Original Gears of War

Original Gears of War The first Gears of War put you in a world that had already been torn apart. Marcus is being pulled out of prison, the Locust are already there, and the war has been going on long before you get to do anything about it. You spend the game moving through what is left of people’s homes and cities. That’s the dark, gritty side of Gears I was talking about. You’ve got Marcus, Dom, Baird, and Cole, and the combat is very hands-on. You can be fighting from behind cover one second and have something right in your face the next. The cover system is a big part of how the whole game works. You need to pay attention to where you can move, where the enemy is, and what happens if something gets around your side. A wall can keep you alive, but sitting behind the same wall isn’t going to fix everything. Even reloading gives you something to think about. Get the active reload timing right and you’re back in the fight faster. Get it wrong and you can jam the weapon at exactly the wrong moment. It seems like such a small thing, but it’s part of the mechanics that give Gears its own feel. Then there’s the Lancer. An assault rifle with a chainsaw attached to it is a pretty good example of what I mean when I call Gears the dark side of Halo. It’s raw, close-up combat. And you still have to get close enough to use it. The other enemies aren’t going to stop shooting just because you want to do an execution. The story gives you a reason to care about the people carrying those weapons. Marcus and Dom are the center of it, but Baird and Cole bring their own personalities into the squad. Those are the characters you keep following as the series goes on, which is part of why what happens to them later has so much weight. I love the gameplay and the mechanics, but I love that there’s a whole story there too. The first game sets up the people and the world that the rest of the series builds on. Knowing where they started matters when you get further into it. One thing worth clearing up if you’re looking at the different releases: Gears of War, Ultimate Edition, and Reloaded aren’t three separate chapters of that story. Ultimate Edition remade the first game, and Reloaded builds on that version. The newer releases have technical changes and the extra campaign section, but they’re still versions of that original game.