Retro|Spective 039R: Gears of War

[Neon Ignition]

It's been a few long running ones of late so here's a little taster of a return trip before we delve into one that will be long running...


Gears of War
"It's a god damned Leviathan!"



Game 01 - Gears of War
The early days of the Xbox 360 and entering their second generation on the market Microsoft found itself with a new core franchise to sit alongside Halo and Project Gotham Racing, it came in the third person cover shooter form of Gears of War. Taking on the role of Marcus Fenix, you battled wave after wave after wave of enemies over a five act campaign that could also be played through in co-op. Multiplayer completed the overall package of a title that was instantly a visual showcase for Microsoft's console and one that set the template firmly for the franchise moving forward.







What impact did the original entry have on your first play?

[Asura]

What impact did the original entry have on your first play?

Fantastic game, but I think its legacy is a little complicated.

It looked amazing. But it also ushered in an era of visuals, made using similar processes in Unreal. Gears of War works because its this weird mix; they were doing space marines in grandiose, wartorn locations, so to avoid comparisons to Warhammer 40k the game's architecture is never gothic, but tends towards neo-romanesque and art deco. That meant the game had a really unique visual style that has aged better than you'd think.



But the thing many devs took away from it were the aggressive colour-grading, deceptively small gameplay spaces that could be made to look like huge locations using scenery (allowing for immense detail but making the game akin to walking down a pretty corridor for hours) and over-amping the pixel shader affects afforded by Unreal's art-driven material pipeline (not the first version of this approach, but definitely the best up until that point, and very easy to use). You could see this at the time in games like Hunted: The Demon's Forge and Damnation:





... which I would argue took away the wrong lessons from Gears.

Also, something worth knowing; people's memories of the original are a little distorted. A lot of people played Gears 2 and thought it was largely the same, just new content - but if you go back to the Xbox original, the sequel "filed off"many, many rough edges from the movement and aiming systems, and made the weapons much more satisfying to use. However, in the re-releases of the game, some of these changes were "flowed back" into Gears 1, meaning that I think the only "raw" version of the game, as-it-was is the Xbox 360 original.

I got the game in Japan, as the second game I got for my J-360 (the first being Lost Planet), and fortunately it was entirely in English (some Japanese games are a weird mix), and I remember loving it. A friend came over and we played it for hours. I loved how it really managed to mesh 3rd-person gameplay with fps-style shooting in a way that had rarely been done quite so well before. I know people talk about how the cover system cribbed heavily off Namco's Kill.Switch but that was quite obscure by comparison.

I must say though, for some reason I never got along with the multiplayer. I tried it many times but I just found it very difficult to get into.

[Colin]

I have recently replayed the entire back catalogue of Gears, and in my opinion the first one still stands as the absolute boss of them all, as long as you're playing the remastered Ultimate Edition. For me, playing through them all again and them being fresh in my mind, the series just never matched the initial entry.

[wakka]

I absolutely loved the original Gears. It felt like a real step forward in terms of both graphics and gameplay. It was the A button that launched a thousand sticky-cover third person shooters, and it was simply jam-packed with great gameplay ideas. Turning reloading into a microgame in itself was genius and I'm shocked more games never copied it.

[Asura]

Turning reloading into a microgame in itself was genius and I'm shocked more games never copied it.

Oh yeah, active reloading is amazing. Sniper Elite does it too, but you're right in that not many games do.

[wakka]

The chainsaw gun became a meme but it was so much fun to actually use. That's the thing about Gears 1 - right out of the gate they nailed the feel of everything. Slamming into cover, tearing through enemies with the chainsaw, hitting a perfect reload...it had such terrific chunky solidity and feedback.

[Mayhem]

It worked. Rough around the edges, hello crab walking in online death match, but I came to play it after Gears 2 (don’t ask) and the sequel exposed most of the flaws of the original.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 02 - Gears of War 2
The sequel arrived two years after the original and continued the storyline of Marcus and his cohorts fighting to prevent the sinking of multiple Sera cities. The game brought new weapons and a refinement of the gameplay to the mix to slightly shake up the same offering of single player, co-op and multiplayer modes.








How much better or worse was Gears 2?

[Neon Ignition]

I've gone through the 360 entries several times each and the original was a game I was always pretty much just fine with. In either original or Ultimate form it's always been a pretty dull looking game because it's so unrelentingly brown and grey but it does have a good sense of scale and set piece. The sequel is definitely all about refinement and it's all minor tweaks but all for the better.

[Asura]

How much better or worse was Gears 2?

A lot of people will say it didn't impress, but as I said before, I think people underestimate how much the gameplay moved forwards. Almost everything about how the game controlled was slightly better. They really sanded off the rough edges, to the point where I found it hard to go back to the original game.

I really enjoyed Gears 2, mainly because of the Horde Mode. I played countless hours of that, and it kicked off a whole subgenre of game modes (yeah, yeah, it technically was Epic repurposing the Invasion game mode they'd made for the updates to Unreal Tournament 2004 but it just works so much better in Gears).

[MartyG]

Gears 1 is a slog to go back to now, the character movement just annoys me. I remember completing this on 360 and having to try to beat RAAM over and over till I succeeded (pride and accomplishment), but going back to the remake I'd had enough at China Shop and put it away as an experience I'd already experienced and didn't want to repeat, even with improved framerates.

A game of its time that I don't really think holds up quite as well today, mostly because the graphics which seemed incredible at the time are simply something we expect to see in modern games; they don't hold the game together in the same way it did in 2006.

[wakka]

I can totally imagine that Marty. Gears 1 isn't a game I've got a hunger to go back to in any way, despite my fond memories of it - not least because the sequels are so similar, and honestly bore me. I tried 4 on the Bone and found it a complete snore, even in local co-op.

Gears 2 landed at the wrong time for me and completely passed me by. In fact I haven't actually played any other title in this series except 4, so I've got nothing else to add!

[Mayhem]

Gears 2 fixed most of the issues with Gears 1. Yes there were still online issues (host advantage, two-piecing, the ability to drop out of a game if you lagged your own connection to just the right length of time to avoid any penalties etc) but it was a much better experience overall than the original. Lancer was more seriously taken as a weapon, had more oooph and damage as well. As for the campaign, there were the odd frustrating moment but the end was a lot better balanced than trying to take on RAAM.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 03 - Gears of War 3
Arriving three years later, the third game added a system whereby you could direct AI companions to focus fire on enemies but the key marketing push was that this was the closing chapter of the trilogy on Xbox 360. The game was broadly a refinement again on what came before as Marcus and the others track down Fenix's father to make their final stand.




Did Gears 3 pay off the trilogy?

[Neon Ignition]

Gears 3 for me was probably the most well rounded entry and it helped that it was the climax of the franchise at the time but it was insanely close to being DLC campaign stuff also.



Game 04 - Gears of War: Judgment
People Can Fly got to take their own stab at the franchise with this prequel that added a late fourth title to the franchise on X360 unexpectedly. The game broke levels down to more shorter mission style approaches with scoring criteria attached. It also added two new multiplayer modes over prior entries. The game reviewed strongly but heavily underperformed at retail.








How did you pass Judgment?