Gears of War has had quite a bit of fame over the past year, and was hailed by some people as the “Halo Killer” (ha…). Because of this representation of the game there was a lot of people that “chose sides” between the two. Well after a full month of Halo, I think now would be the best time for the die-hard Halo fans to get stuck into Gears as this time around you’ll actually have something to compare it to, instead of the incessant ramblings of a Bungie fanboy.

So if you’ve intentionally missed out on Gears specifically because of Halo, now is the time to un-miss it, and here’s a little taste of what to expect…

I looked wearily at my alarm clock as it continually blinked 2:32, I had school the next morning. My clock isn’t AM/PM it was half two in the morning. I knew what the price was of playing one more game of Gears Of War, getting out of bed at the rate of a paralytic turtle, not having time to get washed or even brush my teeth ( I barely got my clothes on), not having the strength to carry my full to bursting bag around all day, not having the focus to absorb any new information, not having any basic drive to live out the day to any extent at all really.

It was worth it.

Gears Of War is, more or less, mindlessly drifting in and out of lobby’s killing people and having them kill you, enjoying the beautiful graphics, intuative gameplay and a half-hearted chuckle now and then as you chainsaw the top A-Hole in a match. But, if you are lucky, you’ll have one match with just the right combination of people, one match to exceed all others. Fuelled by passion and determination, this one match can either end in hysteric tears or ecstatic joy, both outcomes resulting in you falling in love with the game.

We’d been playing the same guys for three hours, with them crushing us every round of the way. Gears Of War online is all about rounds. Your goal is to win the match, this is achieved by winning the set number of rounds before your opponent does, winning a round is simple…..Annihilate your opponent by any means possible, chainsaws, shotguns you name it, just have fun ;). Each round is comprised of eight players, four the heroic COG (humans) and four the barbaric locust (aliens) entering a map and butchering each other with weapons such as the boomshot (grenade launcher), the longshot (sniper rifle) and the basic lancer which is just your run-of-the-mill machine gun……oh, and it has a chainsaw extension (how cool is that?!). A pretty common genre for a game but graphics and gameplay set this title apart from all the rest.

An integral part of the game is the ten second interlude after one team wins a round where you can view everyone’s statistics such as kills, takedowns etc. But, more importantly, this is where you can chat to not only your team mates, but to the other team also. This is where all of the “nasty” words are exchanged, and not only with the other team, you might be screaming at one of your own who only has one kill while you sit on your pedestal with an impressive fourteen, barraging him with insults, constantly reminding him that he is not “pulling his weight”, and calling him a n00b.

Back to the game. I had been beaten by these guys five ten-round matches in a row and was not pleased to say the least. Some people could just walk away saying that these guys were too good, but they weren’t. I was getting more kills than any of them. It may sound egotistical but the reason for my defeats rests solely on the crappy team mates I was allocated. But not this match, not this time. These guys were good, but they had no idea what they were now up against.

Leaving my crappy-ass team to one side I chose to invite some people to the game that I knew were good, people I had gotten to know over xbox-live.

First off there’s Morsie, having played with him for a few months and almost every time I went online, I knew he was good. He’s an overall good player and a freaking GOD with the longshot (sniper rifle). I’m serious this guy gets around ten to fifteen headshots a match, that’s more than most people get in kills! If you don’t want to be constantly insulted by your team mates while you’re using the longshot then you have to be good with it. First of all because they will probably want to have a crack at it and secondly, unless you’re playing warzone, it’s quite a challenge getting a kill with it. If you give a locust a sniper bullet to his seemingly kevlar padded chest, it will only cause a small injury and the longshot’s god-awful reload time gives them a chace to find cover. But this is where Morsie comes into his own. In Gears you can perform a speacial type of reload called an “active reload” where, if timed correctly it gives you a kick ass reload time plus a damage boost. Time it wrong and be prepared to pee your pants, your character jams the ammo in the mechanism frantically trying to load the bullets, your opponents see this run towards you pop off your head and you cry in the corner. Morsie doesn’t have this problem. If by chance he does miss the next 0.7 seconds is comprised of him getting pissed off with himself, active reloading, and making sure the sonofabitch that made him miss won’t be having any alien babies anytime soon (we usually go COG).

Next off there’s CHIZZO. I met him online around the same time as Morsie, same game in fact (DOA4 if you were wondering, buy it, it kicks ass). CHIZZO is a chainsaw nut, and with good reason, there are few things on this earth that are as satisfying as chainsawing your opponent in half….well maybe getting a greatest in DOA (seriously this game rocks). Gamers I have met tend to dislike the chainsaw but all in all the debate is split. Some love it, others detest it. It is by far the most gruesome way to end your opponent in a video game bar MK, but it is also regarded as a ‘n00b’ weapon. If you rev the chainsaw with a simple press of the B button you can then barrell towards your opponent to trigger an animation in which you slice your nemesis in half. But during the slicing of said nemesis you are invulnerable, and this is what people don’t like. Most people in the team of the unlucky mofo being sliced just stay close and wait with the shotgun, or if you have the frags, fag-tag them, but as with Morsie, CHIZZO wouldn’t be on my friends list if he just stood there and let them blow his head off, now would he?

CHIZZO stands chainsawing a hideous locust while three other locust edge closer and closer gettong their shotgun claws ready, waiting for him to stop and then shatter his shull into 42 different pieces.

Odds :- BAD

CHIZZO knows what point in the animation gives him back control of his character, and when this time comes…..the fun begins. A violent thrust of the left analogue stick and a hammer down of the A button sends CHIZZO catapulting away from the murderous trio. Mid-roll he equips a smoke greanade, steadies his footing and hurls it into the pack. The locust, engulfed in thick grey smoke are disorientated, confused. One bursts out of the cloud of smoke, doubtful of where he is on the map, CHIZZO hammers the B button and his character hammers the locust with the butt of his rifle. One down. He spots another foe running off to the right. Spinning round he equips his purposefully unloaded shotgun and performs an active reload. The cowardly locust thinks he is out of range but CHIZZOs active reload gives his bullets the power they need from this range. Ultra high-damaging bullets pierce the enemy’s kneecaps to the sweet sweet melody of BOOM! chuk-chuk BOOM! Two down. He spots the last remaining locust fleeing towards the boomshot spawn to the left. He creeps behind a burnt out vehicle and quietly waits…chainsaw ready.

Odds :- Very favourable indeed.

Third off was some American that wasn’t all that bad at the game, and was actually less crappy than my previous teammates. He could have played better but he tried his best and communicated well, but at one point he got a little cocky with his grenade tags and almost cost us the match. People generally hate grenade taggers, except for grenade taggers, they love grenade taggers, unless they get grenade tagged…then……they sort of hate everyone. The skill involved in performing what is commonly being reffered to as “fag-tagging” is surprisingly low. In most shooting games you require a certain amount of accuracy when you throw a grenade to get it to stick to someone, but not in Gears. In Gears you don’t even have to be close (usually 6 feet or less) to stick them, and you don’t even have to throw it! Think of it less a grande stick, more of a grenade placement! A lot of you may be thinking, “what a flaw, I hope they fix this in an update!”. But to be honest it would take away from the game as a whole. Sure it gets frustrating getting tagged each and every round but, if you mage to squeeze off one lucky shotgun shell into their n00by face to send that sonofabitch down, the sense of achievement is amazing. And that among with other sensations is one of the most integral COG’S in the Gears of War online machine. (It was such a bad pun I had to put it in)

Last off there’s me. All-knowing, All-seeing, All-killing GLORIOUS ME! (Trust me when i’m playing, my ego is that big). My weapon of coice is the shotgun. A beautiful weapon for the game as your character in Gears runs slower than in most shooters so the shotgun is by far the most used weapon online. A potentially team-massacring weapon (and I mean that literally) in the right hands, a great big waste of time and pixels in the other. I fell in love with the shotgun the first time I used it. It’s design is a bit bland but that doesn’t matter when you’re blowing locust hordes to bits. It is hard to describe the result of a shot to the chest of a locust at point blank range. Buy it, rent it or get a lend of it, I couldn’t care but i’m not even going to try explaining how satisfying that particular animation is.

First play of Gears online will leave you dissapointed as it did with me. But have a game like mine, where at nine rounds each……….there was one man left in each team………and one fag-tagged the other just before he started to be chainsawed…………..you’ll be addicted.

By Webb90

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 27th, 2007 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Xbox 360 Games, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.