The Metal Gear Solid series has been around since its glory days on the original Playstation, to the excellent Playstation 2 sequels, and the fourth incarnation in the series is set to be released on the Playstation 3. This highly lauded and critically acclaimed series has seen its share of different consoles, but has never ventured into the realm of portable gaming. Sure, there have been a few spin off titles for portable consoles in the past, and there have been the recent Metal Gear AC!D games on the Playstation Portable, but never a Metal Gear Solid game. Well, for Metal Gear Solid fans who quite get their fix with the two previous games, Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops is about as close as to a true Metal Gear Solid adventure as you can get on a portable system.
This new adventure takes place in 1970, six years after the events of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Naked Snake, also known as “Big Boss” has been attacked and captured by his former team, the FOX Unit. The game begins with a short cutscene involving Snake being interrogated and tortured by a member of the FOX Unit, looking for the other half of the Philosopher’s legacy. After this cutscene concludes, Snake discovers he is imprisoned in a cell next to a lone surviving member of the Green Beret squad deployed in the area to neutralize the FOX Unit, and he turns out to be none other than Roy Campbell. After a brief conversation between the two, the player gains control of Snake and the game begins.
The story alone makes this a must play for fans of the series, as it fills in a lot of the series’ already complicated storyline. After the thought provoking storyline of Metal Gear Solid 3, Kojima and company once again puts together an excellent narrative, rich with incredible plot twists and political intrigue without coming off as over wrought or forced. The story is told incredibly well throughout the game, through the cutscenes that pop up every now and then.
As a sharp contrast with the console games in the series, the story is told through hand drawn, mostly black and white images presented panel by panel, in the style of an animated comic, instead of being rendered by the game’s graphics engine. These highly stylized scenes present the game’s excellent story in a way never seen before in the Metal Gear Solid games. This gives the cutscenes a very unique look that is highly attractive. It’s also worth noting that the cutscenes are a lot more balanced with gameplay than in previous Metal Gear Solid games, which were rather longwinded by comparison. These scenes, while appropriately heavy with narrative, don’t drag on endlessly, which is good, and fitting with the game’s portable nature.
Unlike the previous Metal Gear AC!D games on the Playstation Portable, this looks and plays more like a traditional Metal Gear Solid adventure seen on consoles. The crisp and highly detailed graphics are some of the best you’ll see on the PSP and really show what the system is capable of. The control scheme is vastly similar to that of Metal Gear Solid 3. Although shoehorning the series’ complex controls of that game onto the PSP’s limited (at least by comparison) button layout was likely rather difficult, the developers have done an admirable job. Simple actions such as walking around, crouching, placing your back to a wall, and shooting are performed easily, but once you step into the arena of aiming in the first person view and moving at the same time, a new feature, things can get a bit difficult. Performing complex actions such as the aforementioned moving while in first person view is hand cramp inducing, and don’t come off nearly as easily as they should. But, even with these minor control issues, this is still one of the better control schemes I’ve encountered on the PSP.
Even though this is pretty much the direct Sequel to Metal Gear Solid 3, many of that game’s key elements are gone, most for the better. In Metal Gear Solid 3, much of the time spent playing was in menus, curing Snake’s many wounds and injuries and eating food you’ve found or hunted for in the jungle. It was a wise choice for the developers to ditch those elements of the game for Snake’s portable outing, as they likely would’ve taken up to much of the player’s time. The camera system from Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence has thankfully found its way into this game too. Using the D pad, you can freely manipulate the camera to give you a better view of the action and with a press of the L trigger, the camera will center behind you. Instead of that particular gameplay mechanic, MGS PO has its own unique draw, which differentiates it from the rest of the games in the series. Soldier recruitment. Early in the game, you will be tasked with recruiting a soldier to your cause. After you knock out and bring back your first soldier, you are treated to a quick and very well done interrogation and recruitment cutscene in which you gain the trust and cooperation of the captive soldier. This becomes a major aspect of the gameplay from then on.
Recruiting soldiers within missions is as easy (or as difficult, depending on the situation) as knocking them out and dragging them back to your truck. From there, they are sent to the prison, where they will remain for a set period of time until they are convinced to join your squad. Besides the previously explained method of acquiring soldiers, there is another way, one that is incredibly addictive and simple to perform. Using the PSP’s wireless capabilities, this game allows you to scan Wi-Fi hotspots new soldiers to add to your crew. Using unique IP addresses to generate soldiers, the scan system is likely the easiest method of adding soldiers to your roster. In addition, using the PSP GPS receiver, which is currently only sold in Japan, you can recruit soldiers based on your geographical location.
In between missions, you can assign recruited soldiers to one of six squads, each with a different purpose, such as the medical unit, which develops healing items and speeds the healing of your soldiers in between missions and the spy unit, which locates weapons within their assigned territory and can supply you with vital intel. The most important unit to develop is the sneaking unit. This is the unit that is actually deployed in the field. Placing captured soldiers in this unit can really give you a tactile advantage when it comes to tackling these missions, because in some cases, the soldiers will blend right in with their former comrades, as long as they aren’t discovered performing any out of the ordinary actions. Adversely, placing your soldiers on the battlefield is a risk. If a major story character, such as Snake, is killed in a mission, they are sent off to the infirmary to recover and will be unable to participate in the next mission without time to recover. If a recruited soldier dies in the field, they are gone forever. This gives you reason to remain stealthy and keep your soldiers in good health. If you choose to forego stealth and wind up getting one of your valuable soldiers killed on the battlefield, there is always the option of restarting or aborting the mission, should the loss be too difficult to bear.
The missions themselves are presented in an instant action sort of manner, once again, fitting with the game’s portable nature, giving you five to ten minute bursts of play. Although the story is presented in a linear fashion, Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops takes a much more open ended approach than any other Metal Gear Solid game, giving you total control over which missions you take and when. From the menu between missions you are given the opportunity to redeploy to any location you have previously encountered. One of the major strengths of this game is its wealth of missions, perfect for portable play. There’s never a shortage of missions to play, and having the option to pick and choose which of them to play is a great addition. Keeping with the tradition of previous Metal Gear Solid games, boss encounters are just as exciting and epic as they are in other games in the series, each fight boasting its own unique charm. These battles are challenging though, requiring you to think outside of the box in order to come out victorious.
In addition to the single player campaign, there is a satisfying multiplayer component. There are options for up to 6 player play via an ad hoc network and even a game sharing option which allows up to five additional players to play even if they don’t have a copy of the disc and you can even trade your soldiers with friends. All of that aside, the real draw here is the online multiplayer modes. Using the Metal Gear Online infrastructure established in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, players face off against each other in a standard array of multiplayer modes, such as deathmatch and team deathmatch. The online modes are directly tied in with your progression in the single player campaign. Before battle, you choose one of your four groups from the sneaking unit to send into the field. Before jumping into an online match, you are given the option to choose between a “virtual” or “real” match. When participating in the latter, if your soldiers die in battle, they will no longer appear in your roster, as they have “died” on the battlefield, just like the single player campaign and your opponent can then recruit the soldiers you have lost. To save your valuable soldiers and prevent them from being killed and subsequently captured, you have the option of waving a white flag and withdrawing that soldier from the field and sending out a new one, giving them time to recover and wait until the next deployment.
The problem with this is that these modes don’t have much staying power. There are already a slim number of modes to choose from in the first place and you can add that to some rather shallow third person shooting. Sure there are the stealth aspects from the single player game, but they are often overlooked by the majority of players in lieu of locking on to their closest target and blasting it to hell. There’s very little strategy involved and the small number of modes don't bode well in terms of replay value, meaning the online modes are just fairly decent at best.
More interestingly, one of the best multiplayer modes is one you don’t directly control. The cyber-survival mode is sort of like an online simulated strategy game, in which you choose one of your sneaking units to deploy into the field. From there, they will do battle with other players’ teams. Your team will fare better or worse depending on your soldiers’ stats and equipment, so performing well is conducive with your own pre-battle planning. Also, keeping with the general theme of the rest of the game, if your soldiers are killed in cyber survival, they will not return. If they fare well, you might be presented with captured soldiers to recruit upon their safe return.
In the end, the fresh and unique single player campaign does wonders to differentiate this from other Metal Gear Solid games and proves to be a worthwhile and engaging experience. Metal Gear Solid fans will get the most from this game due to its excellent story and plot development, but non fans can enjoy it all the same because of the classic Metal Gear Solid gameplay and solid suite of enjoyable modes. Soldier recruitment makes for an entertaining little minigame and the squad management options set this apart from the crowd. Bottom line, this is truly one of the best PSP games to date and can easily hold its own with any of its console predecessors.
Graphics - 9
Gameplay - 9
Sound - 9
Value - 9
Tilt - 9
Overall Score: 9.0
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Wii Sports Review
Thought to have gone the way of the dinosaur, the pack in game has made a triumphant return in the form of Wii Sports. Everyone who buys their Wii console (in the US at least) goes home with a free copy of the game. But, does it play well? Well, the game looks, and in some ways plays, like a glorified tech demo, designed to get you accustomed with the Wii remote functions with virtual renditions of tennis, baseball, golf, bowling and boxing. Calling it a sports “sim” would be giving it too much credit. At times, the game is surprisingly short on depth but as a result, is far easier for non gamers to get into and have fun.
One of the game’s selling points is how easy it is to get into. The interface is clean and simple to navigate making jumping into a quick game to kill time quick and easy. The individual sports use the Wii remote and in the case of boxing nunchuck to emulate the most basic actions in the respective sports such as swinging a bat in baseball or throwing a punch in boxing. There is a bit of a learning curve to each sport, but many players will acclimate themselves to the control scheme of each game rather quickly. The included training modes are fun and a great way to improve your skills between games.
Tennis plays pretty much like the real thing, as the player holds and swings the Wii remote like a tennis racket. To serve, you flick the remote upwards and swing. To return the ball to your opponent, you swing the remote, creating a forehand or backhand swing, depending on your handedness. The actual game consists of a two on two doubles match with no option for singles play. On the field, the AI automatically moves your two characters to put you in the best position possible for returning the ball and the AI usually does a good job of getting you into position. These are likely design choices to simplify the game and make it more accessible. As a result, it does cause the game to lose a lot of strategic depth. You never have incredible accuracy or control over your swing, and the direction the ball goes in is entirely dependent on your timing.
Baseball is one of the deepest of the five sports, giving you the most accurate and deepest control over your swing and the pitch. Swinging the Wii remote like a baseball bat controls the swing and emulating an overhand swing controls the pitch, as you would expect. Timing and power of your swing is the key to knocking the ball out of the park and there is a bit of a learning curve to adjust to before you’ll be able to do that. Pitching is similarly deep, allowing you to choose from a number of different types of pitches. The standard fastball is performed by just making the overhand motion and you can throw curveballs, screwballs, and splitters by pressing and holding either the A button (screwball), B button (curveball) or both (splitter). You can also control the direction of the pitch, be it inside, outside, high or low by pressing and holding a direction on the d-pad. Each game consists of a three inning warm up instead of the traditional nine inning stretch of a real game. Unfortunately, this suffers from lack of depth in everything besides swinging and pitching, since that’s all you have control over. It really feels like he game is playing itself when the AI handles everything from catching fly balls, to running the bases. It almost seems like the length of time between making contact with the ball and it being caught controls how many bases you run. After a while of playing, you’ll be able to predict how far your character will run solely based on the time the ball is in the air. When you consider things like this, it almost feels like the game is playing itself whenever you aren’t actually throwing or taking a swing at the ball.
Golf is pretty weak in comparison to many of the sports in the collection, particularly due to the sometimes finicky controls. Holding the Wii remote down, pointed at the ground and swinging like you would a real golf club is simple enough, but swinging can be fussy at times. The game does detect your handedness and realigns your character accordingly, but doesn’t take into account which way you will actually swing the club, be it right or left. As a result, many accidental swings can result from simply setting up to make your swing. Swinging itself is rather difficult to control. On the screen is a power meter which is comprised of four dots at regular intervals, which appear on a minimap, and figuring out how hard you need to swing is a simple matter of figuring out which of the four dots you need to hit on the power meter. Simply swinging as hard as you can when driving for the fairway is not a wise course of action as the ball will automatically hook or slice. Getting a powerful shot without managing to max out the power meter and hooking or slicing the ball is rather difficult, particularly since, for some reason, the power meter continues to rise even after the ball has left the tee with any upward motion of the Wii remote until after a certain point. Once you grow accustomed to the controls, you will find nine holes of golf here, split into beginner, intermediate and expert courses. While they are all entertaining and rather challenging, one does begin to wish there were more than just nine holes to play on.
Bowling is perhaps the deepest and most entertaining sport of the bunch, because it plays well and has most of the strategic depth of the real thing. You start by holding the Wii remote directly in front of you, with it pointing straight up. To throw the ball, you hold the B button, and emulate the down, back and forward again motions of the real sport, releasing the B button again to send the ball down the lane. Twisting the Wii remote to the left or right as you throw the ball puts a spin on the ball, which you can counteract by moving your character to the right or left and changing the angle of your throw before making your approach.
Boxing, the only game to use the nunchuck attachment, is perhaps the weakest sport in the package simply because it’s generally unresponsive where it counts. Throwing punches. Your fighter moves in accordance to your movements with the Wii remote and nunchuck. Dodging punches by moving your character forward, backward or side to side are accomplished by moving the Wii remote and nunchuck in the appropriate direction. The position of the two controllers also govern your ability to block incoming hits and by moving them, your character will mimic the position of both controllers with their hands. Everything controls pretty well except for the one thing that should control best, the actual punching. Throwing punches is pretty unresponsive some times and really detracts from the entire experience. When the game does respond well to your movements and you begin to consistently land punches, it is fun and has a decent amount of depth, as you’ll have to actually aim your movements high and low to land head or body punches. In combination with the dodging and blocking movements, this could’ve been the best sport in the package, but its limited responsiveness also limits the fun.
The Mii avatars, which populate the game, add a bit of spice to the collection. At the outset, you’ll be asked to choose a Mii from your collection to pose as your virtual avatar when playing any of the sports or training modes. Statistics are saved to that Mii which include your Wii fitness age, records held in training games and your Wii Sports “level”. This level is measured in points. Performing well at each of the five sports gives you points towards your Mii’s level in whichever sport you’re currently playing. Performing poorly subtracts from your level so this gives players an incentive to practice and get good at each of the five sports. Once you exceed 1000 points, you gain “Pro” status, which, other than a “PRO” icon next to your name, doesn’t offer any real benefits, but it makes for a nice touch.
Another element of the game is the Wii Fitness training. This mode is similar to the “Brain Age Check” mode in the Nintendo DS game. The mode consists of three events, each one being one of the many training modes mentioned earlier. When the player completes all three games, the game measures your performance in the form of a Fitness “Age” ranging from the best possible age of 20 to the worst, 80.
The multiplayer in this game is pretty much what makes this game stand out. Up to four players can participate in tennis, golf and bowling and two can play boxing and baseball. Golf and bowling even support hotseat play using just one remote between up to four players. The multiplayer modes add a level of fun and interactivity that the solo modes just don’t have. It’s as if Nintendo clearly intended for players to play this game with their friends and family. It feels like it was made for multiplayer , which is certainly a good thing if you can manage to corral enough people to play alongside you.
In the end, even though this collection of sports titles may be a bit light on the simulation aspects of each sport and in turn loses a bit of depth because of it; it’s fun and accessible by nearly everyone. Even those who have never played a video game before in their lives can easily play and enjoy this one. Serious sports fans won’t get much enjoyment from these games but everyone else can find something to like. It’s a great pack in game and despite the feeling of playing a glorified tech demo; makes for a pretty fun game overall.
Graphics - 7
Gameplay - 7
Sound - 7
Value - 8
Tilt - 9
Overall Score: 7.8
One of the game’s selling points is how easy it is to get into. The interface is clean and simple to navigate making jumping into a quick game to kill time quick and easy. The individual sports use the Wii remote and in the case of boxing nunchuck to emulate the most basic actions in the respective sports such as swinging a bat in baseball or throwing a punch in boxing. There is a bit of a learning curve to each sport, but many players will acclimate themselves to the control scheme of each game rather quickly. The included training modes are fun and a great way to improve your skills between games.
Tennis plays pretty much like the real thing, as the player holds and swings the Wii remote like a tennis racket. To serve, you flick the remote upwards and swing. To return the ball to your opponent, you swing the remote, creating a forehand or backhand swing, depending on your handedness. The actual game consists of a two on two doubles match with no option for singles play. On the field, the AI automatically moves your two characters to put you in the best position possible for returning the ball and the AI usually does a good job of getting you into position. These are likely design choices to simplify the game and make it more accessible. As a result, it does cause the game to lose a lot of strategic depth. You never have incredible accuracy or control over your swing, and the direction the ball goes in is entirely dependent on your timing.
Baseball is one of the deepest of the five sports, giving you the most accurate and deepest control over your swing and the pitch. Swinging the Wii remote like a baseball bat controls the swing and emulating an overhand swing controls the pitch, as you would expect. Timing and power of your swing is the key to knocking the ball out of the park and there is a bit of a learning curve to adjust to before you’ll be able to do that. Pitching is similarly deep, allowing you to choose from a number of different types of pitches. The standard fastball is performed by just making the overhand motion and you can throw curveballs, screwballs, and splitters by pressing and holding either the A button (screwball), B button (curveball) or both (splitter). You can also control the direction of the pitch, be it inside, outside, high or low by pressing and holding a direction on the d-pad. Each game consists of a three inning warm up instead of the traditional nine inning stretch of a real game. Unfortunately, this suffers from lack of depth in everything besides swinging and pitching, since that’s all you have control over. It really feels like he game is playing itself when the AI handles everything from catching fly balls, to running the bases. It almost seems like the length of time between making contact with the ball and it being caught controls how many bases you run. After a while of playing, you’ll be able to predict how far your character will run solely based on the time the ball is in the air. When you consider things like this, it almost feels like the game is playing itself whenever you aren’t actually throwing or taking a swing at the ball.
Golf is pretty weak in comparison to many of the sports in the collection, particularly due to the sometimes finicky controls. Holding the Wii remote down, pointed at the ground and swinging like you would a real golf club is simple enough, but swinging can be fussy at times. The game does detect your handedness and realigns your character accordingly, but doesn’t take into account which way you will actually swing the club, be it right or left. As a result, many accidental swings can result from simply setting up to make your swing. Swinging itself is rather difficult to control. On the screen is a power meter which is comprised of four dots at regular intervals, which appear on a minimap, and figuring out how hard you need to swing is a simple matter of figuring out which of the four dots you need to hit on the power meter. Simply swinging as hard as you can when driving for the fairway is not a wise course of action as the ball will automatically hook or slice. Getting a powerful shot without managing to max out the power meter and hooking or slicing the ball is rather difficult, particularly since, for some reason, the power meter continues to rise even after the ball has left the tee with any upward motion of the Wii remote until after a certain point. Once you grow accustomed to the controls, you will find nine holes of golf here, split into beginner, intermediate and expert courses. While they are all entertaining and rather challenging, one does begin to wish there were more than just nine holes to play on.
Bowling is perhaps the deepest and most entertaining sport of the bunch, because it plays well and has most of the strategic depth of the real thing. You start by holding the Wii remote directly in front of you, with it pointing straight up. To throw the ball, you hold the B button, and emulate the down, back and forward again motions of the real sport, releasing the B button again to send the ball down the lane. Twisting the Wii remote to the left or right as you throw the ball puts a spin on the ball, which you can counteract by moving your character to the right or left and changing the angle of your throw before making your approach.
Boxing, the only game to use the nunchuck attachment, is perhaps the weakest sport in the package simply because it’s generally unresponsive where it counts. Throwing punches. Your fighter moves in accordance to your movements with the Wii remote and nunchuck. Dodging punches by moving your character forward, backward or side to side are accomplished by moving the Wii remote and nunchuck in the appropriate direction. The position of the two controllers also govern your ability to block incoming hits and by moving them, your character will mimic the position of both controllers with their hands. Everything controls pretty well except for the one thing that should control best, the actual punching. Throwing punches is pretty unresponsive some times and really detracts from the entire experience. When the game does respond well to your movements and you begin to consistently land punches, it is fun and has a decent amount of depth, as you’ll have to actually aim your movements high and low to land head or body punches. In combination with the dodging and blocking movements, this could’ve been the best sport in the package, but its limited responsiveness also limits the fun.
The Mii avatars, which populate the game, add a bit of spice to the collection. At the outset, you’ll be asked to choose a Mii from your collection to pose as your virtual avatar when playing any of the sports or training modes. Statistics are saved to that Mii which include your Wii fitness age, records held in training games and your Wii Sports “level”. This level is measured in points. Performing well at each of the five sports gives you points towards your Mii’s level in whichever sport you’re currently playing. Performing poorly subtracts from your level so this gives players an incentive to practice and get good at each of the five sports. Once you exceed 1000 points, you gain “Pro” status, which, other than a “PRO” icon next to your name, doesn’t offer any real benefits, but it makes for a nice touch.
Another element of the game is the Wii Fitness training. This mode is similar to the “Brain Age Check” mode in the Nintendo DS game. The mode consists of three events, each one being one of the many training modes mentioned earlier. When the player completes all three games, the game measures your performance in the form of a Fitness “Age” ranging from the best possible age of 20 to the worst, 80.
The multiplayer in this game is pretty much what makes this game stand out. Up to four players can participate in tennis, golf and bowling and two can play boxing and baseball. Golf and bowling even support hotseat play using just one remote between up to four players. The multiplayer modes add a level of fun and interactivity that the solo modes just don’t have. It’s as if Nintendo clearly intended for players to play this game with their friends and family. It feels like it was made for multiplayer , which is certainly a good thing if you can manage to corral enough people to play alongside you.
In the end, even though this collection of sports titles may be a bit light on the simulation aspects of each sport and in turn loses a bit of depth because of it; it’s fun and accessible by nearly everyone. Even those who have never played a video game before in their lives can easily play and enjoy this one. Serious sports fans won’t get much enjoyment from these games but everyone else can find something to like. It’s a great pack in game and despite the feeling of playing a glorified tech demo; makes for a pretty fun game overall.
Graphics - 7
Gameplay - 7
Sound - 7
Value - 8
Tilt - 9
Overall Score: 7.8
Gears of War Review
Gears of War is probably the most hyped game this year. Since it was announced, and the first screenshots were debuted, the graphics were what took center stage every time it was shown. It was touted as one of the best looking games of all time. Its gameplay also received much praise due to its “stop and pop” play mechanics. Its multiplayer received massive amounts of hype due to its fast tactics and emphasis on teamwork. Hype is a funny thing. Excellent games benefit greatly from the hype, going down in history as one of the best games ever made. On the contrary, it can also instill expectations in people that it can never live up to, leaving the player disenfranchised and disappointed. Gears of War is one of the few games nowadays that merits every bit of the hype it accumulated.
The game takes place on the war torn planet of Sera fourteen years after the events of “Emergence Day” the day when the Locust horde arose from the depths of the planet, laying siege to its inhabitants. The main protagonist, Coalition of Ordered Governments soldier and general badass Marcus Fenix fought against the horde during that time but received a distress call from none other than is own father. Marcus promptly left his post, disobeying orders and going AWOL. After unsuccessfully trying to save his father, Marcus was arrested and sentenced to forty years in prison for his crimes. After four years of serving his time, Dominic Santiago, one of Fenix’s friends in the military broke him out of prison, telling him that he had received a conditional pardon to help fight the Locust horde.
The game begins in the prison, and the player has the option to go through a brief tutorial section, or jump right into the fight. The tutorial gives you the basics of the rather complicated control scheme. You quickly learn that the A button on the Xbox 360 controller is going to be your new best friend throughout the game as there are many important actions mapped to this one button. Hit the A button near a wall or anything that can be used as cover and your character will slam his back onto it. Once you’re in cover, pressing the A button again will cause you to leave cover. It’s pretty impressive to see how well the cover mechanic is worked into the gameplay. It transcends the level of a simple gimmick (a la the recent Perfect Dark Zero) and becomes an essential part of the gameplay.
This tutorial also introduces you to the “active reload” system. Once you hit the reload button, a meter appears with two small bars and one sliding along the meter. The key is to hit the reload button once more on the smallest zone, or the “sweet spot”. This causes you to reload your weapon much quicker and the bullets added to your clip begin to glow in the ammo counter, signifying that they cause much more damage than standard bullets. If you hit the reload button in the larger zone, you will get a much faster reload, but no damage boost. If you hit the button anywhere else on the meter, your weapon will jam, and will take much longer to reload. Of course, you can hit the reload button once and get a standard reload, but where’s the fun in that? The active reload system manages to add strategic depth to an otherwise mundane task in other shooters.
Holding the A button down causes you to begin the “roadie run” maneuver, which causes you to lower your head and begin running. The camera pulls back and a bit to the right as you begin running as if it were being held by someone running behind you. You cannot fire while roadie running and it obscures the view of things in front of you, so it’s mainly useful as a way to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.
As soon as you exit your prison cell and take control of Marcus Fenix for the first time, you’ll immediately see why this game has received a good portion of the massive hype it’s gained throughout its development…the incredible, eye melting, bleeding edge and whatever other adjective or phrase you can think of that’s synonymous with amazing. Gears of War is the best looking game on shelves this year and will remain that way for some time. It’s just that good. The attention to detail is simply phenomenal. Everything in the environment is detailed to an insane degree. The visually diverse environments all share the “destroyed beauty” theme. You’ll traverse the now bombed out remains of buildings and homes, a stunning underground mine alight with the glow of the “imulsion” rivers that flow there, to a dark, rain-soaked forest, alight with the eerie glow of the moonlight. There is also some great use of subtle motion blur as you’re roadie running or make sharp turns in any direction. The explosion and smoke effect are also worthy of praise, as you’ll find yourself using smoke grenades very often to throw off your enemies.
There is a substantial amount of blood and gore in this game, whether you’re blasting an opponent to bits with a close up shotgun blast, shooting them with a sniper rifle, causing their head to explode in a fountain of thick red blood and bits of skull, or sawing them in half with the chainsaw, you’ll quickly realize that this was intended for mature audiences only. Blood often splatters on the screen, during one of the chainsaw kills and after taking a buckshot round in singleplayer. This is one game that has to be seen in motion to be truly appreciated and there is no game on the Xbox 360 that flexes its graphical muscle better.
Gears of War ramps up the intensity to high levels from the outset of the campaign and it doesn’t let up until the final credits roll. Despite its incredible intensity, Gears of War not your average run and gun shooter that rewards running around, guns-a-blazing. The action is not constant, but on higher difficulty levels, you’ll be very happy with the breaks. Enemy confrontations are exciting and challenging, assuming you’re playing this on the “Hardcore” difficulty.
As a side note on the difficulty, there are two difficulty settings to choose from at the outset. The Casual difficulty is incredibly easy in comparison to the Hardcore difficulty. There isn’t much of a balance between the two. The jump from Casual to Hardcore is similar to the difference between easy and hard in most shooters. After you’ve gone through the game once, you unlock the “Insane” difficulty, which truly deserves its name. The challenge ramps up significantly, as enemies do even more damage and are even smarter than before, resulting in even quicker deaths if you don’t take cover quickly and effectively. The AI is pretty good, but really unbalanced. The enemies are reasonably smart executing flanking maneuvers, taking cover when they need to and most of the time, don’t charge idiotically into a hailstorm of bullets. You teammates on the other hand, not so much. You’ll often see them go down in heated battles, dependent on you to save them. Thankfully, the majority of the time, they cannot be killed and instantly revive once the battle is over.
The single player campaign is a bit on the short side, spanning about eight to twelve hours, depending on difficulty. In an effort to add replay value, there are a few instances when you encounter a proverbial fork in the road and you’ll have the choice between two paths. The paths are diverse enough most of the time to warrant multiple playthoughs so it makes for a nice touch.
The story itself is one of the game’s low points. Without a good understanding of the game’s back story, much of the story will be lost on you and what there is, is pretty confusing. The story is told well through the excellent movie quality cutscenes (particularly one scene near the end of Act 1) and although the dialogue is rather dry and campy, the voice actors work well with what they were given. The characters mesh with each other pretty well, and you’ll notice the genuine bond they develop throughout the game but like the story itself, they don’t have much depth. The ending is a bit lackluster, as it leaves the player wanting much more. It sets up well for a sequel, but doesn’t stand well on its own.
One of the strengths of Gears of War is its rather varied weapon selection. The standard array of weapons is present, ranging from the Lancer assault rifle, the shotgun, the pistol, frag and smoke grenades, a sniper rifle, and a rocket launcher (named the Boom Shot here). Unconventional weapons such as the Torque Bow and Hammer of Dawn are fun to use. The Torque Bow fires explosive tipped arrows that you must first charge by holding down the trigger. If you don’t hold the trigger down long prior to firing, the arrow will not penetrate your target and will likely bounce off. The Hammer of Dawn is unique among the other weapons, in the fact that it doesn’t actually fire a projectile of any kind but instead “paints” its target. Seconds later, the orbital laser rains down from the heavens in the form of a concentrated beam of energy, obliterating anything in its path.
The Lancer assault rifle is one of the most unconventional weapons in any game and will definitely go down in history as one of the best weapons in a videogame. Not because it functions uniquely as an assault rifle, but because of the so called “chainsaw bayonet” mounted on the end. Holding down the B button revs up the chainsaw, which creates one of the most intimidating sound effects in the game in a multiplayer situation. Revving the chainsaw and running up to an enemy starts a very gory, un-interactive cutscene in which you lower the chainsaw onto and through your opponent, causing blood to spray everywhere (even covering the camera) and instantly killing your unlucky victim in a most glorious fashion. It’s quite possibly the best use of a chainsaw in any game.
There is a decent variety of enemies, featuring the standard automatic rifle equipped grunts, your slightly more hardy shotgun carrying tough guys, the easy to kill and be killed by snipers, the ruthless and deadly Theron Guard, who wield the powerful and very deadly Torque Bow, the imposing and nearly bulletproof (seriously, it will take multiple clips to take these guys down on harder difficulties) “BoomShot” carrying Boomers, the incredibly powerful and nearly indestructible berserkers and what’s sure to become the bane of players everywhere, the Wretches. As soon as you hear their trademark piercing shriek for the first time, you’ll wish you’ll never have to hear it again. They charge toward you incredibly fast, unbecoming of the type of shooter this is, and not fitting with the game's relatively slow pace. Their rather frequent appearance really upsets the balance and is a constant annoyance, especially in the later levels when you encounter the "imulsified" variants, which explode once killed. On the Hardcore and Insane difficulties, these explosions can instantly kill you adding to the annoyance if you find yourself dead at the hands of a close range wretch explosion.
The Multiplayer experience in Gears of War is the reason you’ll continue playing this game long after you’ve finished the main campaign. As exciting as it is, the single player experience simply doesn’t compare to the intensity and fast tactics of the multiplayer modes. Epic, experienced in creating entertaining and exciting multiplayer shooters, demonstrates once more that they know how to create a well balanced and thoroughly entertaining suite of multiplayer modes.
Even the campaign mode benefits from the multiplayer touch. At any time while you’re playing the solo campaign mode you can either plug in a second controller for splitscreen play or invite a friend to join your game via Xbox Live. When the second player joins the game, they take control of Dominic. This makes the battles even faster and more intense. You’ll probably notice early on that you now have the option to revive your partner once they go down as you would the computer in the solo game. That is unless the character is instantly killed by an explosion, point blank shotgun blast to the face, chainsaw, etc. or you’ve been separated from your partner during one of the few sections in which you have the choice between two paths. Going through the campaign with a friend is great fun, as you set up flanking maneuvers, point out enemy hotspots and watch each other’s back.
The biggest draw however is the three versus modes. While splitscreen play is awfully limited in design (only offering play for two people), the system link and online modes are much more robust. There are three versus gametypes to choose from, but they share a few things in common. There is an eight player limit, are all team based and you only have one life per round. Once you die, it’s off to the dead channel for the remainder of the round, where you can watch the duration of the round and chat with the other players who have died (regardless of which team they’re on).
When you begin searching for or hosting a match, you have the three gametypes to choose from. Warzone is your straightforward team deathmatch. Execution differs from Warzone in the fact that you have to perform an instant kill (chainsaw, grenade tag, etc.) or close up execution to your foe once they’re in the bleeding out stage in the form of a point blank pistol bullet to the head, curb stomp or otherwise and long range shots will do no damage. If you don’t perform an execution, they will recover from the bleeding out stage and rejoin the fight. Assassination requires your team to kill the other team’s “leader” to win the match. Once the leader is killed, the round is over.
The play balance, while good overall, could use a few tweaks to make it truly shine. First off, the Lancer assault rifle which is automatically equipped at the beginning of each round is a favorite among many players for its instant kill potential via the chainsaw bayonet. Some players rely on it entirely to rack up kills. Thus, if you see someone running towards you with the chainsaw revved and you’re not quick on the draw, or extremely lucky, you might find yourself on the wrong end of a chainsaw attack. Most of the time, shooting them before they get within slicing range will cause them to stagger backwards and stop their attack, sometimes allowing you to get a quick kill. I say most of the time because on occasion, I’ve shot my opponent point blank with a shotgun or another weapon and they’ve still managed to get the attack.
Overall, the multiplayer is an incredible experience and really demonstrates Epic’s knowledge and experience creating great multiplayer games. It demands teamwork, is visceral and fun, and highly competitive. There are a few issues with play balance, the rather low player limit, and longevity in the form of the game’s lack of traditional multiplayer modes, but these issues aren’t at all game breaking and likely won’t hamper your enjoyment of this excellent multiplayer experience.
In the end, Gears of War lives up to the enormous hype it accumulated over the course of its development. The graphics are everything they were promised to be and stand out as a showpiece for the Xbox 360. The single player campaign is a bit short, but satisfying all the same. The story is a bit convoluted and could’ve been fleshed out a lot more than it was. The multiplayer experience is simply awesome and shows that Epic truly knows how to make a multiplayer game work. Gears of War is overall an excellent and well polished game. Its few flaws are easily overlooked and in the end, it’s a great addition to the Xbox 360’s library.
Graphics - 10
Gameplay - 9
Sound - 9
Value - 9
Tilt - 10
Overall Score: 9.5
The game takes place on the war torn planet of Sera fourteen years after the events of “Emergence Day” the day when the Locust horde arose from the depths of the planet, laying siege to its inhabitants. The main protagonist, Coalition of Ordered Governments soldier and general badass Marcus Fenix fought against the horde during that time but received a distress call from none other than is own father. Marcus promptly left his post, disobeying orders and going AWOL. After unsuccessfully trying to save his father, Marcus was arrested and sentenced to forty years in prison for his crimes. After four years of serving his time, Dominic Santiago, one of Fenix’s friends in the military broke him out of prison, telling him that he had received a conditional pardon to help fight the Locust horde.
The game begins in the prison, and the player has the option to go through a brief tutorial section, or jump right into the fight. The tutorial gives you the basics of the rather complicated control scheme. You quickly learn that the A button on the Xbox 360 controller is going to be your new best friend throughout the game as there are many important actions mapped to this one button. Hit the A button near a wall or anything that can be used as cover and your character will slam his back onto it. Once you’re in cover, pressing the A button again will cause you to leave cover. It’s pretty impressive to see how well the cover mechanic is worked into the gameplay. It transcends the level of a simple gimmick (a la the recent Perfect Dark Zero) and becomes an essential part of the gameplay.
This tutorial also introduces you to the “active reload” system. Once you hit the reload button, a meter appears with two small bars and one sliding along the meter. The key is to hit the reload button once more on the smallest zone, or the “sweet spot”. This causes you to reload your weapon much quicker and the bullets added to your clip begin to glow in the ammo counter, signifying that they cause much more damage than standard bullets. If you hit the reload button in the larger zone, you will get a much faster reload, but no damage boost. If you hit the button anywhere else on the meter, your weapon will jam, and will take much longer to reload. Of course, you can hit the reload button once and get a standard reload, but where’s the fun in that? The active reload system manages to add strategic depth to an otherwise mundane task in other shooters.
Holding the A button down causes you to begin the “roadie run” maneuver, which causes you to lower your head and begin running. The camera pulls back and a bit to the right as you begin running as if it were being held by someone running behind you. You cannot fire while roadie running and it obscures the view of things in front of you, so it’s mainly useful as a way to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.
As soon as you exit your prison cell and take control of Marcus Fenix for the first time, you’ll immediately see why this game has received a good portion of the massive hype it’s gained throughout its development…the incredible, eye melting, bleeding edge and whatever other adjective or phrase you can think of that’s synonymous with amazing. Gears of War is the best looking game on shelves this year and will remain that way for some time. It’s just that good. The attention to detail is simply phenomenal. Everything in the environment is detailed to an insane degree. The visually diverse environments all share the “destroyed beauty” theme. You’ll traverse the now bombed out remains of buildings and homes, a stunning underground mine alight with the glow of the “imulsion” rivers that flow there, to a dark, rain-soaked forest, alight with the eerie glow of the moonlight. There is also some great use of subtle motion blur as you’re roadie running or make sharp turns in any direction. The explosion and smoke effect are also worthy of praise, as you’ll find yourself using smoke grenades very often to throw off your enemies.
There is a substantial amount of blood and gore in this game, whether you’re blasting an opponent to bits with a close up shotgun blast, shooting them with a sniper rifle, causing their head to explode in a fountain of thick red blood and bits of skull, or sawing them in half with the chainsaw, you’ll quickly realize that this was intended for mature audiences only. Blood often splatters on the screen, during one of the chainsaw kills and after taking a buckshot round in singleplayer. This is one game that has to be seen in motion to be truly appreciated and there is no game on the Xbox 360 that flexes its graphical muscle better.
Gears of War ramps up the intensity to high levels from the outset of the campaign and it doesn’t let up until the final credits roll. Despite its incredible intensity, Gears of War not your average run and gun shooter that rewards running around, guns-a-blazing. The action is not constant, but on higher difficulty levels, you’ll be very happy with the breaks. Enemy confrontations are exciting and challenging, assuming you’re playing this on the “Hardcore” difficulty.
As a side note on the difficulty, there are two difficulty settings to choose from at the outset. The Casual difficulty is incredibly easy in comparison to the Hardcore difficulty. There isn’t much of a balance between the two. The jump from Casual to Hardcore is similar to the difference between easy and hard in most shooters. After you’ve gone through the game once, you unlock the “Insane” difficulty, which truly deserves its name. The challenge ramps up significantly, as enemies do even more damage and are even smarter than before, resulting in even quicker deaths if you don’t take cover quickly and effectively. The AI is pretty good, but really unbalanced. The enemies are reasonably smart executing flanking maneuvers, taking cover when they need to and most of the time, don’t charge idiotically into a hailstorm of bullets. You teammates on the other hand, not so much. You’ll often see them go down in heated battles, dependent on you to save them. Thankfully, the majority of the time, they cannot be killed and instantly revive once the battle is over.
The single player campaign is a bit on the short side, spanning about eight to twelve hours, depending on difficulty. In an effort to add replay value, there are a few instances when you encounter a proverbial fork in the road and you’ll have the choice between two paths. The paths are diverse enough most of the time to warrant multiple playthoughs so it makes for a nice touch.
The story itself is one of the game’s low points. Without a good understanding of the game’s back story, much of the story will be lost on you and what there is, is pretty confusing. The story is told well through the excellent movie quality cutscenes (particularly one scene near the end of Act 1) and although the dialogue is rather dry and campy, the voice actors work well with what they were given. The characters mesh with each other pretty well, and you’ll notice the genuine bond they develop throughout the game but like the story itself, they don’t have much depth. The ending is a bit lackluster, as it leaves the player wanting much more. It sets up well for a sequel, but doesn’t stand well on its own.
One of the strengths of Gears of War is its rather varied weapon selection. The standard array of weapons is present, ranging from the Lancer assault rifle, the shotgun, the pistol, frag and smoke grenades, a sniper rifle, and a rocket launcher (named the Boom Shot here). Unconventional weapons such as the Torque Bow and Hammer of Dawn are fun to use. The Torque Bow fires explosive tipped arrows that you must first charge by holding down the trigger. If you don’t hold the trigger down long prior to firing, the arrow will not penetrate your target and will likely bounce off. The Hammer of Dawn is unique among the other weapons, in the fact that it doesn’t actually fire a projectile of any kind but instead “paints” its target. Seconds later, the orbital laser rains down from the heavens in the form of a concentrated beam of energy, obliterating anything in its path.
The Lancer assault rifle is one of the most unconventional weapons in any game and will definitely go down in history as one of the best weapons in a videogame. Not because it functions uniquely as an assault rifle, but because of the so called “chainsaw bayonet” mounted on the end. Holding down the B button revs up the chainsaw, which creates one of the most intimidating sound effects in the game in a multiplayer situation. Revving the chainsaw and running up to an enemy starts a very gory, un-interactive cutscene in which you lower the chainsaw onto and through your opponent, causing blood to spray everywhere (even covering the camera) and instantly killing your unlucky victim in a most glorious fashion. It’s quite possibly the best use of a chainsaw in any game.
There is a decent variety of enemies, featuring the standard automatic rifle equipped grunts, your slightly more hardy shotgun carrying tough guys, the easy to kill and be killed by snipers, the ruthless and deadly Theron Guard, who wield the powerful and very deadly Torque Bow, the imposing and nearly bulletproof (seriously, it will take multiple clips to take these guys down on harder difficulties) “BoomShot” carrying Boomers, the incredibly powerful and nearly indestructible berserkers and what’s sure to become the bane of players everywhere, the Wretches. As soon as you hear their trademark piercing shriek for the first time, you’ll wish you’ll never have to hear it again. They charge toward you incredibly fast, unbecoming of the type of shooter this is, and not fitting with the game's relatively slow pace. Their rather frequent appearance really upsets the balance and is a constant annoyance, especially in the later levels when you encounter the "imulsified" variants, which explode once killed. On the Hardcore and Insane difficulties, these explosions can instantly kill you adding to the annoyance if you find yourself dead at the hands of a close range wretch explosion.
The Multiplayer experience in Gears of War is the reason you’ll continue playing this game long after you’ve finished the main campaign. As exciting as it is, the single player experience simply doesn’t compare to the intensity and fast tactics of the multiplayer modes. Epic, experienced in creating entertaining and exciting multiplayer shooters, demonstrates once more that they know how to create a well balanced and thoroughly entertaining suite of multiplayer modes.
Even the campaign mode benefits from the multiplayer touch. At any time while you’re playing the solo campaign mode you can either plug in a second controller for splitscreen play or invite a friend to join your game via Xbox Live. When the second player joins the game, they take control of Dominic. This makes the battles even faster and more intense. You’ll probably notice early on that you now have the option to revive your partner once they go down as you would the computer in the solo game. That is unless the character is instantly killed by an explosion, point blank shotgun blast to the face, chainsaw, etc. or you’ve been separated from your partner during one of the few sections in which you have the choice between two paths. Going through the campaign with a friend is great fun, as you set up flanking maneuvers, point out enemy hotspots and watch each other’s back.
The biggest draw however is the three versus modes. While splitscreen play is awfully limited in design (only offering play for two people), the system link and online modes are much more robust. There are three versus gametypes to choose from, but they share a few things in common. There is an eight player limit, are all team based and you only have one life per round. Once you die, it’s off to the dead channel for the remainder of the round, where you can watch the duration of the round and chat with the other players who have died (regardless of which team they’re on).
When you begin searching for or hosting a match, you have the three gametypes to choose from. Warzone is your straightforward team deathmatch. Execution differs from Warzone in the fact that you have to perform an instant kill (chainsaw, grenade tag, etc.) or close up execution to your foe once they’re in the bleeding out stage in the form of a point blank pistol bullet to the head, curb stomp or otherwise and long range shots will do no damage. If you don’t perform an execution, they will recover from the bleeding out stage and rejoin the fight. Assassination requires your team to kill the other team’s “leader” to win the match. Once the leader is killed, the round is over.
The play balance, while good overall, could use a few tweaks to make it truly shine. First off, the Lancer assault rifle which is automatically equipped at the beginning of each round is a favorite among many players for its instant kill potential via the chainsaw bayonet. Some players rely on it entirely to rack up kills. Thus, if you see someone running towards you with the chainsaw revved and you’re not quick on the draw, or extremely lucky, you might find yourself on the wrong end of a chainsaw attack. Most of the time, shooting them before they get within slicing range will cause them to stagger backwards and stop their attack, sometimes allowing you to get a quick kill. I say most of the time because on occasion, I’ve shot my opponent point blank with a shotgun or another weapon and they’ve still managed to get the attack.
Overall, the multiplayer is an incredible experience and really demonstrates Epic’s knowledge and experience creating great multiplayer games. It demands teamwork, is visceral and fun, and highly competitive. There are a few issues with play balance, the rather low player limit, and longevity in the form of the game’s lack of traditional multiplayer modes, but these issues aren’t at all game breaking and likely won’t hamper your enjoyment of this excellent multiplayer experience.
In the end, Gears of War lives up to the enormous hype it accumulated over the course of its development. The graphics are everything they were promised to be and stand out as a showpiece for the Xbox 360. The single player campaign is a bit short, but satisfying all the same. The story is a bit convoluted and could’ve been fleshed out a lot more than it was. The multiplayer experience is simply awesome and shows that Epic truly knows how to make a multiplayer game work. Gears of War is overall an excellent and well polished game. Its few flaws are easily overlooked and in the end, it’s a great addition to the Xbox 360’s library.
Graphics - 10
Gameplay - 9
Sound - 9
Value - 9
Tilt - 10
Overall Score: 9.5
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