OK my first review is of Gears of War for the xbox 360.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccWrbGEFgI8 This is a great trailer for Gears of War check it out.
The game is set in the future where there is a war of Humans versus the Locust. The Locust are an alien species who live underground and can emerge anywhere to attack you.
You play as Marcus Fenix who apparantley is a traitor and got put in prison but you start the game off, getting freed to help fight against the locust. When you join up with the rest of the team the commander (who is a complete douchebag, whatever happened to cool commanders?) has come up with a plan to get rid of the locust once and for all. Through the first Act you meet a couple of new characters but by the end of Act 1 you know who you're gonna be playing with the most part of the game.
The gameplay is pretty basic. Most of the time you're heading towards you're objective and the locust can emerge from the ground anywhere so trying to check rooms to see if there's any enemys in them is useless. There's also a lot of hiding in cover as you hide carefully behind a lump of rock you can jump over it, aim while you're in cover and even blind fire.
More detail has been put into reloading your weapon than your usual game. When you reload a bar appears where two colours on the bar represent getting a fast reload. Press the right bumper at the right time and you can get a super fast reload or if you get a bad reload you can be trying to load your gun looking like a complete fool to be put on a battlefield. Some of you might not think it's worth attempting but you do get achievements for doing it a certain amount and it does pay off rather than reloading slowly.
There's a good variety of weapons available like the lancer (an assault rifle with a chainsaw on it), a shotgun, sniper rifle, pistol, revolver and some more explosive weapons. With this variety of weapons some situations need them more than others like whenever I'm in a building I always whip out the shotgun and I always take the lancer out when I wanna chainsaw someone. I have to say though using the chainsaw is one of my favorite things about this game. When you use the chainsaw blood comes spraying out all over the screen. Lovely. Even though it's a bit silly the fact that you can shoot someone and they blow up to pieces it makes the game a whole lot more fun. Watching a Locust saunter his way towards you while you're in cover and jumping over the cover just to get a bullet in the face is always a good laugh.
The game provides online play so you can play through thw whole campaign on co-op with a friend (which is my favorite thing to do online) is a lot more fun than playying alone. There's also multiplayer matches with the usual teamdeathmatch type of thing with a king of the hill game. Even though there can only be 8 players in a game, 4 v 4, it really is great fun.
What new features does it bring?
- the ability to chainsaw someone (in a special move not just mowing them down like in DOOM)
- the fact that when you get a headshot the head flys right off
- the roadie run
- the Kryll, avoiding the dark so you can't be eaten alive by man eating birds, what an amazing idea to bring to a game
The Good:
- great graphics for one of the earlier games for the 360
- playing co-op on campaign
- a good variety of weapons
- a fun game to play with your mates
- the gore is funny
The Bad:
- the controls can sometimes be a bit bulky because of moving into cover all the time
Overall I'm giving this a 9/10 it's not perfect but hardly anything is nowadays. If you an xbox 360 I highly suggest you buy this, it is definetly worth it.
- Ewan
