In essence Gears of War is a third person shooter, but Epic seems to have enhanced and improved every aspect of this genre. Many games have allowed you to use cover while you battle enemies, but often this has been clumsy and difficult to implement. With Gears of War using cover is an integral part of the game play, and moving from one cover point to another is so fluid and fast, that you don’t feel the need to just run at enemies as is so often the case with other games. In fact Gears of War specifically doesn’t cater to those players who like to run around spraying bullets – if you want to do that you can, but don’t expect to hit anything.



An important part of the gameplay is to work cooperatively, whether that’s with a computer controlled character or a live one. The key to taking out the Locust Horde, who always seem to have superior numbers, is to fight smarter, not harder. Let your partner pin them down with suppressing fire, while you sneak around and out flank them. If you can sneak up on them from behind, you can use what looks like a chainsaw built into your assault rifle and cut those Locusts into shreds.

Talking of weapons you seem to get a decent array of hardware to play with. There’s a standard assault rifle for taking enemies out from a distance, a shotgun that appears to be very powerful when up close, and the obligatory grenades. With the grenades you can hide behind cover and just throw them blindly over the top in true WWI trench warfare style, or you can aim the trajectory and even bounce them off walls towards your targets.



Graphically Gears of War is nothing short of breathtaking. The textures, the lighting, the animation, everything is as close to perfect as you’re likely get on a console. In fact I’d be hard pushed to think of a PC game that looks better than this – Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter looked good on the X360, but Gears of War takes things to a different level.

I can’t adequately express how much I want to play this game, and no matter how quickly Epic can bring it to market, it won’t be soon enough for my liking. Let’s just hope that it’s released on a Friday, because I can see myself camping down on the sofa for a couple of days solid with this one.

Link: Epic Games