GameScore:9
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Editors Plus Rating: +.5
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Back before the launch of the Xbox 360 Microsoft showed us this futuristic sci-fi shooter that was called "Gears of War" at E3 2005. The title featured graphics unlike anything we had ever seen and it was being developed by Unreal Tournament developer Epic Games.
Gears of War quickly became the most anticipated game for the Xbox 360. Epic would not give us a release date however,all they would say was "Emergence Day 2006".

Well Emergence Day did finally arrive and Gears of War was released. This title is a futuristic-third person-action-horror-shooter. You play as Marcus Fenix,a man who has been thrown in prison for treason and basically left for dead until your best friend Dominic comes to break you out.

The planet you are on is called "Sera" and it is being overrun by aliens from underground,these aliens are only known as the "Locusts".
This part of the game is where you will take over. You will start the game off in the prison level where your mission is to make it to your chopper and get out alive.

Right from the beginning you will be blown away from the graphics of Gears of War. Epic has used their brand new next gen graphics engine for this title,the Unreal Engine 3.
Never before have we seen graphic quality of this caliber on any game. Gears of War will take away any doubt somebody might have about what the Xbox 360 is capable of. The character models are very well built and designed and the level of detail in the environments is astonishing.
Epic has spared no expense on the level of detail in this game and it definately shows.

Gears of War is what the lead designer of Gears "Cliffy B" calls a "stop and pop" shooter meaning that taking cover behind objects is crucial. You can not play this game like a run and gun shooter or you will be dead very fast. Epic has done a very good job at making sure that this game is easy to pick and play, you tap A to take cover, while in cover you press L trigger to aim and R trigger to fire. You can also do moves such as the swat turn and barrel roll which are also done easily and can be extremely helpful during the heat of battle. A nice touch the developer added to the game is the "Active Reload" system.

During a firefight when your clip gets low hit the right bumper on the 360 controller and this will bring up sort of a mini game where you will have to stop a meter in a certain place while Marcus reloads,if you are successful your reload will be much faster and your shots will inflict more damage. This is optional but really useful.

When you defeat the locusts and complete the single player campaign you can hop on Xbox Live and compete on one of the ten multiplayer maps in one of the three game modes,Execution,Warzone and Assassination.
Gears of war supports up to eight players online,that may sound small but do not fret since this is the perfect amount of players for the size of the maps Gears has.
The multiplayer modes are fun and very addicting allowing players to play as the Locusts or the COG (the good guys). Multiplayer adds alot of replayability to the game since the single player campaign only clocks in at around 8 to 12 hours depending on which of the three difficulty levels you pick,Casual,Hardcore or Insane.

Gears of War definately lives up to the huge amount of hype that the game built up prior to it's release.
It features unbelievably good graphics,fun and intuitive gameplay and extremely addictive multiplayer game modes.
The game has been selling well, it's preorders were second only to Halo 2.
And with a Trilogy Confirmed. This is the must have Xbox 360 game for the holidays. Gears of War will without a doubt sell alot of Xbox 360 consoles for quite a while!