Napalm Riot

I'm pretty certain I received Gears of War as a Christmas gift in 2006, a month after it came out. However for one reason or another I never got around to playing it. Twice actually I had gotten up to maybe Act I Chapter II but lost interest because I decided to play it on a whim when extremely bored. But over the weekend I was at my friends house and I brought Gears of War over as well as an array of first and third-person shooters. We went through every game and played each one for a bit. We eventually got to Gears of War and played against each other. Well of course my friend played on Xbox Live since he's one of those "I don't play campaigns because I lack the depth for any sort of story. I want to kill and kill now, without any meaning." Anyhow, I got butt raped as anyone would have rightly assume. However, excited from having my head shot off from a sniper active reload, sawed in half, and my body stomped into pieces, I was finally pumped enough to play Gears of War through campaign. It didn't let me down.



-------Graphics-------
One word. Wow. The graphics in Gears of War are absolutely breath-taking. Apparently Epic Games used the Unreal Engine 3 for their graphics, but that aside for everyone else, they simply used jaw-dropping high definition technology. One of my favorite moments in the game is when you go in with the chainsaw and the camera swings out to a side view only to see your locust foe being ripped in two as blood spills across the screen. Let me tell you, they did an excellent job with that blood. I'm serious, it's as if it was a movie and blood splashed across the lens.

It's also so presented so well, it literally felt very theatrical at times, from sawing locust in half, to the cut scenes, to the environment, and hell even running in the game made it seem like a movie. Nonetheless I'll always remember my Uncle coming over on Christmas day the year Halo 1 came out and I was playing the second mission, and he said "Oh what movie are you watching?" I obviously laughed and explained to him it was a video game... Hah, I wish he could see Gears of War.

My only two peeves about the graphics were firstly I felt how object broke apart was pretty boring. Wood either shattered into microscopic dust and furniture broke apart like styrofoam. And secondly my basement flooded recently, so I didn't get to play it on a 42" HDTV, I did it on a 21" TV.



-------Sound-------
The sound was excellent as well. I felt the music was very fitting, it was very concert like music, but nonetheless it was still good. The voices were all good, and the Locust and ambient sound was perfect. I like how games put across this sense of suspense all the time with the ambient music, always gets me going. Lastly, the Locust sounds, good overall, but the wretches made this occasional blood curdling screech, which irked me, but that's what it's suppose to do!



-------Controls-------
The controls were good but this is the first section that I did not give a 10. First let me explain what I liked. switching weapons, reloading, melee, shooting, aiming, looking, and moving were all good. It took me about two chapters to adjust fully to running well and hiding behind objects. Otherwise sprinting and hiding behind cover became very enjoyable. The active reload was also very easy to master and I was shooting improved bullets easily 80% of the time.

However the aspect of the controls that really didn't like were the grenades. Firstly if you just through a grenade it will land about 5 meters in front of you, so you need to aim with the another button. With this button you can almost imagine a parabola, and you aim this parabola, also making sure that were it landed wasn't going to cause a bounce (second small parabola). I also didn't like that because I found myself throwing grenades right in front of me a lot, so when I aimed my hulk of a human being was in the way.



-------Story-------
The story in Gears of War is hands down it's weakest point, which is why I gave it the lowest score out of any category. Don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean the story is bad it's just not as strong as the other categories, while it still is strong itself. I feel like I didn't get enough back story to literally anything the entire game. Who is the Fenix guy? What is Fenix's past? Why are the Locust waging a war against humans? Who are the Gears? Many other questions. After going to the wikipedia article for Gears of War I by chance read that the game took place on another human settled planet. Oh? Wow... Where did this come from?

I'm sure if I read up, read the manual, and did other research on the internet I could find a fuller story, however from the perspective of the game I felt there was little that I definitively knew at the end of the game, except that the Locust were mad and were going to continue the war, which means sequel!

Also the character development, there really was none. I mean I don't expect too much of that from a third-person shooter, but I really didn't learn much about Fenix, or even the final boss, who is the same guy who kills your squad leader in the first Chapter. Nonetheless, I felt that the way the squad morphed in the first two chapters as people died was interesting and how the group interacted and showed their different personalities.



-------Fun-------
Gears of War, without a doubt, one of the more fun games I've played in a while. Not only did it feel like a theatrical adventure because of some of the graphical aspects, but there were also a lot of fun little things. I enjoyed the little variation, such as driving the junker APC, and shooting the propane tanks to make light so the Kryll didn't kill me.

The game was absolutely fun, I couldn't put it down after I began, I beat it within 12 hours of start (7 hours of sleep in there somewhere too). Playing through all the missions was absolutely fun, but really it was so fun because of the amazing gameplay and an entire combination of all the above categories melded into one. Not to mention, there's nothing better than sawing a Locust in half, blooding smearing the TV screen!



-------Replay-------
I'm not one to replay a campaign mode unless we're talking ROTOR or Mass Effect, but I definitely plan on picking this game up again soon and going into some multiplayer because the gameplay is just too good! Not to mention Gears of War 2 comes out this year too.