Gears, in a nutshell, is a tactical shooter; a slight departure for Epic, famous for their Unreal series of shooters. Epic has had a long time to hone their skills and build a triple-A team around the shooter genre, and Gears is the culmination of that knowledge and expertise. The story of the game is rather typical – subterranean (rather than extraterrestrial) aliens referred to as Locusts have invaded the surface, leaving the mighty metropolitan areas of mankind scarred and ruined. You play the role of a beefy marine-like character named Fenix who must lead his squad through several hours of bug hunting fun in the beautifully rendered remains of modern civilization and subterranean vistas. I know – the basic story archetype isn’t something we’ve not seen or heard about a thousand times already, but in this particular case, I was willing to overlook that.

When reviewing a game, I like to start with the most obvious – the graphics, and while many would argue that graphics aren’t the core aspect of video games (myself included), they are, after all, ‘video’ games. For those of you who don’t already know me, I’m a PC gamer from way back; I’ve owned far more PC games than I have of console games. So you might say that I’m spoiled by the graphics capabilities of PC video cards, as consoles tend to be a few years behind (especially once they’re in the middle of their life cycle). My point? A lot of next-gen games don’t even come close to current PC game graphics standards. Maybe the developers aren’t used to the console’s hardware yet, or maybe the game is a port from an older gen console. Most of the time, these games are less next-gen, and more like a half step up from the old generation. Gears, however, is one of the best looking games out, even on PC. Running at 1280x720 in progressive scan on a 60” Samsung DLP with 5.1 digital surround sound, you can’t experience Gears, mouth agape, and not wonder who over at Epic is worshiping the devil. The visual acuity of Gears is stunning, and frighteningly real. Texture resolution is extremely high, and polygon count appears to be through the roof. On top of that, add the complexity of the shaders that the Unreal Engine is capable of creating, particularly HDR lighting, and you have one of the most realistic looking games to date. HDR lighting is a rendering technology that basically renders a scene in which white areas are brighter than white and dark areas are darker than black. It’s a carryover from photography designed to create photorealistic scenes, and I remember reading on forums a few years back (when I was experimenting with HDR renderings myself) that we’d never be able to do HDR rendering in real time due to the processing power required. Well, many games have had HDR lighting already; however, the HDR in Gears is probably one of the better implementations I’ve seen to date. Whatever they’re paying their graphics engineer, it better be good. And don’t even get me started on the water shaders and the weather and atmosphere effects. The character and environment models are nothing less than perfect. The world feels full, with painstaking detail put into the post-apocalyptic streets. Broken stone and steel never looked so good. The character animation is fluid and it is uncommon to see popping or sliding as characters plant their feet and push off when changing direction, blend properly between animations, etc.

But next-gen doesn’t just mean next-gen graphics. It must also include innovation in game play. Game development takes time and in the case of Gears it has taken, I believe, around 5 years to develop. Back when Epic first started Gears, many of their core game mechanics hadn’t been seen yet, or were only seen in rudimentary forms – particularly the use of cover, squad commands, blind firing, and vehicles in shooters. Unfortunately, since then, many games have come out which make use of these mechanics well, which means that Gears doesn’t really have anything new in it in regards to game play. That is not to say that Gears is not fun, and after all, isn’t that what it’s all about? The cover system obviously had a lot of design time put into it – it is intuitive and easy to master, and cover nodes are placed well in the levels. The enemy is quite smart as well, making use of cover, blind firing, and flanking tactics just as effectively as a player would.. The one missing feature that I would have liked was a jump button. Why? Because there is no way to simply jump over a low wall without first going into cover behind the wall or running around it. There were many times that I wanted to just keep running straight ahead, and jump over the low walls in front of me to get to a better position. Unfortunately I couldn’t. I either had to run around the walls, taking extra time to do so, or I had to press A and take cover behind the wall, then press A and forward to jump over it, taking even more time. Bad design? Not really. Just a personal preference. Being out of cover when enemy AI is shooting at you tends to be a bad idea in Gears, so at the very least, this mechanic teaches you to stay behind cover, using leapfrog tactics to make your way forward, rather than just sprinting ahead.

While the game does have vehicles in it, so far I have only driven a vehicle once, and the level was completely linear, in which you shoot swarms of flying bat-like creatures with a UV gun. I’m about 75% through the game on Casual difficulty, and it has taken me about 5 hours to get there. I suspect that the total game length is around 8 to 10 hours – a typical length for a shooter/action game, and there are two other difficulty settings (hardcore and insane). I will most likely play both to unlock the achievement points, being a hardcore gamer. That along with multiplayer and the desire to see the breathtaking levels again, give Gears of War strong replay value.

Some of the other game play quibbles I have include are not enough zoom when using mounted weapons, fairly commonplace weaponry, and what I feel is either a bug or a different view on what is considered ‘adult’ language – that is, Epic gives you the option to turn off what they call extreme language and gore in the options; however, doing so had no effect on either from what I could tell, as the cut scenes still made ample use of the dreaded ‘S’ word. If you have children, as I do, you’ll want to play Gears late at night when they are fast asleep.

Game play elements that stood out to me as exceptional included the encounters with the berserker (who you must lure outside in order to defeat) and the Krill (the aforementioned bat-like creatures who, in a distinctly “Pitch Black” manner, avoid bright lights, prompting you to avoid dark areas and create dynamic lighted areas to move around), as well as overall level design - a game design aspect I am somewhat familiar with myself. The levels are extremely linear, one notch higher than a rail shooter; however, they are breathtaking to behold, and well laid out for game play. At key spots in the game, you will be given left/right path choices to help break up the linearity somewhat – choosing the path sends you and another squad member down that path, while the other two man team takes the alternate route. A few other cool mini-features include a simple, but effective and unobtrusive reloading mini-game which allows for quicker reloads, an ultra nice combat footage style camera that follows you as you run, a point of interest button which makes sure you aren’t looking the other way when something cool happens, and a slow walk mechanic that creates the feeling of an interactive cut scene without stopping the action as you communicate with your team and HQ.

The technology behind the game is solid, some would argue second to none. Load times are extremely short thanks to streaming technology and the AI and graphics engines are among the best. Sadly, I do not have an Xbox Live account at present, and was unable to test out the multiplayer which includes player versus player as well as cooperative game play. I have heard great things about the coop, and look forward to trying it out myself once I can convince my wife to let me get an Xbox Live gold account.

>To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t expecting the game play of Gears to be all that great. It looked like ‘just another shooter’ to me, albeit just another shooter with possibly the best look in gaming history; however, once I got my hands on it I was immediately hooked, playing through the first 5 hours in one shot. As I write this review, I find myself wanting to go back and finish the game, eager to see what the remaining half or so has to offer. As I said, I’ll most likely replay the game on hardcore and insane level to get the achievement points, not to mention multiplayer – an added bonus. Having seen the rest of the shooters on the market for both 360 and PS3, it is my informed opinion that Gears of War is head and shoulders above the rest. If you own a 360, Gears of War is a must have for your collection.