Here is an alternative review to Gears of War by someone out my 360 Clan.
See what you think to his writing
See what you think to his writing
“Emergence Day!”
Bellows the hype machine as “Gears of War” hits the shelves with a wallet pummelling roar! Already probably responsible for the delay of “Rainbow 6” (As “Ubisoft” presumably employ fancy footwork to avoid going head to head with “Microsoft’s” alien blasting opus.) “GOW” then goes on to employ sleep deprivation tactics on the droves of devotees stopping up till the early hours over the weekend to indulge in its mixture of hair trigger action, “sure is purdy” graphics and laugh out loud comedy moments. (At least in multi-player.)
Having been prepared for a wait until some point this week to be able to play, I was pleasantly surprised by an 11am delivery on “Emergence Day” (so well done Amazon on that one.) and went on give the game a bit of a workout over the course of the afternoon.
Single player first and I would have to admit to a degree of trepidation on first booting it up. I wasn’t originally going to buy this title but was won over by a mixture of rave previews and nudges from fellow gamers.
My first impression wasn’t good as the game begins in the darkness of a partially destroyed prison with you as “Marcus Fenix” having been left to rot in a jail cell, before being rescued by friend and fellow soldier “Dom”. Everything is very dim to begin with and despite the trend today to use moody lighting to create tense atmosphere in play, if there’s one thing I don’t generally enjoy, it’s too much darkness in a game.
Happily for me things soon brighten up and although the pallet remains generally grey and sullen, as befits a game set in a post apocalyptical warzone, it hasn’t (so far) left me staring at the screen struggling to make out the action.
While we’re talking about graphics I should probably state the obvious and roundly praise the game for looking excellent! Very few people reading this will have failed to see the screen shots doing the rounds over the last few months, but for those who have yet to take the plunge and buy the game, I can tell you that the “stills” barely do justice to the game in motion.
The feeling of depth is powerful as rubble filled streets strewn with occasional derelict cars and vans, stand complimented by beautifully drawn architecture and large scale backdrops, all contributing to the overall feeling of fighting your way from street to street in the remains of a once great city.
None of the above is just for show either. Every piece of rubble or toppled pillar is potential source of lifesaving cover, every rusting vehicle a blessed sanctuary from the hail of angry fire sent your way by the filthy Locusts!
Taking cover behind objects is achieved with a simple press of the “A” button when in close proximity and from there you can pop up to fire before retreating back into your hidey-hole, or swap one cover for another close by with a “Swat” style move, or leap up and over to charge the alien menace. Other context sensitive functions like kicking in doors or pressing switches are performed in a similar “one button” manner and the whole thing is intuitive enough that you’ll soon find yourself pulling off combat manoeuvres with aplomb.
Fire fights are intense affairs with enemy AI putting up a convincing show, utilising the available cover the same way you do and attempting to close on your positions so as to bring their superior hand to hand strength and vicious Chain Saws to bear! The COG forces are also issued with Chain Saws of course and so any face to face melee action is likely to end up as a close encounter of the gory kind!
The aforementioned “filthy Locusts” by the way are the villains of the piece and I say “filthy” with no disrespect intended. I’m sure that individually and under normal circumstances their personal hygiene is beyond reproach! But conquering the planet Earth probably qualifies as “non normal” circumstances and their habit of popping up through holes in the ground can’t leave them altogether clean now can it!
Yep! The alien badguys rip up through the ground just about anywhere they fancy, though you’re never caught completely by surprise for three reasons;
1/ The music picks up a bit.
2/ Your controller starts to rumble.
3/ A prolonged fire fight is often preceded by the game saving a “Checkpoint”.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game so far, having only reached a little way into “act 2” (and even then in “casual” mode as you’d expect from such a cowardly Badger, rather than the more daunting sounding “Hardcore”) but even this early in I’ve been struck by the all around solidness of the gaming experience.
Graphics fly by without stutter in single or multiplayer modes and the atmosphere sucks you into the gameplay, helped along by some excellent cut scenes! Which incidentally are good enough that I wanted to watch them again, only to discover that unlike many games these days GOW does not have a feature to view unlocked cut scenes separately? (At least not one that I’ve found.)
Everything in the game is chunky and has a feeling of weight about it. The COG soldiers are all of the “necks as thick as your thigh” variety and their weapons are brilliantly hefty and ugly. The variety of weapons on offer is pleasing initially while not immense (The “Bolo” grenade named for it’s trademark spin prior to throwing is real Hammer of Thor stuff and particularly satisfying.) and possibly in danger of having the deadly impression given by their looks, undermined by the sheer number of rounds that the Locust enemy (Or COG forces for that matter) can soak up before popping his clogs!
In fact though a single headshot from a sniper rifle (which I’ve only seen in multi-player so far) can drop a combatant from either side, it’s worth taking into account for anyone who prefers a more accurate soldier sim, that GOW’s gaming experience while managing to be simultaneously evocative of “Starship Troopers”, “Warhammer 40k”, “Aliens” and “Judge Dread”, its combat roots are dirty, gritty and shamelessly arcade!
I haven’t got much in the way of gripes to offer you at this early stage. It was suggested to me at the weekend that the gameplay was limited and repetitive, moving as it does pretty much from one fire fight to the next. I suppose this might be a fair comment to an extent, as nobody could argue (at least in what I’ve seen so far) that there’s a heavy narrative at work. The story is combat driven pure and simple and moves along in “Halo” fashion, with one huge combat mission ongoing and linked by intermittent cut scenes.
Frankly though I’ve found the combat is implemented so well and the enemy (even at this early stage) is so varied that I’ve not really found it repetitive. In any case, as a criticism this same comment could be levelled equally well at games like “Full Spectrum Warrior” or the 360’s very own “GR:AW” and I suspect that truth is that it all comes down to how well the game in question engages your imagination while simultaneously suspending your disbelief. If it does a good enough job at both, then you’ll be too busy kicking ass to find it repetitive!
Well I guess that’s about all I can offer on the single player game, at least while I’m still in the early stages. But I’d be remiss not to briefly touch on GOW’s multi-player experience.
My first time out I found myself in a full lobby of eight (maximum players per match) and chuckled when on spotting my Gamer Tag of “GreyBadger” one of the other players remarked “Hey… isn’t there a guy on the Elite Ops Forum called Mr Badger? He writes these long posts where……” thankfully whatever might have come next was cut short by our sudden departure from the lobby and into the first game! (It never pays to listen to people talking about you!)
There are three modes of gameplay available all based around working in a team;
Warzone: Which is a basic team deathmatch affair.
Assassination: Which see’s one player as the team leader who must be protected by his men as if he dies it’s game over. A further twist in this mode is that the more advanced weapons like Sniper Rifles, Rocket Launchers etc, are only able to be picked up by the leader. (Although he can subsequently drop them for his men to collect.)
Execution: Which starts as a basic “Warzone” game, but with the twist that players who die will be respawned and the only way to kill them completely is to perform an “execution” move.”
This last mode highlights one of the games genius aspects. In all modes it’s possible for a fallen warrior to be revived by his team mates, within a certain time and as long as the damage done is not so great as to kill him outright. But while he kneels wavering in this “bleeding out” state, it is also possible for the enemy to perform a coup de grace with either the chainsaw or by stomping on the unfortunate warriors head!
This is just as gory as it sounds, with spectators being treated to a torrent of blood splashing against their screen as the dirty deed is done and resulting in more hilarity among those looking on than perhaps is strictly healthy! (Badger takes yet another step toward the dark side.)
Unbelievably the “chainsaw” apparently nearly didn’t make it to the final build! Now that would have been a missed opportunity.
Because of the intuitive nature of the controls, you can quickly forget about worrying over how to pull off the various moves and concentrate instead of giving full reign to your murderous instincts. Consequently even your Badger was able to rack up a respectable kill count by the end of the evening… well… respectable for me anyway!
The diving for cover mechanic that serves the single player game so well fairs even better here in the multi-player arena and for all that this is a manic arcade blast of a game, even gamers who have never played together quickly find themselves joining forces and using tactics, as one covers an area while the rest move into it and the fact that you can heal one another only encourages the team effort further.
While the amount of damage you can soak up could foster a balls in the air run and gun mentality, this tends to be kept in check by the constant threat of the chainsaw by the unseen assassin who manages to get in close.
Favourite moments in a game like this are bound to be legion, with war stories swapped in lobbies the land over and tales told to grandchildren around the fireplace of heroism and daring do. So it goes without saying that I can’t resist sharing with you a couple of mine from that first session.
Having gained confidence at one point I decided that the best defence was a good offence and as a game began I surged forward with the idea of getting behind the enemy. Suddenly realising that I’d made this rush alone I called to my team mates to catch up to me quicksmart! It was time to kick ass and chew bubble gum…. And I was all outta gum!
It was around about that moment that I heard the chainsaw start up behind me and the next thing it was head in a basket time!!! (now THAT’s a smooooth shave!)
On another occasion our route toward the enemy was dissected by a double railway track. Every few seconds a huge “2000AD” style monster of a train would hurtle by at breakneck speed. So heavy that it shook the ground we stood on, so loud that it all but drowned out our coms chatter.
Waiting for the behemoth to pass I leapt onto the tracks but for some reason dragged my paws in crossing and suddenly heard the oncoming rush of the next train! It was a moment of decision and in my panic I couldn’t remember if the train used the track on the left, or the one on the right. Which way to jump!!?
It turned out to be a moot point though as while I stood frozen with indecision and relying on quick reactions to leap the right way at the last moment, the mechanical beast bore down on me like an enraged bull and …..yes you guessed it…. it used both tracks at once. SPLAT!!
Finally and in a rare opportunity to look good for a change…. A group of three of us were working together moving through an underground parking area, when a hapless lone enemy blundered into us. He was quick to react, but stood no chance against our massed fire.
As he sank to his knees helpless all three of us clustered around and unleashed a hail of bullets basically causing him to explode! I can only guess the comments going on in the spectators lobby at that point but I do regret that we didn’t swap to chainsaws instead for a coordinated execution! What a missed opportunity.
Anyway, there’s my first impression of Gears of War for you. Very impressed so far as I’m sure is obvious and I can only hope that I continue to enjoy it as much as the rest of the single player game unfolds.
Worth all the pre game hype? I don’t know… perhaps for a change it was! But it’ll certainly keep me going while I’m waiting for “Rainbow 6” and hey…. I also got a “I played on Emergence Day” themed desktop as a free download as well as some gamer pictures!
Shiny!!
