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Think back to when you were a kid and the latest greatest videogame came out, featuring some new graphical or technological advance that seemed so mind-blowing at the time. You marveled at things like 16-bit graphics or a controller with three buttons on it. Now you can do two different attacks! Oh my god, his head is made out of, like 20 pixels! Now imagine getting into a time machine with your Xbox 360, an HDTV and your copy of Gears of War, traveling back to your youth and showing the adolescent version of you what videogames have become in just 20 short years. The visual experience of Gears of War is so unbelievable, Retro-you would probably think the whole thing is a trick. It would be like trying to explain quantum mechanics to a caveman.

But the graphics of Epic Games’ masterpiece for the 360 are not the only thing pushing this game in to the upper strata of all-time great games (yeah, I said it.) Anyone with a high-powered graphics engine – like the Epic-created Unreal 3 engine – and a ton of money – like Microsoft’s fat roll – can make a gorgeously lifelike-looking game. But Epic’s Cliffy B knows that gamers of today aren’t just satisfied with hot graphics. It’s all about the gameplay, and Gears of War delivers in that department so completely that it wouldn’t matter if you were playing the game in 16 bit graphics. But you’re not. And Gears of War’s glorious presentation - everything from the sound effects to the art direction to the awesomely dark storyline – only enhances what lies at the heart of Gears’ destroyed beauty: the gameplay.

The developers call it “stop and pop”, because that’s how you move through environments, stopping behind cover – everything from boulders to collapsed columns to dusty furniture in grand abandoned mansions – and popping your head around and over to take shots at the grotesque yet humanoid enemies known as the Locust. Simply running around levels, circle strafing enemies or running directly up into their faces to chainsaw them to death is going to get you killed more often than not. Although pulling off a successful chainsaw move is almost worth dieing a couple times.

The plot is a fairly simple one, yet very effective. You are Marcus Fenix, a battle-tested soldier in the elite C.O.G unit who has fallen from grace for an event that is still shrouded in mystery. Maybe we’ll find out more in the inevitable sequel. But either way, you begin the game in prison, where your buddy Dom comes to break you out to help the C.O.G. take one last stab at defeating the subterranean invasion of the Locust which has reduced the utopian earth-like world of Sera into rubble.

Dom will be by your side throughout the game, even during co-op and a number of other C.O.G. soldiers, each with his own unique personality will make their way in and out of your squad over the duration. You’ll have some basic control over the squad, telling them to advance or hold back, but for the most part they handle their own business. It’s a good thing their A.I. is so well programmed, because the A.I. of the Locust enemies is pretty whip smart too. They are programmed to use cover as much as you need to and they’ll flank and use other tactics to stop your advance. As a result the game feels less like the shooting gallery that so many other shooters do, and more like a series of intense firefights with enemy squads. Which is exactly what it should feel like.

Gears starts to feel a little more like a traditional shooter once you boot up the multiplayer mode. Featuring straight up 4-on-4 action, the modes are slight variations on team deathmatch. Still, they should be a blast over Xbox Live, as much of a blast as playing through the entire game in co-op mode over Xbox Live is.

All told, Gears of War is doubtlessly the best game in the short life of the Xbox 360, and might very well hold that title for a long time, maybe even after the release of Halo 3. It’s also reaches the pantheon of one of the greatest games of all time, only to be surpassed someday by its superior sequels. Or at least we hope so. Microsoft’s got a real thoroughbred in its stable and we expect them to let us lucky gamers ride this baby for years to come.  

Article by: Tom Price

Video produced by: Tom Price and Matt Keil