Mettle Gear: Gears of War Review
Your feet step across the blood-stained floor. Cover is needed. You duck your head and slam your shoulder into the base of a statue. Even in the heat of battle, fate affords you a show of irony: this stone figure of mankind’s civilised age now standing as refuge to the regiments of man’s armies.
War can make you smile, sometimes.
Smiling is the livings’ privilege, however, so stay alive. In Gears of War, staying alive is all about taking cover, an action natural after a moment’s practice. Your soldier’s desperate jog towards cover is a reckless thrill with enemy fire sweeping toward your location, missing by a thin margin as you successfully drop behind the defence of a small wall.
Now sheltered, the game’s satisfying tactical element comes to life as you must quickly grasp the layout of the area and the location of your adversaries and assailants. Knowing this, you can move productively.
It’s not one-hit kills here, but dashing blindly into a pack of enemies will end only in death. If you come under fire then quickly get covered and get your bearings; cut that sod to pieces later.
Carving up the enemy, possible only in close quarters, is a rather detailed, graphic affair. More disturbing is the pleasure of these murders; chainsaw killing is one of gaming’s great joys.
Technically, the visuals may be an achievement. Detailed and weighty to an impressive level, Gears of War may be the pinnacle of apocalyptic, gritty renditions of earth in game history. The world is torn to pieces you battle on. You’re fighting in a war here, not waging a one man assault, and you see your team live and die on your flanks — often in one of the game’s spectacular set pieces.
It’s just shame that effort could not be spent crafting a world which felt new, rather then what here feels slightly stale. Marcus Fenix, protagonist-at-work, is similarly lacking: another generic space marine for gaming, seen again and again.
With a dull plot which comes to a rather abrupt end, it is fortunate Gears has such an enjoyable multiplayer. The artificial intelligence is no substitute for the tactical possibilities when playing with friends, which truly puts a feeling of teamwork and support into the play. As the high profile release of the year, it does a good job in promoting the strengths of the console, particularly the online capabilities of the machine.
Enjoyable thought it may be, Gears may be worrying to some. With narrative and characters as shallow as they are here, some will question whether the new generation can offer anything above another step towards ‘Hollywood realism’? Asking such questions here is pointless, Gears is clearly without care for such matters and does offer more then just a visual appeal, but an audience exists who want more then blood ‘n’ guts gameplay, and a march towards bigger and better graphics seems to be a march away from these ones, and this issue should be put into the spotlight.
Criticising elements such as this is criticising but a small part of Gears, which remains a fantastic action game. ‘War can make you smile’ was the point this prose began with. Gears of War will give you the brightest smile of all.
http://gamejonezblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/adam-montgomery-joins-gamejonez-blog.html
