varingblaarGears of War
Spoiler warning: If you haven't played Gears of War, I suggest you do so before going any further. If this spoils it for you, it's not my fault.You have been warned.
Part one of playing through the Gears of War series in co-op.
Here We Go Again...
I owned an XBox 360 and played through the first three games back then, but had forgotten almost everything about it. What I didn't forget was the menu music. When the game started up and those first notes floated in the air, a wave of nostalgia made me long for a simpler time.
This is not the original game. We're playing Gears of War: Reloaded on the XBox Series S. It runs at a buttery smooth 4k 120Hz and has cross-platform online co-op, which is how we're playing this particular iteration of the series.
Here's the weird thing: The remake feels half-baked. Especially in the graphics. The character models are higher detail, explosions and animations look better, but a lot of the environment is still low poly. Areas just outside the playfield are reduced to a flat plane with a texture unrecognisably stretched across it. Sometimes when the game was too vague about our next objective, I could spot which door to open because it was the only door with newer textures.
Besides cool explosions, it doesn't look like much attention was paid to the lighting system. Everything seems darker and moodier. Maybe because it's HDR now? I didn't check. Often times I hear an enemy near me, but only know where they are when they shoot. Was the game always this dark? And then you'll be walking down a dark hallways and a crate shines at you like it's in full sun.
The game was known in its time as "an ocean of brown", which it still mostly is but now with "4k mud and dust". I don't mind it. It fits the feeling of the game and helps the COGs and Locust stand out a little bit.
But all that aside, damn that framerate makes a difference. The original game was 30fps, which was standard at the time. The characters felt heavy and sluggish. Now at a higher framerate, they still feel heavy but more responsive. The camera turns faster, even if it still takes a while to do a full turn. It's impossible to directly compare without an original console, as the original game gets an FPS boost on modern consoles.
Now let's get into the actual game.
The Story
It feels like narrative driven railroad games were popular during this era. Halo, Bioshock, Uncharted... All games focused on a well crafted story. I wouldn't quite call it an interactive movie, there's much more gameplay than that, but there's definitely a sense of "we're playing through a story from beginning to end."
The story itself is pretty good actually, if male fantasy super soldiers mowing down faceless enemies is your thing. Four (occasionally six, sometimes two) guys with disproportionately large limbs and tiny heads walk into any situation and shoot their way out. It reminds me of Ultramarines in the Warhammer 40k universe. The story is fine though. It progresses at a good pace and there are some nice developments that makes it interesting to see what comes next. But man they talk a lot...
There's been an opinion online of late, where modern "for streaming" movies and shows will have characters say what's going on over and over because the content is most likely being consumed absent-mindedly while doing something else. But clearly attention span was a problem 20 years ago too. Marcus discovers a thing, Marcus discusses thing with Dom. Marcus radio's Anya to tell her the thing they discovered and what they're doing about it.
Seriously, after finishing this campaign we started ending phone calls with "Delta out."
During all this talking, a few hints are dropped about why Marcus starts the game in prison. Something about trying to save his dad, getting a court-martial and a lifetime prison sentence. Right up until Dom is sent to fetch him, presumably because after 14 years they're run out of soldiers. I think Dom mentions his wife once or twice but that's it in terms of back story. The character that gets the most back story is Cole, who was an "NFL-but-future" player. Other than that, the characters are sort of flat.
Anthony Carmine is fun, up until he gets taken out by a sniper while trying to fix his gun in the middle of a firefight... The only reason I mention him, is because I've played the other games in the series and know the legacy of the Carmine family.
Arguably the most interesting is the appearance of an enigmatic woman figure at the end of the game. Turns out it was her voice earlier, and she seems to be in charge. She speaks prophetically about the future of the war, but her identity isn't revealed. Foreshadowing!
Level Design
Levels basically boil down to combat arenas with a bunch of chest high walls and stuff, connected to each other by hallways or stairscases. A lot of the time you still have to fight your way through these narrow parts, but as you walk into a room and see the shapes you think "oh this looks like a fight" and then the Locust appear. They all have slight differences though. Things block specific paths, enemies need to find a path around things, elevation changes make it difficult to shoot people, or troika turrets lay down cover fire. Sometimes there are methods of flanking or outmaneuvreing enemies that can be quite fun if you spot them, and this is also where the ammo and interesting guns are.
Even though it's a bunch of fights followed by a bunch of fights with some talking in between, it's interesting enough to keep going and unless you're paying attention to narrative breaks, the game sort of just wants you to keep playing.
Enemies
There's some enemy variety, but when you're playing it almost doesn't matter. Most of the basic guys are just "if it moves, shoot it." Wretches are easy but they're kinda quick. Drones, Scouts, Snipers and Grenadiers all take about the same amount of shooting to kill. The Boomers, Grinders and Reavers actually require a little planning to take out, especially when they show up halfway through a fight and you're already overwhelmed. But focus fire on them, then get back to the hordes, and you'll be fine.
The trick is to close emergence holes as soon as possible. By getting a grenade in there, you stop enemies spawning. But the emergence hole is usually way at the back, so you either need to be really good at lobbing grenades, or you have to break cover and hope you make it back before they mow you down. When you do get downed, there's a chance the other player can save you. It means they're breaking cover to do so, and if they go down it's game over, but there's a chance.
If you decide to stand your ground and just fight them off, eventually they will stop spawning. So you can just wait them out. This does mean you'll run out of ammo for your favourite gun and will have to start using the Locus Hammerburst, which is actually pretty good once you get used to it.
Towards the end of the game the Lambent are introduced. Basically same enemy but goes boom when it dies. And they glow yellow. They mostly happen in confined spaces, which make them difficult to dodge, but the way health works in Gears of War makes it annoying more than difficult. As long as a couple of them don't hit you in rapid succession, you'll be fine.
Then there's the set piece bosses that actually take a little planning, like the Berserker. At first the game didn't explain the objective, unless it was in dialogue and I missed it because of all the other talking... It took a few tries before we realised the Berserker needs to break pillars, that lets in sunlight, that makes the Hammer of Dawn work. When the game made a point of "Press Y to look at the important thing," this would've been the perfect opportunity to do exactly that.
The fight with the Brumak feels like an arcade shooter. Just do what the characters shout at each other nad you'll beat it no problem.
RAAM (apparently it's always all-caps) was little interesting . The lead up to the fight was a series of small battles on a moving train heading towards the front, which is cool. The last save point is in a traincar just before RAAM, with some guns and ammo. Why do I know this? Because we had to retry a bunch of times to figure out his attack patterns and what we needed to do. Once we did figure it out, he's not such a bad boss fight. The battle carries on long enough to feel a sense of achievement when he dies, nicely wrapping up the game.
Gameplay
Gameplay boils down to "shoot things until they stop shooting back, then go press a button". This isn't terrible though, once again because you know what you're getting into. We're mostly here for the story. The shooting is really fun and well executed. The active reload system even makes reloading into a little timing test, that feels good when you get it just right. It just feels awesome.
The roadie run is an odd choice. You can't sprint like in other games. If you "roadie run" the camera hunkers down with you and shakes as you move marginally faster. It makes sense for Gears because the low position keeps you in cover as you move forward, and stopping against a barrier puts you in cover immediately, but I wish I could just turn a corner a little sharper. I've seen semi-trucks take a sharper turn than this dude.
Multiplayer?
I joined the XBox 360 generation around 2009, about halfway through its run. Because Gears of War 2 was already out, I just played the story of the first game to get to the second game. Now, twenty years later, we're playing these games specifically for the story. If there even is a multiplayer scene, I don't have the time or interest for it.
Verdict
It was a fun 8 or 9 hours. We didn't bother reading any of the lore we unlocked, which would probably add to the lore if we took the time. It's a cool universe that hints at world building yet to be discovered. Everything seems consistent in design. We have our four main characters of which two are clearly the slightly more core characters (because you get to control them duh) and we're ready for the next one.
