Gears of War

Honest and Unpopular Reviews No. 52 Gears of War (Xbox 360) There's always that one game you wrote off for years without ever giving it a chance. Admittedly, for me that was Gears of War. I figured it was a dumbed-down version of Halo, basically a rip-off, so I skipped it when it came out in 2006. And I kept skipping it. I finally gave in and played it in 2018 after one of my friends, a huge Gears fan, was able to talk me into it. All the preconceived thoughts I had about Gears turned out wildly incorrect. Now I regret not playing it sooner. You spend most of this game stuck to a wall, popping up to shoot at the Locust and getting back down before they can hit you. A lot of the third-person shooters that came out after it play the same way. Gears usually gets the credit for that, even if it wasn't the first game to use cover. The Lancer has a chainsaw on the end of it. This is the best part of the game. Sawing your enemies in half right down the middle is high-quality entertainment. The addition of active reload was a great design, giving you a damage boost when you tap the button at the right moment or jamming your gun when you miss the target. At some point the campaign throws a blind Berserker at you that hunts by sound. The Kryll are their own problem, since stepping out of the light for even a second gets you torn apart. The controls are the only thing I don't particularly care for in this game. They're way different from your typical shooter, but after an adjustment period they're doable. When I ranked my top 10 games of the 2000s, Gears landed at No. 10. I've played every Gears outside of Tactics, and I'm actually a fan of the franchise. Looking forward to eventually getting around to playing E-Day after it releases. I rate Gears of War a 4 out of 5.