I have been a PlayStation fan for years. I love playing the wonderful exclusives like Bloodborne, The Last of Us, and Horizon Zero Dawn have kept me captivated in the Sony ecosystem for the majority of my gaming life and until recently that has changed. I finally decided to pull the trigger on an Xbox One X to finally play through some iconic gaming franchises like Halo, Gears of War and Forza. Ultimately, I decided to just start with the first Gears game.

Initially, I had little interest in this series for an admittedly petty reason, I didn’t like the frat boy nature of the characters in the snippets of gameplay I had experienced and wondered if they were going to evolve into something a little more nuanced and relatable. However, as I played throughout the 10-hour campaign I found myself slowly warming up to the characters. I also had a blast with the (at times) intense gunplay and grew a little more excited to watch this world expand and see how the lore and characters will grow through the rest of the series.

My thoughts on the characters never really changed as I finished the game, even if I did warm up to them, I just couldn’t find myself caring about any of the one-note characters. For example, there is “let’s blow things up” Cole, angry jaded soldier Marcus, Baird who was an insufferable whiny character who hated Marcus for seemingly no reason, and Dominic who is I guess searching for his wife? The writers of Gears of War left the motivation of characters pretty much out entirely to focus on the action and the lore. As I mentioned above I didn’t really think I would love these characters and since there was no development or arcs I was right. I did not find myself caring in the slightest about anyone in delta squad and was wanting to quit due to the fact that I wasn’t enjoying the cast, but it was the lore and world-building that kept me around.

Gears of Wars’ story is a pretty standard linear shooter. Go map out the enemy base and destroy them once and for all to win the war, it’s nothing groundbreaking but the world is intriguing as the main enemy are a race of beings only known as “The Locus”. It is here that I find Gears does something a little more interesting. One day the Locus just appear and just start annihilating the human race for a mysterious reason, maybe it was for resources or maybe we encroached on their territory; the motive was unclear in the first game but it kept me wanting answers.

Gears of War likes to keep its typical linear corridor shooter feeling fresh and exciting by introducing the player to environmental hazards. In one instance I found myself in the pitch dark with a group of carnivorous bat-like creatures called “Kryll” who come out in swarms after sunset and can devour humans in seconds. To survive, you are forced to run to one small pool of light to another. This does a great job at creating a tense atmosphere that left my heart pounding and palms sweaty.

Other ways Gears likes to keep things fresh is having an active reload system. As you run low on ammunition you will time your reload, if you press the reload at the right time you are rewarded with extra damage and faster reloads, however, if you fail your gun will jam up and leave you vulnerable for attack. This helps players stay engaged in the combat and leaves you feeling more involved in the fights unlike other third-person shooters like Uncharted or Spec Ops.

I can’t really praise Gears of War for everything, as I had issues with the melee combat, audio cutting out, and unresponsive characters. The melee for some reason would only work around 10% of the time; I would get close with a locus and attempt to punch or use my chainsaw and would find it unresponsive. I did switch controllers, but that didn’t alleviate the issue. Marcus would at times not want to move in the right direction, and wouldn’t duck into cover leaving me to die a most frustrating death.

After finishing the campaign I tried out a bit of multiplayer and found myself enjoying the fast paced nature of the fights in the small arenas. Matchmaking wasn’t a big issue for me but with me not really being into multiplayer games (with few exceptions) I played three or four matches and didn’t really put any more thought into it afterwards.

Overall I did enjoy my time with Gears of War. I liked the intense engaging gunplay, the lore, and the potential of some great stories to come. I really had a blast just fighting through hordes of Locus too. The technical issues were a bit of a detractor, but they never really soured my enjoyment; however, my biggest issues would have to be the characters and how none of them evolved as people or made my care about them in anyway. I look forward to playing the rest of the games for the lore and to see how they improved the mechanics. I hope to see Gears making delta squad a little more empathetic and relatable in future titles.

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Gears of War: Ultimate Edition

$19.99 USD

8

Score

8.0/10

Pros

• Intense Gameplay
• Smart environmental design
• Lore

Cons

• Technical Issues
• One note characters
• Generic soundtrack