On Emergence Day the Locust, a race of subterranean creatures, burst up from the hollows underneath the earth. Ever since then, humanity has been fighting a losing battle against the Locust. Every resource has been expended in the fight against the Locust. Prisoners have been freed and pressed into service in the military. One of the last to be freed is Marcus Fenix, a former soldier. As Marcus, you are given a critical task, deploy the Resonator, a piece of equipment designed to map the underground lair of the Locust. With it humanity can finally strike back at the Locust and save themselves from extinction.

The first thing you’ll notice when playing Gears of War is that the graphics are absolutely mind blowing. The cut scenes look amazing, of course. The level of detail on the characters is almost getting to be disturbing. Characters have beard stubble, you can see sweat, and scars look amazingly lifelike. It’s easy to make cut scenes look great though. The real test is how good the gameplay looks, and Gears of War excels here as well. The terrain and background look incredibly realistic. The shattered buildings and destroyed terrain throw you into the middle of the struggle. This is honestly the first game that I’ve played that has really looked like a next-gen game.

Gears of War is a third person over the shoulder shooter. Making it a third person instead of a first person shooter opens up a whole new set of options, including a much more active use of cover. In most shooters cover usage is a simple thing. You stand behind a corner, run around it and fire, and move back. In Gears of War a single button press will have you jump into cover. From there you have a lot of different options. You can mantle over it and charge your enemies, do a swat turn across an opening to get to another piece of cover, blind fire over the cover, or lean out and aim. It’s a lot more interactive and makes you feel connected to what’s going on. Another addition is the “roadie run”. Holding down a button puts you into a run. If you run into a piece of cover you’ll automatically jump in. Usually works really well, but every once in a while you’ll get too close to a piece of cover and jump into that, leaving you unexpectedly stuck against a piece of cover out in the middle of nowhere. Different cover provides different amounts of protection. A stone column will cover you pretty well, but a sofa or a chest of drawers will quickly disintegrate under the weight of Locust fire. For the most part, though, the cover feature works really well and adds a lot to the game. There’s something satisfying about blind firing from cover and bringing down a Locust without fear of repercussion.

The addition of an active reload system is a creative new feature. Reloading tends to be nothing but an inconvenience in most shooters. There is usually no benefit to reloading other than not getting caught flatfooted with an empty gun. Gears of War provides a reason for wanting to reload. When your gun gets close to empty, it will make a ratcheting sound to warn you that it’s about to reload. When a reload is initiated a sliding timer bar appears at the top of the screen. You can ignore it and let it reload automatically. If you tap the reload button again in the right range on the bar you’ll reload faster. If you hit it perfectly though you’ll reload with bullets that do extra damage. This can be very useful, especially if you’re about to go up against someone really tough or if you find yourself running up against someone extra tough or if you find yourself low on ammunition. Of course, if you screw up the active reload your gun will jam and you’ll spend a few extra moments clearing the jam. This can make all the difference between victory and defeat as you and your enemy desperately try to reload first.

Online multiplayer is definitely a lot of fun, but use of the headset is an absolute requirement. Gears of War is very team oriented and coordinating with your teammates is vitally important. You need to be able to let your teammates know if your character has gone down so they can revive you, you need to be able to tell them about upcoming threats, and you need to be able to coordinate your attacks so you don’t get overwhelmed by more numerous enemy. It really makes you feel connected to the person you’re playing with and in the co-op story mode it gives a much different feel to solo play.

My one major complaint is how disappointing the multiplayer versus mode is when played on one console. Gears of War is all about team battle. Unfortunately, in the multiplayer on a single console it’s simple one vs. one. I would have expected that the rest of your team would have been filled in with bots, but this just wasn’t the case. And since Gears of War plays much differently than a first person shooter, I found this mode to be almost unplayable. However, this is just one mode of an otherwise fantastic game.

Gears of War has been a defining point of the year for me. Give it a try, and I bet it will define a year of gaming for you.