Cogs of Combat

Now that's what I call a main character.

So I literally just finished Gears of War just about 30 minutes ago. As many of you know I was playing through the entire campaign co-op with my girlfriend’s brother. Putting that together with the fact that we only played a little bit every night since Monday we finished it relatively quickly. Onto the review!

Gears was one of those games that helped sell the 360 in it’s early days and I can see why. Action, good local and online multiplayer, and a badass take no prisoners main character. It’s the same reason Halo helped the original Xbox from landing in the garbage can. So if you liked Halo you more then likely got Gears of War when it first came out and thus you need not read any further.

For those of you who didn’t jump on the GoW bandwagon and waited or are still waiting to get the game your thoughts are probably similar to my own. It was a great game especially while playing alongside someone else. However, with all the power behind the system it seemed like there could have been more visuals to go along with the game to make it more eye pleasing and less “brown”. Okay, so it’s a war based game, there is bound to be a lot of brown you say, I can agree with this. Nevertheless, I couldn’t have walked into Home Depot and had my eyes assaulted with more brown then Gears threw at me. All I’m asking for is a little bit of green or blue or something thrown in there.

Another issue I’d like to bring up is that in the midst of a heated battle Marcus, Dom, and just about anyone else in the entire game look exactly the same from a distance. So when I’m being shoot at and make a run to attempt a chainsaw kill only to find out that I’m about to chop off my partner’s head (which you cannot do anyway). Afterwards I promptly fall to my knees because while I was wasting my time trying to kill Dom every enemy in the world had their sights on me. It’s nice to have a character gimmick (in this case giant suits of body armor), but it would also be great if each of your character’s suits had a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) difference to it so you know just who is who.

On top of all that, I didn’t feel like I was drawn into the story like I was with other games in the genre. Even with Army of Two’s bad acting and B movie script I felt more compelled to get to the end more then just to shot the living shit out of everything in my way. With that said, closer to the end I felt like the story was somewhat there and the main character just chose to ignore it and do whatever the hell he wanted. I could however say the same for myself.

Now I’ve gabbed on far too long about what I didn’t like, and even though my dislikes are a bit more then I would like, I had fun playing Gears of War. That’s right, I had fun. FUN! Mindlessly going around using a chainsaw bayonet to rip the Locust into little tiny bits of grey skin jerky was more then enough to keep me playing until the end. There are enough guns in the game to keep anyone satisfied. Though I did find myself relying on the basic shotgun far too much, more then I would have liked atleast. It’s a good game and provides exactly what it is expected to, great online matches, a good campaign, and lots and lots of blood.

With Gears of War 2 on it’s way to shelves November 7th of this year all questions come down to this. Will you be playing the second one? So, to answer my own question, will I? Yes, but will I buy it? Maybe not. While the first one was impressive in some aspects it did let me down on a few key points. GoW2 looks to be bigger, better, and meaner then the first one. So fans wont be let down. If you haven’t played the first one yet and don’t much care about the storyline of a shooter then just wait it out and snag GoW2 when it comes out, I’m fairly certain you wont be disappointed.

…Did I mention John DiMaggio (voice of Bender) is the main character?! Kiss my shiny metal ass you Locust meat bags!