enemy's ugly mug until they die or (more often) you take too much damage, so pop back behind cover, Active Reload, and wait a bit for your health to recover some before repeating.
For the whole game, you’ll be accompanied by at least one ally (co-op or AI) but usually a total of 4, split up occasionally by branching paths.
After taking so much damage, allies will fall to the ground, requiring you to physically walk over and revive them, so they can go running off to soak up even more enemy bullets.
If you go down on single player however, your AI buddies can’t help you, it’s a straight fail and the game will reload from the last checkpoint. This is a key difference which can have a big impact on playing the game.
Your initial difficulty choices are Casual or Hardcore. There’s hardly any point in playing on Casual, and Hardcore lives up to it’s name, being a bit too punishing at times. So on single player where dead is dead, you can spend long periods making no progress as you fail over and over.
Enemy AI certainly does a very capable job of making your life a constant misery, as you frequently (and comically) explode into a pile of chunky, bloody, limbs. Enemies that themselves explode upon death (usually taking you with them) are especially annoying.
Ally AI on the other hand is pretty useless, with you having to do most of the work yourself. They serve the purpose of taking some enemy attention away from you, and not much else.
It also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that the enemy will mercilessly shoot every member of your team UNTIL they’re injured and in need or reviving, but won’t ever finish them off. And despite their protests, they will never bleed out, so there is no urgency to put yourself in more danger to save them.
Once your commander bites it early on in the story, you’re put in charge and can issue tactical commands to the rest of your squad ...just don’t expect any order you give to make much of a difference.
On Hardcore single player, there are some real shitty parts.
The worst for me was right before you first fight those fucking enemies with the bow and arrows that kill you in a single hit. Some pillock thought it’d be a good idea to put the checkpoint right BEFORE a long walk and dialogue scene which leads up to the firefight ...I lost count of how many times I had to retry this, spending whole minutes each time slowly walking over to the fight, while my team of idiots spouted the same (unskippable) stupid lines, only to die again and again. I ended up muting the volume after an hour.
This is followed later by a section where you have 20 seconds on the clock to make a run for an APC which is at the other side of a courtyard, the only thing in your way being a bunch of massive enemies! With enough tries you can make it BUT the shitting checkpoint has you start further back, making you keep repeating the same firefight over and over for 5 minutes before you can take another crack at the APC run. Again i died a lot, and was not very pleased about having to waste so much time redoing the crap beforehand.
The checkpoints didn’t need to be more frequent, just better placed!
From a design point of view, Gears of War feels a bit antiquated sometimes and ridiculous others. Most of the game is cover-based shooting but there is a little bit of variety.
There’s the level where you’re killed instantly by swarming bat-like monsters if you step away from sources of light, so have to shoot at propane tanks (that just happen to be perfectly placed) to create a path.
This is followed by a brief vehicle section where you drive down a linear road, stopping at set points to shine a light on aforementioned flying swarming enemies, who will ‘blow up’ the big tank you’re driving by flying into it a bunch...
Production values are good, even though everyone looks like a fat bodybuilder, and the world is all grey and brown. It’s not always easy to tell your big meaty enemies from your big meaty allies in the middle of a firefight, with everything just blending together. Friendly fire isn’t an issue as such, just a waste of ammo.
The orchestral soundtrack is a highlight though, and hits all those ‘heroic’ themes.
Gears of War is one prolonged firefight after another, interrupted occasionally by military chat and macho asshole speak. There’s nothing to get excited about in terms of gameplay or innovation, and on single player it all just feels like a real chore.
I just don’t like the tone. Shooter buffs and “bros.” will love it though. The type that wear baseball caps and have Xbox tattoos...
5/10
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