No Level Up

Most shooters taught me to jump out of trouble. Gears of War took away my jump button, handed me a rifle with a chainsaw attached, and told me to stay behind cover. And I loved it! On 07 November 2006, Epic Games and Microsoft began releasing Gears of War for the Xbox 360, introducing a brutal third-person shooter that would become one of the console’s defining franchises. I didn’t pick it up at launch, but shortly afterward I spotted a steelbook Limited Collector’s Edition and snatched it up. The story was entertaining, the characters were fun, and the combat was unlike much of what I’d played before. But what really sold me was the cooperative campaign, which kept bringing me back for another playthrough. Welcome to Sera. It’s a Terrible Place. Gears of War takes place on Sera, a planet devastated by years of warfare and an invasion by the monstrous Locust Horde. Humanity is fighting for survival, civilization is crumbling, and the few remaining soldiers are desperately trying to prevent complete extinction. You play Marcus Fenix, a disgraced soldier released from prison to help fight the Locust. Alongside his friend Dominic Santiago and the other members of Delta Squad, Marcus battles through ruined cities, underground tunnels, and some exceptionally unpleasant situations. Now, I’ve never been a particularly big fan of apocalyptic, end-of-the-world settings. Give me a living, breathing world full of people, towns, and interesting places to explore over a civilization that’s already been reduced to rubble. But while the setting wasn’t necessarily my favorite, I enjoyed the story and especially the relationships between the characters. Marcus was the gruff, serious soldier. Dom brought a more personal side to the war, while Baird and Cole supplied some welcome personality and humor. Their conversations and occasional wisecracks helped break up an otherwise grim adventure. Still, it wasn’t the story that hooked me. It was the gameplay. Take Cover or Die Trying One of the first things I had to get used to was the inability to jump. After years of shooters where running, jumping, and strafing around like an idiot were perfectly acceptable survival strategies, Gears of War took some adjustment. The cover system changed everything. You moved between protective positions, leaned out to fire, flanked enemies, and tried not to expose yourself to their attacks. The famous Roadie Run let you sprint between positions with your head down, adding a wonderful sense of urgency to combat. I picked up the mechanics fairly quickly, but that didn’t mean I always made sensible decisions. Every now and then I’d panic and run headlong into trouble. Usually with predictable results. But if you got too close to the hostiles, there was the Lancer assault rifle, complete with a chainsaw bayonet. Because apparently shooting your enemies wasn’t quite violent enough. And let’s not forget one of the game’s cleverest, most infuriating mechanics: Active Reload. Instead of simply pressing a button and waiting for your weapon to reload, you could attempt to time a second button press with a moving indicator. Get it right, and you reloaded faster. Hit the perfect sweet spot, and you received a damage bonus. Miss it? Congratulations! You’ve just jammed your weapon. Most of the time I could handle the timing without much trouble. But put me under pressure, with Locust charging my position and bullets flying everywhere, and that little sweet spot suddenly became considerably harder to hit. For the record: I loved that something as ordinary as reloading could become its own little risk-and-reward challenge. Even after I’d gotten comfortable with the combat, a poorly timed reload could turn a perfectly manageable firefight into a disaster. The Best Way to Play Was With Friends For me, the real star of Gears of War was its cooperative campaign. The game allowed two players to tackle the story together, with one controlling Marcus and the other playing Dom. And that’s how I spent most of my time. All of my cooperative sessions were over Xbox Live. I never played split-screen, and frankly, I’ve never particularly enjoyed sharing half a television with somebody else. Give me my own screen, my own controller, and a friend connected from his own house, and I’m happy. Co-op worked particularly well with the cover-based combat. You could support each other, attack from different positions, draw enemy fire, and revive a downed partner when things went wrong. And things certainly went wrong. Sometimes somebody got a little too confident. Sometimes we made terrible decisions. And sometimes the game simply decided we weren’t going any farther until we learned our lesson. But that’s part of the fun of a good cooperative game. I tried the horde mode and multiplayer a few times, but it really wasn’t my thing. I preferred working with friends against through the story. And Gears of War offered exactly the kind of experience I wanted. One More Playthrough. Just One. I enjoyed the campaign enough to complete it multiple times. Sometimes I was simply having fun. Other times I was hunting down collectibles or working toward achievements. The game scattered thirty hidden COG tags throughout its levels, rewarding players who took the time to poke around instead of rushing into the next firefight. I’m fairly certain I found them all. The achievements were another matter. I never managed to earn 100 percent, although I certainly put some effort into it. Considering that the infamous Seriously… achievement required 10,000 ranked multiplayer kills, I don’t feel particularly bad about leaving some unfinished business behind. I eventually played the other Gears of War installments released during the Xbox 360 years, although I haven’t followed the franchise beyond that generation. But the original remains a favorite. Twenty years later, I remember the frantic firefights, the satisfying combat, the badly timed reloads, and the fun of working through the campaign with friends. I still don’t particularly love its bleak, apocalyptic setting. But I didn’t need to love every part of the game to have a hell of a lot of fun playing it. Did you play the original Gears of War? Were you a campaign and co-op player like me, or did you spend most of your time solo or with one of the other game modes?

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