I can remember it like it was yesterday. The XBOX 360 had around 30 games and the PSN had around 10. We hadn’t played Bioshock yet, and the motion control craze had not even begun. Things were different back then…
I can hardly remember playing Gears of War campaign. I don’t think there was even a website with my name on it back then. I remember loving playing the multiplayer with my friends from my ex-employer, XBOX Evolved. But I really wasn’t feeling the campaign. In fact, after the bud had fallen from the rose of the multiplayer, I never touched another Gears of War game again.
Then I had a chance to play the Gears of War 3 Beta and I jumped at it. After I’d played the Beta for the entire period; I decided to try and play the whole series, in preparation for playing #3 when it arrives. Well, apparently 5 years makes all the difference.
Upon playing Gears of War again, I found the campaign incredibly interesting. While the story wasn’t anything special, it was comparable to something like Call of Duty. But the real star of this game are the gameplay and sound design. Each area in the game was incredibly well designed, enemies coming from not just one place but multiple places. These aren’t exactly monster closets, at least most of the time. But rather, in most cases; a logical place where enemies would be coming from. There were some great scenes with the Reavers where you had to straddle light sources to move across the map and survive. There were also some incredible instances where you had to get to the end of the level in a certain time. This was awesome, because there would be real situations where you couldn’t just sit in cover and shoot guys forever. One would actually have to escape before terrible things happen.
The sound design was amazing. Locusts would make guttural noises at the right time in the right place. I’m completely in love with the chainsaw sounds that are so wonderfully accurate in all the Gears games. I loved the interactions between characters, and music that fits perfectly into all most every situation. This was prior to Bioshock’s industry setting sound design; but this was definitely a really good step toward that level of perfection and polish.
What I found most impressive about Gears of War is that today, as someone who has played a lot of video games in the past 5 years; the game holds up. If someone put this game out tomorrow, it would probably get a 7 or 8 out of 10. Other than Halo, I wouldn’t want to try that with any other game. There really is very little here that could be considered dated or backward in a technological sense. Some of the character models, could be better. But that is a very small thing in the end. Even the kind of arena map style design can still be seen today in many modern games. This isn’t saying that, it’s great; but the design is still being used today. While the multiplayer matchmaking system and style is dated. The actual multiplayer is still good. And Gears was the first game on the consoles to have full campaign co-op which many games don’t have today. Makes this game an incredible milestone in the history of video games and something that even another ten years from now, could be pointed to as a great game.
I have to say that this series just keeps getting better and I can’t wait to play Gears of War 2. As it is supposed to be even better than #1. Back in the day, if asked I would have given Gears of War a 7/10. But today, I would give the game a 9/10. I guess some things really do get better with age.
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