GEARS OF WAR
Developed by : Epic Studios
Published by: Microsoft
Platform: Xbox360 (exclusive)
Genre: First person Shooter
Release date : 11/05/06
Players:1-2 co-op
Online: 1-8 vs. / 1-2 co -op

Trailor




IN GAME PLAY FROM E3


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Box Art


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Description of Game:
“Gears of War� is the first game developed by Epic Games exclusively for Microsoft Game Studios and the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system. “Gears of War� thrusts gamers into a deep and harrowing story of humankind’s epic battle for survival against the Locust Horde, a nightmarish race of creatures that surface from the bowels of the planet.


Previews

Multiplayer: (credit
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Late Wednesday night in Barcelona, after the X06 Media Briefing and an international media dinner, Microsoft crowded journalists into a small three-level house booming with techno music to let them and execs alike get hands-on time with some of the upcoming Xbox 360 titles. One of those titles was Microsoft and Epic's Gears of War.

The new multiplayer map on display had a series of bridges with large boxes and debris serving as cover underneath them and in the shin-deep water throughout the level's center staging area. The map is encased in large, gothic cathedral-type buildings (get used to the aesthetic) and on both sides are staircases, which lead to corridors that turn to the bridges overlooking the map's cover-riddled center. It's much different structurally from the E3 plaza-type level, but the color palette, comprised largely of a mixed bag of washed out grays, is pretty similar.

Each team, Locust and Human, starts at a separate end of the map as battle gets underway. Gears of War is heavily emphasized as a "stop 'n pop" game, instead of a speedy fragfest, so cover and the way that cover is used in multiplayer becomes paramount. Near the map's center on a bridge is the sniper rifle, and the team that can control the sniper rifle -- as expected -- has a sizable advantage in controlling the map.

Performance-wise, Gears of War is running significantly better than it was the last time we played it. The left trigger scopes your weapon: the assault rifle has a medium ranged scope, while the shotgun, more or less a large hit area, is best suited for close quarters. In extreme close quarters, players can press B to fire up the chainsaw -- the Gears equivalent of a melee attack.

A revive mechanic can be used when a player on your team has been gunned down and not "curb stomped" (a finishing move the other team can do). It's another way for you to increase your individual player's score -- Gears of War's multiplayer is more than just kills and deaths.

With roughly a month to go until Gears of War is gold, and the game pretty close to done, one lingering concern we have is the cover system. When running from cover to cover, it's a bit tricky to judge when it's time to stop the run (by pressing A) and grab cover (with the A button). Even when we aren't running through the map, it's a bit difficult to predict what exactly the player is going to grab onto in terms of cover.

However, it's hard to say if right now the cover-grabbing system is a design-choice issue or a player-skill issue. It's entirely possible that the nuance of the cover-system, which operates pretty atypically for a shooter, takes some getting used to. It could be that we just haven't got the elegance and grace of sliding from cover to cover, spraying fire and popping skulls, that Gears of War demands. Or is the cover system still requiring a bit of extra tuning? Designer Cliff Bleszinski will be on hand tomorrow at X06, and we'll also be firing up the single-player version of the game and hopefully messing around with co-op. Maybe by the end of those play sessions the cover system will have grown on us.


Single Player

Everyone...Ok, everyone who owns an Xbox 360 wants to know how Epic's Gears of War plays. Before Microsoft's X06 conference in Barcelona, Spain, all that we'd played from Gears of War was a lone multiplayer map. At an event after their media briefing, we played a new multiplayer map, during X06, we played single player. The game plays the same in both single player and multiplayer modes.
We ran through the tutorial-level and a plaza-type level where we fended off the Locust horde with our teammates in an abandoned fountain. While Gears of War is designed to be a stop-and-pop shooter, on the demo's level setting of "casual" (read: noob-friendly) it's pretty easy to run and gun through the level, but that doesn't help you understand the Gears of War gameplay choices. In single player, you'll control Marcus Fenix, who is a part of a squad (he doesn't assume a leadership role until later, according to CliffyB) of men fighting off the Locust horde in a post-apocalyptic world.

Visually, both multiplayer levels and the single player parts we've played and seen (CliffyB has demoed both sequences, one at E3 and one recently at the X06 media briefing) are extremely similar. They are washed out in grays, with very little in the way of bright colors. Everything from Gears that has been shown at X06 looks like variations on a single area. Does that mean to expect the same environments and aesthetic throughout Gears of War? Absolutely not.

According to CliffyB, the game takes place over the equivalent of a 36 hour period (that's 36-hours in the life of the characters, not 36 gameplay hours) so players can expect fighting at night against the Locust horde and a series of boss battles that the folks at Epic haven't even begun to hint at, much less show. We're optimistic that much of Gears of War's single player is being kept under wraps so that players can squeeze the most out of their experiences on Emergence Day in November.

How did the single player work? Like we said above, it plays pretty identically to multiplayer. One of our concerns about the game's core design was that the cover system seemed a bit difficult to get a feel for. It was difficult to tell when Marcus Fenix would grab cover when you hit the A-button. After playing considerable amounts of single-player today, we can confirm that the cover-grabbing system becomes more intuitive and natural.

CliffyB described navigating through Gears of War like it was a platformer, but instead of jumping in the game's Z-axis, the jumping takes place in the X and Y axis as players navigate through the cover and debris. He explained that if one player was running in a straight line and holding down A (executing the Roadie Run) and another player was using the cover system to navigate through obstacles, that the player using the cover system would actually get from point A to point B faster.

So not only did we get to play through the single-player campaign, we got to play through the single-player campaign on multiplayer. That is to say, co-op. Two 360s were system linked on the show floor running Gears co-op, which is pretty self-explanatory. Everything we've written about the game above can be applied to co-op, but instead of going alone, you're watching your buddy's back as you both bounce from cover to cover. The difficulty seemed to be ramped up a little to balance the increase in fire (and brain) power. There didn't appear to be any combat scenarios specifically designed around keeping your buddy alive (and should he fall in battle, you can medic him back to life by pressing X), but again, the demo we played was but a small sliver of the overall game. And it's immensely satisfying bailing out your teammate (or watching him work his chainsaw magic from afar).

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