Personal Game of the Show: Gears of War

Factoid #1 – I do not own an Xbox360.
Factoid #2 – I did not particularly want a 360 before E3.
Factoid #3 – Gears of War WILL make me buy a Xbox360 and subscribe to Live!

This year, the best looking and best playing game was Xbox360’s Gears of War, the 3rd-person shooter that truly ushers in “next-gen”. At E3, I was given the chance to play a few rounds of Gears of War’s team multiplayer mode (2 teams with 4 players per team) and it single-handedly convinced me that I had to get the Xbox360. I don’t mean to try and convert anyone, or pitch a particular company’s product to you *hides money bags*, but I wanted everyone to know the immense power that Gears of War wields. I was but a pawn as the game toyed with my emotions, gave me the most basic and visceral pleasure of letting me chainsaw Morgan Webb’s avatar in half (she was playing right next to me, I just couldn’t resist), and then abruptly took away it’s other-worldly joy. See, I’m not usually this wordy when it comes to simply describing my experience with a game, but I just want to convey that this title is singular – it’s simply must-have material.

Factoid #1 – I do not own an Xbox360.
Factoid #2 – I did not particularly want a 360 before E3.
Factoid #3 – Gears of War WILL make me buy a Xbox360 and subscribe to Live!

This year, the best looking and best playing game was Xbox360’s Gears of War, the 3rd-person shooter that truly ushers in “next-gen”. At E3, I was given the chance to play a few rounds of Gears of War’s team multiplayer mode (2 teams with 4 players per team) and it single-handedly convinced me that I had to get the Xbox360. I don’t mean to try and convert anyone, or pitch a particular company’s product to you *hides money bags*, but I wanted everyone to know the immense power that Gears of War wields. I was but a pawn as the game toyed with my emotions, gave me the most basic and visceral pleasure of letting me chainsaw Morgan Webb’s avatar in half (she was playing right next to me, I just couldn’t resist), and then abruptly took away it’s other-worldly joy. See, I’m not usually this wordy when it comes to simply describing my experience with a game, but I just want to convey that this title is singular – it’s simply must-have material.

Well, now that I have gushed about GoW quite profusely, IÂ’ll talk about the gameplay and demo. First thing gamers will notice about Gears of War is how detailed everything is. I was in awe at the amount of detail of the backgrounds and the especially the way the map was affected by the fray. Also, the characters and models looked great and flexed ridiculous levels of details; I was always amazed when a character was eviscerated by a chainsaw with a geyser of HD blood gushing out of them and the elicited cheers of everyone in the room. Of course, the audio and sound effects were great, but to be honest, all my attention was being paid to destroying my opponents.

The map we played was a sliver of a destroyed city on 4v4 with the teams being human and alien. First team to kill all the members of the other team (and have them stay dead) won. The only way players could revive in the same round was for their teammate to run up to their corpse and revive them using the X button, otherwise, it was one life per person. Gameplay was smooth, fast and highly tactical. With the choice of weapons and accessories, players could choose to take out their competition with either long range sniper rifles, mid range machine guns, close range shotguns, or (my favorite) a ultra close range combo of smoke grenades and chainsaw. Weapons were switched by tapping the D-pad and, with nice touch; they corresponded to where they were on your character (e.g. tapping ‘left’ went for the weapon on your left shoulder, ‘right’ went for the right shoulder weapon, and ‘up’ went into a bag for grenades). Moreover, many of the weapons had dual-usage (e.g. the machine gun becomes a sweet chainsaw). Lastly, to add even more depth, players can ‘tactically reload’ their guns for bonuses. Doing a tactical reload consisted of tapping the right trigger button at the correct time, and it results in either a quick reload, double strength bullets, or a reload jam if timed incorrectly. Thus, the tides of battle could easily shift with the success of failures of tactical reloads. The last feature worth mentioning is the essential ‘take cover’ function mapped to the A button. Holding A while running speeds up your character while making him harder to hit, but also making him unable to attack others. Next, holding A while close to most walls, corners, or objects will allow your character to take cover. After taking cover, players may shoot blindly in one direction behind them, peak out to aim at opponents, lob grenades, or move from one structure to another by using A + the analog stick. It’s a little hard to describe, but if you’ve played Kill.Switch, you should have a pretty good idea of what is going on.

One last thing, IÂ’m not a big fan of shooters (IÂ’m more of a niche gamer), but Gears of War floored me. I want it, hardcore shooter fans want it, and odds are, youÂ’ll want it too.

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