After all the 10/10 ratings from hype induced journalists, there needs to be a deeper look at the important part of any game, the multiplayer. Does gears live up to the hype? Well, if your talking about the single/co-op gameplay, the graphics, the level design, or the AI, then I think that answer is yes. Gear Of War is a technical marvel on the 360 and worthy of praise and excitement from any potential buyer. From the minute you boot up your 360, you will feel the excitement and suspense.

The Mechanics

Before I jump into my review of the mulit-player, I think its important to first go over some of the things that make Gears tick. Gears of War is a tactical shooter, so if you bought this game expecting to run and gun you are going to be easily frustrated when you start racking up deaths for jumping out in the open to fire at locusts. You need to learn to slide and shuffle from cover point to cover point while popping up to fire as you move. This same idea is paramount in multi-player if you want to stay alive or protect other team mates (something almost no one seemed to understand in my 4 hour session). Luckily the A button does most of this work for you, and many of the movements will become fluid and natural after a couple rounds of playing.

Engaging the enemy, on the other hand, might not feel as fluid to the hard core player. Grenades must be aimed in order to throw and the time spent doing so puts you at risk of death with every attempt. Add that, a seemingly very small damage area and their use becomes pointless instantly. The same idea follows other weapons as well. The chainsaw takes a small amount of time to "charge up" before it can be used and its implementation seems to be lacking in terms of control and precision. Almost every time the weapon was used in multiplayer I could hear the chainsaw coming and easily defeat it with a simple shot gun to the head. In fact, you will find out quickly that starting with your default weapons is probably the best practice. Sure the Bow is cool, but since it takes up to 5-6 seconds to fire, you once again will be exposed for far too long to make it worth its use.

Multiplayer Options

To put it simply, there are none. A game with this much hype, you would expect Epic to really spend the time on making the multiplayer experience as good, if not better, then the single player. Unfortunately, this is not the case. To begin with, the multiplayer experience only comes with three "modes" of gameplay. War Zone, Assassination and Execution are the three choices you can make when setting up a lobby. The sad truth is all three of these modes are really more like slight (and I mean SLIGHT) variations on one another. In fact, I wouldn't even call War Zone and Execution variants since the only difference between them is Execution only requires a sniper head shot, chainsaw, or other up close execution. It's like they ran out of ideas before they even had any. Even lesser games then this have almost three times the options and with games like Halo 2 we think it would have been wise to offer more.

Once you choose your game mode, you are given the opportunity to tweak some other options. Things like bleed out time, number of rounds and weapons are all there. You will find out fast, that these options do not really change the feel of the games all that much and will not make too much of a difference in your overall multiplayer experience. Without a longer list of game modes, the option here are little more then an after thought.

Menu System

This is where we have to really take the marks off for multiplayer design. The interface is just plain confusing. You cannot bring in your own party for ranked matches. While we understand that Microsoft wanted to do this in order to thwart the evils of cheaters, it also makes it impossible to experience the fun of having a great night of butt whipping with your friends. Why even allow gamers to choose sides? Simply start a party of friends and let the matchmaking decided. Doesn't anyone learn from Halo 2?

Beyond this you can always make a custom game with some buddies and set the room to private or public. This is actually a nice feature, since you are allowed to leave slots open to your friends and can fill the rest with strangers. Its almost like having a party designed match making system without the need to look for new opponents after the games ends. Unfortunately, this is also where the love of the custom match ends. Once you select your game mode and options and set up your lobby, you are stuck with it. You cannot change the game mode or settings without booting the entire party, quiting the lobby, and restarting the lobby with the new settings. This is down right moronic and quickly becomes annoying when you realize their are only two other modes to choose from anyway.

Maps Design

Starting with a respectable 10 unique maps, Gears of War actually looks like they took the time to focus on design, layout and balance. Each map takes a page from the beauty of level design in the single player and uses elements like high ground and cover extremely well. It's a shame there was no Capture The Flag (CTF) mode or other strategy based modes created for these interesting maps. After all, GoW is a tactical shooter, so why not add some tactical game-types to honor that? My hope is that more of this will come with the release of Downloadble Content (DLC) that Epics says they are already working on.

Is it Worth it?

In a word, yes. With the lack of quality games on the market right now, Gears should prove to be one of the largest games on XBL. The single player story, the graphics and the amazing CO-OP setting makes this game a must purchase for any game lover. While the Multiplayer is severely lacking, our hope is still with the downloadble content that Epic seems already have in store. We only wish that we didn't have to wait even longer to find out.

Single Player: 9/10

CO-OP: 10/10

Multiplayer: 8/10