Ok so I was lucky enough to get to play gears of war last week at the Match Made in Hell Event hosted by gamerscoreblog.com/Microsoft and New Line Cinemas at the Metreon in San Francisco. First we got to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Begging a few days before it came out. And then we go to take turns playing in 8 man Team Deathmatch Games in GoW. Great Combo! A movie about killing with chainsaws and a game where you have a chainsaw on the end of your gun. The movie was actually pretty good, it had more storyline to it than the first one. It actually tells you how the family came to be the way they are including the sheriff and LeatherFace. But onto the good stuff...

Gears of War exceeded every expectation I could ever have. I have to say without a doubt it is one of the best shooters I have ever played, and by far the best on console in my opinion. Gears is in 3rd person which I did not think I would like but I have to say this is the first shooter ever that I actually ended up appreciating the 3rd person perspective. The game relies heavily on your character taking cover behind any and all objects. The 3rd person view really helps as you can tell which parts of your body are exposed. The game looks amazing, the graphics are head and shoulders above anything else I have seen in a shooter. The character animations are also amazing to watch. Half the time I would just end up watching how my character moved from cover to cover in the game. It felt like watching a movie sometimes. The weapons are great, if you are the CoG (Humans) your main machine gun as mentioned above has a chainsaw blade attached to it. The chainsaw requires that you charge it for a second, and if you get shot it restarts the charge. So this is not a weapon to go chasing after enemies with. In fact it is best used as a finisher. When an opponents life reaches near death, the hunch over and cannot move. During this time an ally can revive them (up to 3 times in one match I believe) but if you get to them first you can do a few different finishing move on them. You can blow their head off, or even more satisfying you can chainsaw them. The animation for the chainsaw kill is great and literally covers the screen in blood. You also have grenades, which work very well thanks to the fact that when holding one it shows you the bounce path it will take so you can aim very precisely with it. This is great for closing the Locust Hordes emergence holes. The shotgun is a BLAST literally. But my favorite by far is the Bow. The bow has arrow heads that have a delayed explosive on them. Similar to the grenade the bow shows you the path the arrow is going to take. The longer you pull back on the bow the straighter and farther the arrow will fly. Besides just using it to blow up your enemies(one shot kill BOOM!), you can also use it to get splash damage on enemies that are near it. If you know an enemy is behind a piece of cover, stick and arrow in the ground just behind it and see how quick they come jumping out. Also one move that I saw the was a great idea was sticking the arrow in a wall right between two enemies that were standing side by side. The explosion damaged both of them.

The game is definitely a tactical shooter, you must make heavy use of cover to survive. Also it is best to stay in groups of at least two people as you can revive each other using the x button on the controller. If you get caught alone chances are you are toast (the exploding kind). You can shoot from cover as well. In the game by default when you shoot there is no crosshair. If you want to aim with crosshairs you need to hold in the left trigger. This can be handy because when behind cover I can shoot by just holding my gun above my head and shooting over the cover. If you hold down the left trigger to aim, your character will rise up enough above the cover to see. To take cover behind an object you simply walk to it and hit A, this will iether make you duck behind it or if it is a wall you will flatten against it. When you are in cover and there is another cover object near by you can just hit toward it and your character will duck from one cover spot to the next. Also when behind low cover object like rocks, low walls, etc... you can hit forward and A to jump over the cover. The controls are pretty standard, Right Trigger Shoots, Left Trigger Aims, Right Shoulder Reloads(More on this below), D-Pad changes weapons, X button revives allies and performs death moves on enemies and has some other uses I forget, B button charges the chainsaw for the death move. There is a mini game in gears of war that will definitely help if you master it, the Active Reload, you have a bar that represents your ammo and if you time your reload correctly the game rewards you by temporarily boosting your weapons damage output. If I remember correctly they said it was about 30% damage bonus, enough to make it well worth mastering.

Alright so time for me to go to work, I am in Jackson Mississippi this week and will be in Las Colinas Texas next week. I can't wait for this game to come out. I will be out for 3 months starting Nov. 1st due to ankle surgery and since this game is coming early Nov(the date got moved up, not the 12th anymore, I think the 7th or 8th), I will have plenty to keep me entertained.

Later....