Gears of War Review
| Ability to prevent motion sickness |
3/10 |
| Fun factor |
7/10 |
| Lack of repetition |
6/10 |
| Always knowing what to do |
9.5/10 |
| Controls |
9/10 |
| Cleverness of design |
9/10 |
| Overall: |
7.3 |
Ability to prevent motion sickness: The entire game takes place in a 3rd person view, which is fantastic; however, when the hero (Marcus) walks, his head bobs up and down, and up and down. Couple the bobbing motion with closed quarters and quick screen movement, and you have a nice recipe for motion sickness. The levels that took place in the outside environment caused fewer problems in terms of motion sickness compared to some of the underground levels. While the game ran in 1080p, at a solid 60 FPS, there were some hardware slowdowns in 3-4 areas of the game as well. Fun factor: The game had it’s frustrating moments, but was pretty fun. The game had an auto-save feature every time a “checkpoint” was reached. Each time the character died, you would simply start from the last check point. Beyond there, the characters in the game were hilarious, such as Cole Train. On the ending credits screen, Cole Train starts doing one of the worst rapping sessions I’ve ever heard. I supposed I should mention there’s a wide variety of weapons, such as a machine gun with a chainsaw on the end of it, I mean, that’s cool right?
Lack of repetition: After 5 minutes of gameplay, you will know the fighting style for the entire game. It’s not bad, and there’s a large variety of terrain to hide behind. However, all you pretty much do is hide or crouch behind things while shooting the enemy.
Always knowing what to do: If there’s one thing I absolutely hate in video games, it’s not knowing where to go or what to do. The game is pretty linear, and the level design makes it hard to get lost.
Controls: There isn’t a mess of buttons to worry about, and there isn’t 500 secret button combos to do. Solid controls, never had a frustrating moment.
Cleverness of design: Gear of War gets big points in this category. It was fun, intuitive, creative, and I’ve never played a shooter game that did the job quite like this. There were basic elements of puzzles such as blowing up gas cans to spark explosions to kill enemies, and so on.
Overall: If you own an Xbox 360, you should own this game. While I never complain about games being too short, this title would make a fine rental as it can get beat in under 10 hours.
