Gears of War

"Terrible, terrible game. Did they even try to port it?"

Graphics: Having a powerful rig I expected some blazing graphics. What I got was a fantastic looking slide show. This game has terrible performance problems, even on lowest or highest settings. It insists on running smoothly for a few seconds then sputtering while you get torn to shreds. When it does run it looks good but unremarkable. Character models are gigantic and almost square, with feet the size of my torso. These unrealistic character models have no place and annoyed me. At least the textures are high quality, and the shadow work is fantastic. But thats where the compliments end. This game uses fog, motion blur and depth of field blur too much. It masks the flaws and visuals with dust and defocused distances. Shooting at a Locust only to reload and have it vanish under blur is a pointless addition that makes relocating, and killing, the thing even harder. Good money was paid for this rig that can play Crysis smoothly. Gears runs poorly and even crashes at time. 4/10

Pros: High res textures and gloss, good shadows.
Cons: Poor performance at almost unplayable frames. Poor use of blur and fog.to hide visuals.

Sound: Apparently in the future the objective of military technicians was to make all the weapons look menacing, be attached to chainsaws and all sound the same. Whether it be the pistol or a revving monstrous rifle, almost all the guns deliver no punch and sound like plastic toys. The soldiers wielding this clone guns also have vocabularies matched by household mops. You can expect a ton of grunts, swears, growls and one liners. For a game that takes itself seriously having the main characters most used word be "Grrrr" is sure stupid. The sound lacks hard in this game. The distribution of it with speakers is terrible. Too much bass, too much right speaker dependency: Its a nightmare. 2/10

Pros: Nothing at all.
Cons: Voice acting, weapons, environment sounds. Speaker usage is a sin.

Story: The Space Marines defend their planet against the Tyranid--Oh, wrong series. This completely unoriginal story line has you as Marcus Fenix: A gigantic scar ridden soldier trapped in a destroyed prison. (Why didn't he just escape.). He is rescued by Dom who is his friend (How did Marcus even make friends?). The two escape the prison and fight bugs and eventually try to find a big bomb to blow up the enemy (halo).. This plot is awful. Its stolen pieces of so many better games. The game has uninspired cutscenes, awful story execution, and bad characters. Its a shame these cutscenes are unskippable. And best of all they're placed after check points. 1/10

Pros: Once again, nothing.
Cons: The entire thing.

Game Play: Whoever made the cover button the same as the run button needs to be fed pine cones. This games premise, and gimmick, is cover. Everything is cover. So you can hide behind a slab of concrete and blind fire over it (That is, not aiming. There is an option for aiming.). Or you can go behind a couch, a tree, a body, a van.. wait a second, why do I keep on bouncing from cover to cover with the slightest button and why did I just jump over this slab--gunshot-. Exactly. The controls are so offer that the "simple" button scheme becomes a death wish. The game gets an Epic (No pun intended.) feel when you blind fire over cover, throwing grenades and dust flying everywhere. "Let me just move to the left" you think. You Press "A" and Marcus takes the chance to do a dive, then roll, to the left. Locusts tear you apart. The game reloads at a ten minute cutscene. Welcome to Gears of War. Replace "moving left" with any direction and thats what will happen. And when you want to roll, you will shuffle around while being turned into Burger King.

So, the controls and cover system is a flop. What about the firefights? They are fun but ridiculous. Shooting a Locust with two whole clips will not kill him. Ever. But shooting a cap in his knees then one in the head will, somehow. And I mentioned earlier the guns sounded the same. They also act the same, except one is a single shot, one is a burst and one is automatic. They have similar accuracy and so the automatic is the only good choice. Its good to know that blind firing doesn't have that bad of an accuracy penalty. So you don't even need to aim half the time. And since you can have around 2K rounds on your person aiming is always pointless. Whoever had that idea sucks. The melee system is also a nightmare, as revving and striking and placing the chainsaw is WAY harder then it should be and bashes are like one hit kills. 2/10

Pros: Good atmosphere, starts off decently.
Cons: Everything past five minutes into the game.


Summary: And thats the game. Firefights from cover over, and over, and over. So if the cover fails, the controls suck, the guns are clones and the performance is bad why get the game? There is no reason: Don't get it.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 08/25/08

Game Release: Gears of War (US, 11/06/07)