Release Date: 25/08/2015
Played On: XBO
Available On: Win / XBO
Time Played: 6h 13m
Progress: Completed
Developer: Epic Games
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
For most of my life, I've been a PC gamer. Yes, I am a member of the master race I do believe that there is no better way to experience gaming than with a personal computer that allows you to play however you want to play and with little to no limitations. However, as of the Playstation 3, I have also enjoyed the reliable and predictable experiences that console gaming can bring. There's something to be said about knowing that every game you buy for a system should be able to run well on it, as the hardware is the same for every single player. Not to mention the many console exclusives that get released regularly as an enticement to buy the hardware, which is why about a year ago I found myself with a brand new Xbox One X - the first Xbox I have ever owned.
You see, someone in marketing managed to come up with something that's not only a good idea, but a pretty good deal for consumers as well. About a year ago I discovered that I could bundle in a brand new Xbox One X with my current mobile phone plan. The cost would be the equivalent of buying the system outright, but spread over monthly payments for two years. Sounded like a decent way to rent-to-own an expensive console, but then they threw in Microsoft Game Pass Ultimate with the system and the deal suddenly became a no-brainer for me.
I've always been a fan of bundles and good-value subscription services for games, as it always seems like a win-win to me. As the customer, I get a good deal on good games and I regularly have something new to play. For the retailer, they suffer a little bit of a profit loss by offering good deals as part of the service, but they get a guaranteed income from multiple subscribers each and every month.
Lately though, Sony have been taking the piss with their Playstation Plus service, which used to offer SIX (6) games every month, which has been reduced down to TWO (2), while the price remains the same. Needless to say I'm waiting for my subscription to expire, at which point I will not be renewing it again. Especially now that I have access to Microsoft Game Pass Ultimate, which is actually a superior service in many different ways.
Now, the first thing that makes it a good deal is the fact that I've never owned my own Xbox before, so I've never played any of the exclusives that Xbox fans will go on about. At the time of receiving my brand new Xbox One X bundled in with my mobile plan, I had never played a Halo game, never played Gears Of War, never played Perfect Dark, and never played a bunch of other exclusives that I can't even think of because they're so foreign to me. Hence why something like Game Pass Ultimate, which includes access to all of those big exclusives and more, is such a great deal for someone like me. What's more, I still haven't upgraded to Windows 10 on my PC, so many of the games on Game Pass Ultimate aren't even playable on my Win 7 system.
Suddenly with a new console and a decent subscription service in Game Pass Ultimate, I had access to hundreds of new games to play. I immediately downloaded Gears Of War Ultimate, the Halo Master Chief Collection, and a few others that I'll talk about some other time. As an Xbox outsider for all these years, I knew that Halo and Gears were perhaps the biggest games that I needed to try right away, even though are many other (arguably better) games available, I had to experience what everyone has been banging on about for so many years.
I'll talk about Halo properly in its own post someday, but I've honestly been struggling to get through the first game. It's just so slow and boring for the most part, but I can forgive it for being a console FPS, which is never a good recipe for success. Before i even started playing I knew I would have a better time with Gears Of War, simply because it's third-person and has some more interesting characters and design going on than Halo ever seemed to have (in my opinion of course... don't @ me).
Plus, I've always been a big Cliff Bleszinski fan. Not because I think he's great or anything, but I like the games he's been involved in and I've always had a good time when his name has been in the credits. To me old Cliffy B is kind of like the "bro" version of John Carmack. Except where Carmack is an undeniable genius and all-round epic figure in the gaming industry, bro Cliffy B tends to attract a bit more of the bad kind of press.
Industry figures aside, I played through the first Gears Of War and it ended up being one of the first "classic" Xbox games that I have completed on my first ever Xbox. I've also played a few other little games here and there, but this is one of the big titles that I've always heard people talk about with a certain reverence and nostalgia, so I knew I had to give it a solid go.
The first thing I'll say is that having completed the first in the series, I'm actually now keen to try the rest and see where the story goes and how the games improved over each iteration. I did have some issues with aiming while using a gamepad, as I tend to play any kind of shooters with mousey keys where possible and generally suck at aiming with analogue sticks. Thankfully though, much like other casual console gaming, there's a generous lock-on system that really helps out when you're as bad at aiming as I am.
The story of Gears Of War is pretty dude-bro-big-tough-guns in the most generic way possible. All the characters are gruff men with big muscles and stupidly large armour, making this almost a parody of itself. In fact if I didn't know that this was one of the first to create those kind of stereotypes, I would think that they're playing a big old joke on me and hamming it up on purpose.
Actually, I did come away from the game with the thought that there's definitely a bit of tongue-in-cheek happening throughout. Some scenes and lines of dialogue are just so obtuse and cringey that they honestly feel like some kind of self-aware joke that's being played incredibly dry. Maybe I'm just giving it more credit than it's due, but for my money I actually found many parts of the whole adventure quite amusing and silly. There's something about burly army types acting so earnest and using their big-boy voices that I always find inherently funny.
Honestly, the nuances to the story were lost on me a bit, but the general idea is that there's an alien species who are invading earth and it's up to the big guns and big pecs to stop them. The entire campaign is spent moving through destroyed cities and buildings in order to reach some place or another. Ultimately though, it's up to our handful of dude-bros to wipe out all the alien monsters and save the day. It's just about as straight forward as you could hope for.
Along the way there are a good variety of enemies, but they will get repetitive after a awhile. There are the small ones that swarm, the human-like ones that take cover, the larger ones that charge at you, and the massive ones that need special weapons to defeat. Some of the best moments in the game are when you have to take out a massive enemy that requires a bit of manoeuvring and thought to defeat properly. Some of the most boring aspects of the game are just about every room you walk into with waist-high walls.
This is after all, one of the pioneers of the stop-and-pop gameplay loops that we've now come to know as a bit dated and boring. However at the time I wouldn't be surprised to find the CoD crowd creaming their jocks over this new and innovate style of play. Basically you run into an area and take cover behind one of the many waist-high walls on offer. Then you pop out of cover to shoot at the enemies who are hiding in the same way, before hunkering down again to reload and take stock of your targets.
Oh, the reloading is another part of Gears Of War that I've heard talked about again and again, but I can't figure out why. Sure it uses an "active" reload system, which basically means that when you press the reload button, you can press it again at the correct time to hasten the reload animation and get back into the fight. Again, I have to assume that this was mind-blowing at the time, but as a modern gamer this is just an annoying feature that doesn't really bring anything fun to the game. Especially because when you mess it up, your reload animation gets extended instead of quickened. When you're like me and mess it up just about as often as you succeed, you might as well just reload like normal and split the difference.
In fact, between snapping to cover and popping out to shoot at enemies, and reloading with a mini-game, Gears Of War feels a lot sillier than I think it's meant to. Mostly because there are these massive soldier dudes on screen, but they move like they're running around naked and have nothing encumbering them at all. I suppose that it's functional and lets you get a move on as you travel through each level, but it also looks a little hilarious to have such a big cumbersome dude move about with the grace of a young fawn.
Aside from all of that though, Gears Of War is actually a pretty good little third-person shooter. There's a lot that has to be accepted just because it's old and game design has moved on a lot since this game came out, but for what it's worth, I can see why so many people love the series.
There are plenty of good set pieces and interested areas to tackle, as well as unique gimmicks that get thrown in every now and then to change things up. In one level you have to keep blowing things up to create light and scare off flying parasitic aliens. In another level you get to fight along the carriages of a moving train. In another you have to disable a monolithic beast in a fun kind of boss fight. Suffice to say that there's enough variety in the game to make the repetition of the gameplay loop seem bearable. I mean, as far as brown and grey military shooter type games are concerned, you could do a lot worse.
Perhaps I'd have a different attitude towards Gears Of War if I hadn't played the Ultimate Edition, which I don't actually know what it does, but I have to assume that it adds better textures and all that good stuff. After all, most of the game looked pretty good and was detailed enough to not be off-putting. Unfortunately though there are some things that can't be remastered, like old school level design principles and the constant availability of waist-high cover.
Then again, I'm not the kind of gamer who loads up an old classic and expects to be blown away in the same way that the newest blockbuster would. It's pretty much expected that the first Gears Of War game would have a whole lot of stuff in it that has since been improved on. I just hope that as I work my way through the sequels, the improvements are many and the iterations are fun and focused on entertaining gameplay, as opposed to gruff burly men with angry faces shooting things.
Thus, for what it's worth, Gears Of War gets my seal of approval. Considering that it's the first really classic Xbox exclusive I've completed, I think that's a pretty good result overall. Now all I need to do is finish struggling through Halo: Combat Evolved so I can spent an entire post breaking down why first-person-shooters should not be on consoles.
2020.11.21 - PS - I recently re-read this post while I was testing some site features and realised just how poorly written it is, and how many errors there are throughout. While I typically just write posts and do nothing more than a quick spell-check, I think I might give future posts a quick proof read as well.
Anyway, my apologies for the low quality of this, and any other posts. I’ll try to get better in future!