Gears of War [Xbox 360]

"I can't understand all the hype about this game. I recently bough a used 360 wich came with GoW and I wasn't impressed by the game at all. So yea the GFX are great, 5.1 sound, fun/dumb story we all like in shooters, etc... But what the hell is wrong with the controls???!!? they are totaly annoying, you can't aim! are the developers for Gow ever played Halo or what?
A perfectly good game ruined by crappy controls!"

"Just finished it and I'm blown away! This game is the best run and gun shooter I've played in a long, long time. My only suggestion would be to have the option of telling one of the AI team members where to go, i.e. like in Rainbow Six where you can actually send them into rooms, etc. That'd be cool. Awesome game!"

"Everyone was sooo looking out to this game, and I guess I only heard of it a few weeks before it came out. I did like the concept, and the videos looked good. I got the game as soon as I could.

It actually lay in my room collecting dust for 1 day before I played the first time. As I was with a friend, we decided to start with the co-op mode. We died pretty fast (enough fun for him to decide to buy it as well though).

It wasn't until a week later that I started single player. I don't have the urge to play it every day (like I do with Zelda games) until it's completed, but I do want to complete it. I still haven't, but I don't have that many hours in it. I'm on about 50% from what I've read so far.

The game then. The controls are, like any other shooter on a console, pretty bad. Unless you've been playing shooters alot on a console you will probably take some time, like me, to figure out walking and aiming right when you suddenly need to shoot an enemy. I for instance jumped at a scary moment, wanting to shoot an enemy at the top left of my screen and found myself looking and shooting at the floor to my right. And died. It's a familiar story with shooters on consoles. Anyway, now, halfway trough the game, I've tried inverted and normal mode for looking, and I'm okay at it now (I just overshoot sometimes).

It's all about cover. Taking cover is done by a single button press and from your cover you can press the aim button to aim and shoot only to fall back in to cover when you're done. This, to me, is very new and I don't think it has been done before. It's useful to say the least. You can do alot of things while in cover, you can jump to other coverplaces, or you can shoot overhead (wildly to create coverfire). Taking cover is the key thing to beating this game. Especially in 'extreme' mode.

I found the A.I. of my team to be not so good. Sure they provide coverfire and they can keep some of the Locusts away from you for some time, they don't really kill alot of them. Ofcourse you're the one who payed for the game and you should kill them, but it seems unfair. It seems unfair because the enemy seems to be having no problem to shoot one right through your head if you happen to pop it up for a second from your cover to take aim. Bleh.

A way to prevent this bad team-A.I. is to play Co-Op over Live, or on a split screen (I recommend over Live so you can actually see where you're going and what you're shooting at). Only thing with Co-Op is that they seem to have doubled the enemies at certain points in the game (or my Co-Op player is playing even worse as he would if he were to be an A.I. player). I'm not saying this is a bad thing, cause you get more destroyable guts for your dough
. You decide.


The story is not all that bad as people from some sites would try to let you believe. It's no Half-Life, but at least there is a story, beautiful cutscenes and alot of action to distract you from the story. The game is scary at times (no? just turn your 5.1 surround system on very very loud and be prepared). I jumped alot of times, or got goosebumps from certain enemies I had to defeat. That's another thing. Sometimes it seems like you can't get past points in the game. All you have to do then is take cover, watch your surroundings, and find that other way to take the enemy out. It's alot of fun to do so.


So yeah, I'm giving it a 5 out of 5. I don't like shooters on consoles (I only played HALO because it went to PC, never did HALO 2), but this got me hooked. I wanted to complete it, I will complete it. I will probably go through it again in Co-Op over Xbox Live. This is a game that should just be in your collection. Right now."

"Gears of war, a singleplayer game by epic games, one could think it's just an tech demo in form of an game to show off their latest version of unreal engine, but that tought is something to forget. Completely.

Unlike epic's usual singleplayer games -unreals, gears of war isn't all about rushing in and shooting everybody in the face, it's about taking cover and THEN shooting everybody in the face! And trust me when i say it, you really need to use them covers.

You take the role of Marcus Fenix, an professional soldier who has been locked away in prison as a traitor. There you are rotting in the prison when your friend Dom comes to free you to help in the fight against the bad guys, Locust.
From the first steps of this prison break you see that Gears of War is very cinematic game, and it's filled with good looking scripted sequences.

The story isn't too good, nor deep, but personally i didn't mind because of the near-perfect gameplay and cruel gore.. nothing really beats chainsawing your butt-ugly enemy to two pieces.

You never walk alone, theres always somebody next to you, usually 3 others.. Unfortunately these teammembers are only good at distracting the enemy so you can crawl up from your cover and take a few shots before having to go back there again to prevent your head being blown off.
Enemy A.I seems to be alot better than the one on your squadmembers, they take cover, shoot you almost immidiately if you raise your head, if you dont raise it they see the chance and start approaching you trying to find cover as soon as the bullets starts to fly at them.

If i really start digging for bad things in the game, well it must be that with easy setting (casual) it's too damn easy, with medium(hardcore) it's usually challenging but can switch to pain in the ass fast.. I haven't tried the "hard" (insane) mode that you unlock after beating the game.. i think i will save that for Co-op.

All in all gears of war is a very satisfying shooter that feels fresh for a while, giving the player around 10 hours of solid singleplayelayer and countless of hours in multiplayer makes gow really worth the money."