Wednesday, Ocotber 4th.  Pre-emergence day, day.  After watching a pre-release screening of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre:  The Beginning”.  The executive producer of Gears of War came out and took the audience through a little walkthrough of the opening level, afterwards provided us a chance to get our grimy little mitts on the game to try it for ourselves. The first thing that hit me about the game was the visuals.  This game IS next gen.  The levels are designed to look like a beautiful world that has pretty much been destroyed by these Locusts. 

I guess the story goes along the lines of our hero being broken out of prison in the opening level by a fellow character who seems to share a past with you and who will accompany you throughout the game.  All the humans that are left are trying to hold down a little piece of granite on a plateau, or something like that.  They’re all fighting these creatures that are emerging from the ground, and yep, you guessed it, it’s up to you and your buddy who rescued you to try and help save humanity.   The Locusts will pop out of the ground during levels through certain holes that have to be closed (think of Gauntlet) with a grenade; otherwise the Locusts will keep coming.

There is a co-op portion of the game that supports both offline, via split screen and online.  If you get stuck in a hard spot, you can even call in a buddy from your friends list to come in and help you out.  I thought that was a really great innovation, so to speak.  I mean, it’s not exactly new to gaming, but it is new to fps played over Xbox Live.  Another nice extra step they went was to make sure that when you are co-oping, your friend plays the part of the character that rescues you in the beginning.  So there won’t be any cut scenes involving two main characters, *cough halo *cough 

Movement 

Movement is very nicely done.  The A button pretty much does everything.  From a full out sprint, to ducking behind something sturdy for cover, to jumping out of the way of a grenade or incoming projectile.  It handles really well; it wasn’t hard to get to cover or out of cover.   They Y button is also used to help guide you.  A Y icon will flash and if you hit Y it’ll point you in the direction of where you need to be and other point of interest.

There are some great weapons in this game.  I wish I could remember the names of them all, but sadly I cannot.  I believe the chainsaw weapon is called the Lancer Rifle, and there was one other weapon in the middle of the map everyone kept going for.  It was sort of like an exploding projectile launching vertical crossbow, it was called the torque gun.  Aiming was simple, right trigger shoots, left one to aim.  I like how they implemented the grenade aiming reticule as well.  It would actually show you the line it would take and where it would land.  Sort of like Hot Shots golf, if you’ve ever played that. I also heard some people mention that you can actually run up and stick a grenade into an enemies back (the grenades are covered in spikes), I’m pretty sure the executive producer mentioned something about that too.

The Fun Stuff 

But...let’s get to the fun stuff.  The multi-player.  Now, when it was announced that the multi-player was going to be limited to 4v4 there were some outspoken people.  And those people did not like what Epic was doing.  However, after playing the multi-player, even if it was only 3 rounds, it seems very natural to have 4v4.  For starters, it’s more strategic then most games.  This became very apparent to me when I sat down and got owned because my teammates were all over the place and the enemy stuck together.  There is no health, if you’re down you can tap the A button to keep yourself alive while you bleed to death.  Then it’s up to your teammates to come over and revive you.  Oh, and if they don’t get to you quick enough, your enemy can come over to you and give you a nice little “curby ala “American History X” to quote the executive producer.  With a quick tap of the X button you will be stomping the life out of what’s left of your opponent.  I do have to admit, that coupled with the chainsaw gun (Lancer Rifle?), really had me drooling.  When you attack someone with the chainsaw part of the gun, the blood splatters everywhere, even on the screen.  True, that’s not new, but it never looked so beautiful before.  It is safe to say, team play is really needed on this game.  It’s your basic ‘good guys’ (the Cogs) against ‘bad guys’ (the Locusts).  It was hard to tell just how many different characters there were to choose from both sides.  The developer switched to a different human, but when we were seated we pretty much got stuck with whoever was picked in the first round, and everyone picked the same person (I don’t think the first people noticed the left and right bumper were used to change characters).  I don’t know how many different multi-player game modes there are either; we just played team death match.  Honestly, that was so fun, I don’t really care if there are any other types, but I’m sure we’ll see the same old, same old.

That being said, go out and pre-order Gears of War at a video game dealer near you.  You won’t regret it!

Article by Mistah Clutch

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