Gears of War is primarily a multiplayer game, which is hardly surprising considering Epic's history. But it's also the best single player game they've ever made. The campaign is short, intense, and mostly linear. On a couple of occasions it runs quite literally on rails. And there are boss battles that wouldn't be out of place in a Zelda game, including one soul-destroying puzzle waiting just this side of the endgame cinematic.
But the campaign is memorable and it does a great job of establishing its own world. At first glance, this looks like little more than a gloriously grunged up Warhammer universe. You’ve got scowling gravelly voiced Space Marines whose guns have the obligatory chainsaws on the end. They’re fighting thought levels built out of what looks like leftover artwork from Unreal Tournament tech demos.
But by the time you've gone through the game, you'll have visited a well-realized world of boomers, berserkers, King Ravens, kryll, troikas, Hammers of Dawn, and lambent wretches. You might even know the name of that giant demon with the rocket launcher on its head, depending on how many times you failed the objective and had to watch that cutscene. You'll know the one I'm talking about.
It's worth noting that Gears actually gives a reason for monster closets. Civilization has been overrun by creatures who have crawled out from underneath the surface of the earth. So instead of simply teleporting a few monsters into midair, Doom-style, an “emergence hole” opens and out crawl the baddies. You can close it with a carefully placed grenade, but otherwise, you've got to fight all the creatures it will spawn. Since when did Epic get so clever with the internally consistent fiction?
A lot of Gears is derivative, from the Pitch Black light gimmick to the sassy black sidekick to the "Saving Private Ryan cam" to the way the score apes James Horner's Aliens soundtrack. But Gears of War feels like a game built out of homages rather than creative bankruptcy. These bits of Warhammer and Aliens and Doom are veritable archetypes for gamers. And none of them gets in the way of Gears' obvious priority: gameplay. This is what counts, and this is where Gears of War proves that although it comes in a comfortably familiar wrapping, it can still be exciting, new, and unique.
