|
Friday 8 February, 2008
Summary
Gears of War is a fast paced, realistic third person shooter with a tactical twist. The fighting style of this game is unique and unlike any other shooter I’ve played. Similar to paintball; it’s all about having cover and flanking your opponents. You have the option of playing campaign by yourself or with a friend or competing online against players around the world in various gametypes. Gears of War is one of the most hardcore and sickest games I’ve ever played. Its brutal graphics, unique fighting style, and extreme details really make this game great.
Gameplay 1
For my first couple of hours of gameplay of Gears of War I played the campaign mode. This game has everything a good campaign should have, great graphics, AI, physics, characters, storyline, etc. It has it all. This game is so detailed, there are so many effects that make the campaign great. It is very hard to put the controller down once you start playing Gears.
Gears of War has one of the coolest storylines I’ve seen in a video game. You play as Marcus Fenix and the game starts off with you being released from a prison cell in a prison that has been taken over by the Locust Horde. It turns out that years ago, the Locust Horde gathered under every major city and launched a surprise attack killing many . And rather than allow the Horde to keep the spoils of their aggression, humans used chemical weapons and orbital particle beams to neutralize them, along with the cities and bases they controlled.
The more you play single player the more hooked you get. There are 5 Acts with numerous chapters in each act. And in each act you have the option of taking different paths, split up your squad, and give your squad commands. This adds a replay value to the game. You get so into the story and characters with each cinema scene you get to as you progress through the story. The music in Gears is sweet; it really helps you get lost in the game. With every new wave of enemies you encounter the music picks up, and once you kill them all it dies down again.
The characters in this game are all hardcore. You and your squad are all huge, and completely decked out with armor. Your character has phrases that he says during combat that people can relate too. Its always awesome to hear Marcus yell “Bring it” when under fire and “Oh yeah” when you get a head shot. It’s appealing to know that your character is a badass, it makes you feel like a badass too when you rip through your enemies. And all of your enemies are demonically fearsome, evil, and ugly.
The only thing that I disliked about the campaign was that at times you were forced to walk. Who wants to walk. The faster into battle the better.
Gameplay 2
For my second couple of hours of Gear of War I decided to play some online matches. Gears of War’s online play is very competitive which makes it a lot of fun. There are ranked matches and player matches with various gametypes like Annex, Warzone, Execution, and Assassination with multiple levels to play them on, you can find yourself playing online for hours.
The online play is much more fast-paced than the single player mode. Don’t expect to last long without cover. Winning games online requires a lot of skill, Gears isn’t one of those games that you can just pick up and be good at. It requires a steady thumb and a lot of strategy to be a great player. Its defiantly a game aimed towards the hardcore gamer. This is good because a lot of games today try to appeal to too many different types of gamers. It’s nice to see a game dedicated for the skilled gamer.
A cool feature that Gears of War has is a statistics record. The game keeps track of your headshots, grenade kill, wins, losses, etc. It makes you want to play better and achieve a better record.
Although Gears of Wars online play is better than most online games, it still has some flaws that it could improve upon. It is a big pain to find games because of how long it takes to refresh the list of available games. For example, when you load up a list you see a game with 6/8 players in it and select it, you often get denied access to the game because the 2 spots were filled while you were refreshing your game list. And when you are denied access to a game you have to completely refresh your gamelist. This gets rather annoying.
Something I feel that Gears of War could add to its online play, is a ranking system where you are matched up with people of equivalent skill and games that aren’t just 3v3 or 4v4. It would be nice to see 2v2 and battles containing more than 8 players.
Design
The way Gears of War is designed is what really sets it above most games out today. The fighting style is unique because of how realistic it is. Most shooters are nothing like real firefights, circle strafing, running out into the open, and jumping around would never be a strategy used in a real firefight. In Gears its all out getting cover and flanking your opponent. You have the ability to get into cover, jump over low cover, dodge roll in all directions, swat turn from cover to cover, and roadie run. Which is what your more likely to see in real combat firefights. Its style is very innovative and not seen in games of the past.
The weapon design in this game is so sick. The Lancer and Bow are by far my favorite. The Lancer is a machine gun with a chainsaw attachment, so instead of just beating your opponent down, you saw him in half, and there is nothing more satisfying. You would think that a bow wouldn’t stand a chance in a game full of big guns, but the sick think about the Bow is that it shoots explosive arrows. So when you do nail someone, they explode into bits. The sheer brutality of all the weapons make this game very visual stimulating.
This game is designed to be very graphic, and I love it. The more gore the better. When your seer through the locust in half your chainsaw is revving loud and his arms are failing while blood is shooting everywhere. Even though it’s a third person shooter, slightly transparent blood splats against your screen, it’s a cool effect that adds a level of intensity. When you get shot mid range by a shotgun there is the same effect except much more blood. I have to say the coolest gory feature is the headshots, if you nail someone enough times in the head with the pistol and hit them in the head with a sniper, the head explodes.
|
