Gears of War (Xbox 360)

Hello gamers,
Today’s post is a review of Xbox 360’s game of the year, Gears of War.

To start off with this review, I want to express the knowledge that most people, when reading my review, will highly disagree with me. I totally encourage those who don’t agree with my opinion say so in the comment section. I would really like to hear what you have to say and why you think I should have given it more credit.

Let’s go ahead and talk about the story. Marcus Fenix is the main character, and he is locked up in jail because of disobeying orders. Dom, a member of the Delta Squad, is out to free him. Since almost everyone on Earth has been killed, they need as many people as they can get. He gets Marcus out and later Marcus becomes part of the Delta Squad group. The alien group responsible for all the chaos is the Locus Horde. These “Locus” look kind of like humans, but are colored gray and have very strange voices. They have the ability to make holes come out of the ground at any time where they can send troops. That’s mostly why so many people on Earth have died; they can’t know when and where the holes are going to come out. It’s Marcus’s job to kill all the locus and end the war. So, on that note, let’s go ahead and talk about the story. If we’re going to be honest, is the story really anything different than other alien games? I want to you tell me if this sounds different: Earth has been under attack by a large alien fleet and the human race is almost wiped out totally. You and some other troops must stop the alien threat at any cost. Now, after reading that, does that sound familiar? Some may thing I’m talking about Gears of war, but I was actually talking about Halo. Sure, there is some difference between the two games with the background plot, but the main plot is still the same. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of having the same story over and over again. I don’t thing this game did anything different with the story besides the typical “humans killing aliens” plot. I didn’t feel connected with the characters like I do in many other games. I believe the story is amazingly overrated. There is nothing original about using the same story over and over again, except with some background information and the ending.

As for the weapons, they still didn’t add anything new. Choose to get the basic assault rifle, the basic shotgun, the basic sniper rifle and some pistols. Wow…..so…cool….except it isn’t. Sure, they added a chainsaw addition to the assault rifle to make sure that the main people who buy it (those with lust for blood and violence) can have lots of alien gore. Sure, the chainsaw attachment is a cool idea, but not anything I would say is amazing. The best weapon out of all the weapons is the grenade. The grenades in the game are like little spiked balls with a chain attached to the end. If you run up to enemies, you can stick it too them. It’s really quite cool.
Controls for Gears of War are actually okay. The game is played in third person so you can switch angles and other things. They wanted to give the gamers a paint-ball feel to the game. In the game, take cover behind walls or little objects laying on the ground. The player can blind fire (meaning to fire without looking) behind cover and they added a “one-button” action to it so it’s not confusing to jump across to other cover. Just simply press the “A” button to hide, and use the joystick to aim in the direction you want to go to jump across to another wall, run to the next object in the next room or rush your enemies. Sure, it’s not like they invented or changed the idea of hiding behind cover, but it adds a tactical prospective to the game that most shooters lack *cough* Halo *cough*. Aim the weapon by holding the lower “L” button or just run through without aiming. So, the controls aren’t bad and I believe that simple is better.

Graphics aren’t bad for a 360 game, but it’s not quite as good as Halo 3’s graphics. Now, graphics shouldn’t be a feature which controls your decision, but they do matter.

Okay, let’s talk about Multiplayer. Xbox has been known to have amazing multiplayer, but this game really lacks something amazing. The player can choose to play co-op on a single system, play co-op with friends or do normal multiplayer. With co-op, play with another player to continue the story like most co-ops do. With normal multiplayer, they let the player choose like four different game modes. All of them are team. You can’t choose what weapons you want to have, they don’t have many levels and it’s so repetitive. Unlike Halo, you don’t just keep playing the same thing over and over again, they let you switch it up. Gears of War wasn’t made for multiplayer, just co-op.

So, what’s so great about Gears of War? What makes it a “must buy game” that many people told me it would be? It’s online multiplayer sucks, nothing really new with the story, doesn’t have any new weapons and was very sloppy with how long the game was. Is it the worse game of all time? No. Could it have been better? Yes. I just want to know why we are giving a “game of the year” sticker to a game company that doesn’t deserve it? Were there no good games that year? Well, I do believe that most websites need to get over how good it looks and find out what separates that game from other shooters. With that I give Gears of War 7.5 out of 10.

Ups: Good controls, some nice levels, pretty nice graphics.
Downs: Horrible multiplayer, not original, no new weapons, story sucks.

Well, that’s all for now,
HANG TIGHT GAMERS!!