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Saturday 13 January, 2007
Gears of War has consumed my life in the best way imaginable. I look forward to playing and continuously improving my skill.
The gameplay is extremely well balanced. It's a tactical third-person shooter with first-person elements. There are a variety of weapons for the players to equip, and each one has its purpose, as well as two different ways of being used: ranged and melee. To use the ranged, the player uses the right trigger on the Xbox 360 controller, whereas the melee attack is employed with the B button. This is not a random placement: it makes sense to have the ranged command be linked to the controller's trigger as to better emulate firing a real gun; it keeps the ranged shots being used more frequently than melee shots and thus increases the pace / excitement of games; and it imposes a penalty on those taking their hand of the trigger to swing their fists / weapon at the opposing player.
Not that the melee function isn't useful. As if dodging around the extremely large and detailed levels wasn't control enough, the melee function serves as a way of breaking combat from artificial video game scenarios into an effective approximation of real-life combat. There are no "safe zones" in the amazingly well-crafted levels. Ranged weapons, close-range weapons, and even grenades are only as effective as the player using it.
A good indicator of the excellent emphasis on balance in Gears of War: when playing online, it could be 4 veterans against 4 complete amateurs, and yet both teams could -- and most likely would -- have a reasonably even distribution of points at the end of the game, with people of all skill levels capable of scoring kills. This aids the user in improving his skill, as the reward for attentive gameplay is increased ability in operating and understanding the game.
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