“The humans of Sera built a glorious civilization…but humans were not destined to create…”
So begins the story of Gears of War, Epic’s latest opus courtesy of Cliff Blezinski’s moment of paintball inspired vision. However on Sera, a world much like Earth aside from its brush with the apocalypse, the player will be wishing that paintballs were all that they had to worry about. When the first screens had been released to the public and the mighty marketing muscle of Microsoft began to flex itself across print ads, television, and trailers downloaded by fans from the ‘net, Gears began to develop a level of anticipation rivaled only by Halo as Emergence Day approached. It may not revolutionize the genre with gameplay that players have never seen before, but when Emergence Day had arrived it raised the bar on what players should expect from an action adventure.
Mission Briefing
Sera was a world with shining cities of prosperity spread across its face as its nations experienced a period of relative peace. The discovery of Imulsion by an oil drill would change everything. Developing a process to convert liquid Imulsion into pure energy, all other conventional fuels were suddenly rendered obsolete. Nations that had Imulsion reserves beneath their feet became the first to enjoy the fruits of an energy source that was cheap and appeared to be limitless. Those that did not and were devastated by the collapse of the fuel market thanks to Imulsion speculation would eventually spark what would become known as the Pendulum Wars, so named as armies would fight each other for territory that would swing back and forth between hands after each battle. The Wars would rage for seventy nine years. Until Emergence Day.
They burst from the ground beneath major cities, military bases, and elsewhere on Sera in an attack that would see billions dead. Desperate and caught by surprise, the armies of Sera ceased fighting among each other to fight a common foe. Unleashing their arsenals on what they would call the Locust, they scorched the face of the world with chemical and orbital weapons destroying the very cities where their enemies had taken hold. The invasion was beaten back, but the Locust still live safe underground, ready to rise up again and again. The Coalition of Ordered Governments was established to govern what was left, to prepare for the next attack, and provide hope. Protecting that hope are the Gears, CoG soldiers dedicated to defending the last of humanity from extinction.
Fourteen years later, Marcus Fenix rots in a maximum security prison for the crime of abandoning his orders to rescue his father, a famous scientist, from a Locust attack. He was too late, and for his insubordination, was sentenced in disgrace. Now, rescued by his old friend, Dom, Fenix finds himself called back to service.
The Locust are still out there. And Fenix has a fourteen year itch to scratch.
Gameplay
The backstory to the struggle in i[Gears]i is told through a short video that runs as a teaser when you let the title idle before starting, laying down what had occurred on a world called Sera and why players will be fighting for their lives across what Blezinski and the crew at Epic call “Destroyed Beauty”. Much more of the setup is told in the graphic art book that accompanies the Collector’s Edition, or shown in one of the many videos released on the ‘net or on the main site for the title. This is too bad since those without access to those resources won’t have any idea of the kind of elaborate backstory or detail that Epic has obviously labored to put into Gears. But for other players, the action is what matters most and the game delivers a heavy dose of it.
Gears’ post-apocalyptic action is played as a third person shooter, although it controls a lot like an FPS so players familiar with that type of gameplay will find themselves jumping right into the action. But jumping into any firefight here with skills honed through Halo will be the fastest way to have Fenix’s travel pass punched with lead. Gears may be focused on the gory action, but this is a game that will also challenge the player to be smart about how they go about it. Players who have experienced IO’s Freedom Fighters might find that it shares quite a bit with it, especially in being brutally unforgiving to those that fail to think twice about rushing headlong into danger.
Cover is key and the ruins of Sera’s once mighty cities along with the tumbled debris found within the tunnels beneath the ground provide ample opportunity to keep Fenix protected from most of the Locust. A single button easily puts Fenix’s back to anything that can conceivably be used as cover allowing him to take aim and fire from where he is crouched, or blind fire in the hopes of putting some fear into the enemy…or taking them down as they foolishly rush at him from behind a piano. He can also do what the game calls a roadie run, the camera following alongside and shaking as if held by someone right next to Fenix as he crouches down as he sprints ahead. He’ll also be able to roll to cover and perform a SWAT move from one side of a doorway to the next.
This single button mechanic works well for the most part, but it’s not perfect. It can be too easy to run and then suddenly ’stick’ to a wall ahead putting the player in an awkward position if they had wanted to merely get around it. This can be pretty aggravating in a pitched battle online, but it’s a relatively minor annoyance given how well everything else works to get him back out from cover.
Fenix will also be able to pick up a variety of weapons during his mission, picking up assault rifles, grenades, and pistols. He can only carry two types of guns, however, along with one type of sidearm, giving the player a choice of whether he should risk throwing away the starving rifle with a buzzsaw bayonet for a rifle with more ammo, or tough it out until they find another ammo stash. Reloading is handled automatically, although the player has a chance to do this themselves by timing a bumper button press to hit the sweet spot during the procedure, reloading even faster and perhaps even getting a damage bonus to their shots by doing it perfectly. Missing your timing during reloading, though, makes it worse as Fenix wastes time in trying to unjam his weapon. The Locust will often try to take advantage of this lull in fire to try and rush, so it can quickly make things sticky for the player, especially on multiplayer.
Fortunately, the player won’t feel as if they’re painted into a corner if they decide not to pick up a certain weapon during single player. If the player needs something special, the in-game chatter between Fenix and the rest of the team will let the player know. One example of this is the Hammer of Dawn, the orbital beam weapons that were used to scorch the surface of Sera during Emergence Day. Satellites above can provide a searing pinpoint laser strike as long as the player has the aiming device used to paint the target, clear skies, and is outdoors. It’s pretty impressive to see this in action and if the player sees one of these devices lying around, they’d probably do well to grab it for what is ahead.
Gears continues a trend found in titles such as Call of Duty 2 that do away with health packs keeping the player from wondering where the next bandage will be coming from. Although Fenix doesn’t have a life meter, his health (or his luck, if you want to see it that way) is measured by an icon that slowly fades into view the more that he is exposed to enemy fire. Called the “Crimson Omen”, it gives the player an idea of how much life Fenix has left before he’s put down. By taking cover, the Omen slowly disappears keeping the player focused on the game, emphasizing cover and careful patience which fit in well with Gears’ gameplay. The player can also revive their AI teammates when they go down as they slowly bleed out. By making it to their side and helping them back up, Fenix can put them back in the battle.
Fenix’s friends are armed with smart AI making them useful in battle as they duck for cover, throw grenades, or after a certain point in the game, try to follow your orders. As a team that follows alongside the player, they do a pretty good job although they occasionally act as if a gear was knocked loose. They’ll sometimes retreat backwards on their own to save themselves, which is all well and good, until I saw one of Fenix’s friends try to go back through a door that was closed and locked. In several other instances, all of them ran out into machine gun fire and died. This was before I was able to command anyone to follow me or retreat, so I had no choice but to watch them walk right out into a stream of hot lead.
But they’d also be on the ball more often than not. In one memorable firefight, Dom covered Fenix’s back by buzzsawing a Locust that had tried to flank around from my blind side not once but several times, helping to hold the line from an onslaught that had tried to rush the position. This also goes both ways. The Locust are also pretty smart, doing much of the same thing by taking cover, rushing when they see an opening during reloads, and flanking when they can. They’ll even reload their weapons, opening opportunities for Fenix and his friends to rush ahead. In one instance, I watched as a Locust appeared to try and unjam its own weapon. The AI really turns each firefight into something tactically different tempting players to replay the action just to see what might happen next.
Blood Patterns
Gears fills the screen with plenty of detailed destruction courtesy of Epic’s Unreal Engine 3. Sera’s architecture is inspired by elements from Europe’s past, mixing them with the Industrial Revolution and a dose of sci-fi to create a unique, Stalingrad-style playground for the conflict that players will experience for most of the single player. The urban ruins are filled with abandoned streets slowly being retaken by nature, the hulks of rusted cars, cracked pavement, and the bones of mighty buildings looming over them while rivers of glowing Imulsion flow underground. Light glints off of exposed pieces of metal, rain soaks the hard earth as light dances off the dimples in the dirt, and gunfire lights up the night as it rattles another reply.
The characters also share much of this detail right down to the seams on their armor and the scarred expressions on their faces set atop physiques that shouldn’t exist. The Locust drones that the player will be facing for most of the game are also fleshed out with armor that flies away with well placed shots and physics that send them flying over barricades and down stairs, turning their blown off limbs into playtime toys for soccer fans. The more fantastic creatures that come out from the ground look just as good in all of their creepy, multi-limbed, multi-eyed glory.
Limbs aren’t the only things that go flying from well placed ‘nades. Gears literally splatters the screen with red ichor as foes are turned into Locust fillet with the buzzsaw. Heads burst like blood sausages from sniper shot or pop away thanks to a well placed curb stomp, red fluid flies as bullets find their marks, and debris tumbles down around Fenix and his party whenever something huge comes calling. The environment of Gears is filled in with a lot of these kinds of detail both in and out of combat.
There’s also a good variety of scenarios that the player will deal with during the single player campaign, such as the funhouse-style level deep in the bowels of an Imulsion plant or in getting a Berserker to smash a door open for you without getting turned into instant ground beef. There’s even a section of the gameplay reminiscent of Cliff Blezinski’s other inspiration, Resident Evil 4, dumping the player into a rain soaked night, making their way through a dark forest to their objective far ahead with the silhouettes of creatures yet unseen running alongside just out of reach. There are even creatures that feed off of the darkness, killing whatever wanders into the dark corners whether it is a human or even a Locust drone. These scenarios and the levels of gameplay in the main campaign are also seamless with little to no loads anywhere, even in co-op.
The orchestral audio is also filled with plenty of tracks that keep up with action oriented atmosphere of the game along with the sound effects pounded out with every bullet, explosion, and tumbling corpse. The professional voice work for the characters is also well done, making the game feel a lot more like the cinematic experience that Epic had been aiming for with its seamless levels and cut scenes.
Story
Epic wanted Gears to be a cinematic, action packed experience from the start and to some extent, they’ve succeeded in doing just that. The cinematic flow of Gears’ story can be likened to a slice of Schwarzenegger-inspired chaos with Marcus Fenix’s gravelly, soft spoken demeanor providing the poster face for the gritty action that it stains the screen with. But the massive amount of background info that supports much of what is going on isn’t found in the game itself as mentioned earlier, or even the manual, leaving the title’s sparse treatment of its own world all that many players may have to go on.
Despite that, the setting is clearly one of the strongest points of the entire production and the story tries to tie in the many firefights that the player will be thrown into, sticking to the basics in simply getting the player from one frying pan to the next. Sci-fi fans might recognize elements of the action from films such as Aliens, Starship Troopers, Predator, or even Commando ensuring as it pays homage to the white knuckle pacing found those titles. And just like those films, the title does have more than a few twists that can be a little too convenient such as Jack’s deus ex machina moments. The characters might be fun to listen to, but you never get a sense of anything more about them other than dialog that can sometimes try too hard to make them seem “hard”. Fortunately, there’s plenty of action to make up for this and the player will probably be too busy trying to survive to really wonder why the alien-like Locust also have assault rifles.
Multiplayer
The single player campaign has some of the most exciting and replayable action to be found on the 360, but it is also a relatively short experience depending on what difficulty Gears is played at. The higher difficulties make it something to really earn your achievements by, but when the final bullet leaves the barrel, the battles don’t have to end there.
Epic has created a solid multiplayer game over Live! or the system link that not only allows the player to team up with a friend and play through the entire campaign as partners, but experience a variety of game types against each other; Warzone pits Gears against Locusts in an all out team based bloodbath, Assassination makes one player a VIP that their team has to protect while gunning for the other, and Execution is where players can only be taken out with a special kill move such as a curb stomp. A variety of maps based on venues from the single player campaign are available and the tight design of each ensure matches that can last only a few minutes, especially when games are limited to only eight players total on any map. Everything that the player can do in the single player from using cover and blind fire to splitting foes in half with a pitiless buzzsaw surprise is here in blood soaked detail. Players can even revive fellow teammates, as long as they’re still in one piece. Wondering what the Hammer of Dawn can do to other players? You’ll find out.
Players can pick and choose which games they want by filling out the details in the search or in checking out the listed matches from the lobby. Being able to actually look and pick which matches you want to get into gives the player a lot of choices, making it even easier to find one on one duels or mix it up in team firefights. Co-op expands the experience, especially with the branching paths where one player can help cover each other, ensuring some replayability for friends on top of the achievements that they can attain especially when the difficulty is upped a notch. The only oddball moments were in watching myself instantly teleport to my partner who had scouted further ahead, apparently tripping an invisible wire that zapped me right to where he was.
The games ran pretty lag free with the action moving quickly, but there were a few things that weren’t so great to experience. The buzzsaw, while it does take time to start up and can be interrupted by getting shot at, is a killing move from which there is no escape. Once you’re hit with it, you really have no choice but end up like steak. There are also a few connection issues that players have experienced with ranked matches along with a few other problems, but as of this review, Epic has promised that a patch is in the works. Fortunately, it appears that players have learned to live with these annoyances as Gears continues to dominate the charts in being one of the most popular multiplayer games on Live!
Emergence
This is how a next-gen franchise is born. After more than a few years of development, hype, anxious anticipation, and promise, Gears delivers the goods with an ending that leaves the door open to further adventures on Sera. Multiplayer is just as ferociously brutal as the single player and with a co-op mode allows partnering up with a flesh and blood buddy, there is plenty to look forward to even after the battle has been won. It’s not perfect, but it does so much else right in creating an action packed, adrenaline charged experience in sending players into the bullet riddled landscape of one world’s Armageddon. Epic’s “Destroyed Beauty” is a thing to behold.
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