Gears of War has its roots in Unreal Tournament. Gears was originally going to be Unreal Warfare but the idea of Unreal Warfare shipped within Unreal Tournament 2004 as "Onslaught." Cliff "CliffyB" Bleszinski, lead game designer, wanted to do something more single player, darker and slower paced. So, the Gears of War concept became its own stand alone idea.
Gears was designed to be story heavy and engage you, as a single player, but also become focused on the shared experience. Cliffy said he finds it rewarding when you bring a friend along to see something you've experienced and you get to watch how they react to what you've already seen. This is one reason Gears of War was designed from the ground up for Co-Op play. Cliffy targets Gears of War toward the casual gamer and the hard core gamer alike. Casual gamers may not yet have the skill or time to overcome great challenges so they have the option to bring in help when needed. It's also extremely fun to work with a buddy at the same skill level to play through the entire store mode with.
Unfortunately, the business side of the Gears of War project has cut some of the great design ideas the team was working on in order meet deadlines. Some of these ideas may wind up being downloadable content later and some may make their way into another game in the future. Regardless of cut features, Gears of War remains a very compelling, complete and engaging roller coaster ride of a game from start to finish.
Cliffy and his team have plenty of ideas to continue the series into future game releases but much of them will depend on how well Gears of War is received by the customer. I personally don't think they're going to have any issues making sales, I'm predicting Gears of War will set a new sales record for an Xbox 360 title only to be exceeded until Halo3’s release. Epic is looking into merchandising for Gears of War and creating such things as action figures. Nothing will be available at launch but we could see a variety of Gears of War trinkets post-release.
The controls for Gears of War are designed to be fairly intuitive. Holding the Y button will focus you into point-of-interest (POI) and if it’s really something you should look at, you’re squad mate will tell you to hit the button. If there is not a POI, you focus on your team mate. If you move with the Y button focused, you move in the direction of your POI, otherwise if you let go, the camera will go back to your previous facing direction.
The game is very A button-centric. If you press and release A you will perform a roll. If you're near cover and press A then you'll take cover. Pressing A and specifying a left or right direction will roll in that direction or out of cover. Although Gears doesn’t have jump or crouch, pushing the A button and the forward direction near a low wall will make you climb over. Holding A and a direction and you will perform a “Roadie Run” which is a ducked style run.
Shooting without aiming, by just pulling right trigger, is as you’d expect: inaccurate. It's useful, however, for blind firing over cover. Aiming with the left trigger does an aimed fire with an over the shoulder camera view, which is much more accurate. If you’re behind cover and do an aimed fire, your character will automatically pop up and shoot.
While you're firing, there's a meter in the upper right corner that shows your current ammo capacity. When you're out, there's a pseudo mini-game to reload. If your timing is right, you do a fast reload saving a second and the rest of your shots on that magazine do extra damage. Each time you perform this successfully, the next time you attempt to perform the mini-game reload it will be a bit harder. If you miss the timing, you perform an unwanted “gun jam reload” which will cost you an additional second. Each weapon has its own unique reload timing as well so you’ll need to get used to the game with each gun.
Your weapons are mounted on your back. Left D-Pad selects the left weapon, right D-Pad selects the right weapon, Down D-Pad brings up your semi-auto pistol and Up D-Pad selects grenades. Grenades also have aimed and non-aimed tossing.
Lastly, the left bumper shows you the location of your closest team mate.
So far the weapons that have been revealed are, of course, the famed chainsaw equipped assault rifle, pistol, rocket launcher, sniper rifle, frag grenades and smoke grenades. Your soldier can carry two guns on their back plus a pistol and grenades (I’m not sure if you can carry only one style of grenade at a time or a mixture.)
The single player story takes place over a 36 hours time period so players will be fighting in day and night which can include changes in weather such as rain. Cliffy B has described the single player like an “X-Axis platformer.” You navigate yourself from cover to cover working your way across the map. He went on to say that if one player ran straight through the map holding A to perform a “Roadie Run” and one player worked through the map using the cover system, the cover system player would reach the end first. You're artificial intelligence (AI) teammates will talk to you the whole time with useful information including how many Locusts, the bad guys, are left and which way you should flank for greatest chances of success. Apparently, you'll be able to give orders to your squad in later stages of the game.
Co-op is “drop in, drop” out style. You can invite a friend, at any point, during your solo gaming and that person will take over as your teammate seamlessly. If your friend has to leave, the AI instantly takes over where your teammate left off. When this happens, the game will adjust itself its level of difficulty for two human players. Cliffy sees co-op as the ability to bridge the gap between casual and hard core gamers. In fact the game doesn't have traditional difficulty levels, there are Casual and Hard Core modes of play and once you finish the game, you'll unlock Insane mode.
If you're playing co-op and unlock something, such as an Xbox 360 Achievement or new chapter, you’ll both get the unlocked bonus. This may open up some opportunities for cheap Achievement Whoring, but there are other achievements that are based on collecting Continued Presence Tags (also known as COG tags) from fallen soldiers which require you to play, not jump in just as an achievement is being unlocked. You can play co-op either split screen, over system link or over Xbox Live.
The enemies are smart and have all the same moves as the player(s). So you need to constantly out think your opponent and anticipate where they will be moving to and cut them down in the open.
Versus mode multi-player is limited to eight players, usually 4v4. You can play as the COG soldiers or Lucust team. Before you start a multiplayer game, you will be given the opportunity to customize your character. Both the COG and Locusts have a variety of skins to choose from so your team can all wear matching uniforms or you can go the more unique individualist route. If anyone on your team gets shot down, there's is a revival window in which you can earn points for reviving your teammates. There is a counter though, if you shoot someone down and 'curb stomp' them with a finishing move, the player is not revivable. When you die because of being 'curb stomped' or you weren't revived in time, you enter spectator mode. In Spectator Mode, you can watch the rest of the match in either an overhead view or an individual player over the shoulder view.
There are no AI bots in versus mode but there will be plenty of variety for setting up versus mode games with your friends. Gears uses a traditional matchmaking system, like we’ve seen on many other games already, to get players connected and fighting it out. Versus mode will have three core types of games: Warzone which is last man standing team based game, Execution and Resurrection both of which are variations of the Warzone type game. Weapon locations can be altered to help change things up a bit and there will be at least new maps via downloadable content (DLC) post-release.
So far three versus maps have been revealed:
Gridlock: features stairwells, burned out cars and archways with very few camping spots. Any spots that could be considered camping spots have at least two open directions the camper would need to alternate covering. The rocket launcher also spawns in the middle of the map as further incentive to keep moving.
Canals: similar to Gridlock except without the cars; Canals has boats and bridge debris. This map also features water you can stand in.
Mansion: takes place around a ruined mansion at night in the rain. This map has inside and outside environments with inside being full of destructible cover that disappears as it takes damage.
Its clear Epic is still holding their cards close and holding a lot of details secret. What we do know and have seen through many trailers: it is clear Gears of War is going to be the must have game this holiday season.
