Ever since its first trailer was released, Gears of War has been proclaimed by many to be the Xbox 360’s first true “killer app.” Considering the fact that it has become the highest selling 360 game at around 4 million units sold, the first game to surpass Halo 2 for the title of most played game on Xbox Live, and allowed the 360 to outsell its recently launched competition in the 2006 holiday season, it’s very hard to deny that claim. However, the question is not whether it is a killer app, but instead if it deserves to be a killer app. At first glance, I wasn’t too impressed.The graphics looked very good but it seemed like another generic shooter. I even felt the premise of the game was uninspired. A shooter about a large contingent of alien foes threatening the existence of humanity that appears on an Xbox console? Does that sound like something else we know? This led me to believe the game would be the perfect example for hype overshadowing quality in today’s game industry. Fortunately for us, I was wrong and its many similarities with Halo are a positive.

The first thing you may notice about this game is its accessibility. Within minutes of booting up the game, you will be blasting enemies left and right. There are no long cut scenes to watch or huge blocks of text to read. Unfortunately, this sacrifices the back story for the game and you may be left wondering who you’re exactly shooting or why you’re doing it. The one thing you will know, however, is that it’s fun. It doesn’t take long for you to realize this game is intense. Being forced to take cover while getting shot at from all sides greatly enhances the war-like atmosphere the game is trying to get across. The absolutely gorgeous graphics don’t hurt this aspect either. Even the simplest of kills gains you the utmost satisfaction as you see the blood squirt out of your enemies’ bodies as you spray them with your Lancer, the default weapon in the game. This satisfaction, however, doesn’t even compare to the enjoyment you’ll get from other possible kills this game allows you to do. The Lancer comes equipped with a chainsaw bayonet for melee attacks and it does not disappoint. Shredding your opponent in half and seeing their guts fly all over the place while you do it never gets old. Speaking of shredding, the troikas (turrets) in this game do it just as well since any enemy which crosses their paths will turn into tiny bits of biological matter. Blowing a hole through an enemy’s chest with a shotgun only to see the rest of the body just collapse on the floor into pieces isn’t bad either. Neither is getting a head shot with a sniper rifle and seeing what was a head transform into a combination of blood, brain particles, and eyeballs that pops up and falls on the floor. Don’t be fooled, however, since this is not your typical shooter. As mentioned earlier, ducking for cover in essential for survival in every situation, and this game will make that clear since the beginning. Running and gunning will not only make you an easy target but will also lower your accuracy a great amount. At first it seems this decrease the pace of the game and make it more tedious. Instead, it proves to be game’s greatest achievement. Watching the carnage unfold in front of you as you take cover behind a giant rock, occasionally popping out to murder your enemies, is just plain beautiful.

This is also where its many similarities with Halo come in. What made Halo popular was not the fact that it was something gamers have never seen before, but instead combined good elements from previous series while adding very subtle innovations of its own. The same can be said for Gears of War. If one had followed games fairly closely in the past few years, they would remember a game called Killswitch. This game stressed the duck and cover mechanic several years before Gears of War was announced. However, shallow gameplay led it to become a fairly forgettable title. Gears of War, on the other hand, has made it work beautifully. Two words you may have noticed in this review that I cannot stress more are intensity and satisfaction. The intensity the game creates and the satisfaction of progressing through it is what makes Gears of War a lot more memorable than Killswitch. Even Gears of War’s enemy designs and weapons aren’t really that unique. The enemies in Gears of War can be directly correlated to the enemies in Halo (wretches = grunts, drones = elites, boomers = hunters and so on), however, once again every fight with these enemies is intense and satisfying. One particular battle with a Corpser is quite possibly one of the greatest moments in any shooter. The weapons in this game are also your typical pistol, rifle, sniper, shotgun set barring two notable and remarkable exceptions. The first one being the torque bow which launches an explosive arrow that detonates a few seconds after impact, making each kill worth watching. The second is the Hammer of Dawn, which is a satellite beam that fires down from the sky and burns anything it touches to a crisp. This just might go down in history as one of the best weapons ever in a video game. Again, intensity, satisfaction, and subtle innovations such as these new weapons and active reload (a system which actually makes reloading fun) are what really distinguishes this game from most others and gives it triple A status. Also like Halo, the game can be played cooperatively for double the fun. This feature is also available online so you can team up with anybody around the world.

Needless to say, the game is not perfect. Online multiplayer is present but it feels quite broken. Every adverserial match seems to become a shotgun-fest where getting kills seems like a coin flip (unless you’re host, in which case you’ll nearly always win). There is still some skill involved however, and this mode can add a ton of replay value to those who finish the single player rather quickly. This brings up another problem, the incredibly short length of the game. The game can be finished in less than ten hours and the harder difficulty modes, though fun, don’t really give you the urge to replay it again unless you’re craving some achievements. The upside to the short length is that the game is fun throughout and there is no forced gameplay that feels tedious, save for perhaps the driving level. The last problem is that this short game is culminated by a somewhat anti-climactic ending and a cliffhanger that may annoy some (another Halo similarity!). The one good thing about this is that it guarantees a sequel to this extraordinary game.