Gears of War gameplay post mortem

As I mentioned just shortly before its release, Christmas is coming up and many kids (and their parents) will be hoping for Gears of War in their stockings. Before it was released there was a huge amount of hype about the game, its visuals and gameplay. Having now been playing it for a couple of weeks, I thought it worth passing on some of my experiences so you can decide whether GoW is worth playing. First, the good stuff:

• Visuals are gorgeous. There's no denying that the work done to produce the superb visuals in the game is all worth it. (Although see my counter comments below)
• The hide and fire gameplay makes a welcome change from the usual rush and fire model that you might be used to with say Doom or even Halo/Halo2
• The story is well thought out (albeit with some annoying, and indeed completely pointless, attempts at breaking up the gameplay, outlined below).
• There are some great environments and changes (for example, the cart ride is like mixing a FPS with the mine scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom).

Now, the bad stuff:

• The game is a little too linear. Often you have no choice but to go down the only road or walkway available to get to the next part of the game. This rather limits your attack and approach choices.
• The visuals have an annoying habit of tailing off; in the early levels when you are outside in the city, the big expansive environments and bright scenery work superbly. Later, as you start to end up inside more, and particularly in the underground environments, both the quality and variety seems to taper off significantly. On my first go through, I thought this was due to me being too busy to play, but on subsequent attempts, I still get the same feeling. This is particularly the case by the time you get to the
• Annoying attempts to break-up the gameplay away from the hacking and slashing are half hearted and don't add anything but annoyances. There are a couple of good examples - having to find the power for a lift to get into the factory is one. It's a case of walking 25 yards and pressing a button, then returning to the lift and pressing the lift button. There's no complexity, no thought required and not even any enemies to get past until after you've pressed the button. Unfortunately, it is the first such substantial element and you are more than half way through the game. If these type of elements were going to be part of the game, why weren't there similar examples in the earlier acts? Similarly, in the factory, the 'unstable floor' section is just frustrating; it's the sort of element I would have expected in a game of this type 5 or 6 years ago. In my experience there is only one game in the last few years that has remotely managed to combine both the FPS and puzzle styles - Half Life 2.
• Perhaps a better example of the above is the 'driving' level. It's not a driving level at all. Although your vehicle looks funky, you have to follow a very specific path (there's no wandering off track) while fending off attacks from the dark-loving kryll which turn out to be the most 2D looking sprites I've come across in a game since my days on the Sinclair Spectrum in the mid 80s.
• There is little variety in the animation or voices. If your gun locks up during the mini-game that is reloading, then there are one, maybe two, varieties of swearing and animation of retrying to lock and load the gun. That's it. There's also very little chatter or communication from your team mates. This is one area where Halo/Halo2 shine - the sheer variety makes it more interesting, whereas frequently I often forget we were even working as a team because my team mates were so silent.
• The much publicised AI, particularly of your team mates, doesn't seem that intelligent at all. In Act 3, with the kryll, means that you can't walk into dark areas or you get attacked. Surprisingly, your team mate will walk into the dark with alarming frequency. Fortunately, so will your enemies.
• Your team mates can be knocked out, and you can revive them, but if they fall while behind cover, and you are also behind cover, you cannot revive them while 'hidden'. You must stand up, then press X, then hide again, usually getting shot in the process.
• I do not understand why in a modern game we have still have a concept of 'boss' characters that require more hits and/or specialized attacks to kill them. It just feels like they ran out of ideas of how to finish the game. In games of yore they were used because the options for final battles were somewhat limited; in a modern game there are plenty of opportunities to provide additional enemies, more complex environments and other elements to up the stakes.
• As a frequent FPS player, I've got used to reloading after a battle so that I'm ready for something to jump out. On the basic difficulty level this works as you expect. Go up to Hardcore, and your reloading is wasted, because one of the ways the difficulty is increased is by forcing you to reload your already reloaded gun the moment an enemy rushes you. If you had no choice about when to reload, this restriction might have made sense.

Recommendation: Considering all the faults I've listed above, you might think I hate the game. I don't, but I don't think as a whole the game is as good overall as say Halo 2 or Half Life 2. The visuals are stunning, the gameplay is a welcome change, but in other respects, the games seems rushed and has the air of design by committee and checklist feel, as evidenced by the 'Ooo, we should add a puzzle' feel that first appears over halfway through the game. At times though, the game is phenomenally fun to play. If you can get past and/or ignore the annoyances above then you can have a good time, but if you like the open-ended environments that you get in Halo, Half Life, or Far Cry then you and your kids will be kept busy over the Christmas period.
_____________________
Related Articles and Blogs:

Cool Stuff: Your 2006 Holiday Gift Guide
Martin McKeay: My wife's getting a geek gift too
Martin McKeay: What's going under your Christmas tree this year?
The PDA Guerilla: Gifts part 4: Scott eVest
The PDA Guerilla: Gifts part 3: Accessories
The PDA Guerilla: Gifts part 2: The Hewlett-Packard rx5915 PDA
The PDA Guerilla: Gifts part 1: The Plantronics bluetooth stereo headset