Gears of War

THE BAD:
sometimes crashes, have to make a live account(annoying),video shudders at check points.

SUMMARY:
Gears of War is one of the best shooters I have ever played. The graphics are awesome and well optimized. I can play it at 1280x800 with everything on high but shadows and no AA with a geforce 9500m gs.

Gears is something new. The cover system is good where it's more realistic than most shooters which you run around shooting the bad guys. This game forces you to take cover behind walls or barriers and shoot around corners. Not just run around in the open shooting people. When multiple locusts are all firing at you it's really intense.

The music is great because it goes perfectly with the game. This is probably the best shooter since halo. The story line isn't great but is not horrible. The humans are cog (coalition of human governments or something like that) and they are fighting locusts which are aliens that live underground.

The environments are post apocalyptic cities with run-down, damaged and piles of ruble from collapsed buildings. The atmosphere is dark and creepy to the point where it makes you want to shoot your own shadow. Locusts jump out at every corner. I always get sweaty when I don't know what's going to happen like when I play online or on my first run through story mode. You never know if someone's going to blow your head off with a sniper rifle or blow you to chunks with a shotgun.

The weapons are good too. They have the lancer, shotgun, hammer of dawn, sniper rifle, the torque bow, and a few others. The lancer has a chainsaw bayonet which you can use to chainsaw your opponent. The game has lots of blood and gore. When you chainsaw somebody (or when you get chainsawed) blood splatters across the camera and they are decapitated. The feeling of chainsawing your enemy is extremely satisfying. When you get a head shot their head explodes. When you shotgun them they are riddled with holes or blown into chunks.

The controls are good using the mouse keyboard combo. The view is third person over the shoulder. The right click shoulders the gun or pops your head out of cover to shoot. This system works very well. The cover system works by pressing space when you get near cover to jump towards. To sprint you hold space while pressing forward. To doge roll you tap space and you roll in what ever direction your pressing. The cover and take cover work well.

The online multiplayer is good but it's not the same as offline. Online the cover system is not used the same. People don't always stay behind cover to shoot especially when they have the shotgun.

In all this is a great game if you have a PC that can handle GoW you should buy it. I was able to buy it for twenty bucks on sale.