If you’re at all in tune with the gaming world, you know right now is about as exciting as it gets. The newest consoles (PS3 and Wii) are all being released and the anticipation couldn’t be much higher.

I haven’t been a console gamer since the days of NES and SNES, but my roommate, Rick is throughly invested in the console market with his Xbox 360. I can’t say I mind one bit. :) Yesterday, he came bought Gears of War.

The game has garnered perfect or close to perfect ratings on every site I’ve read about it on. The graphics, the controls, the gameplay, all unparalleled. It’s the first game to take full advantage of the 360’s hardware and I’ve read articles explaining that it only scratches the surface of what the 360 is capable of. Those are pretty impressive accolades.
In recent years, first generation games for new consoles tend to be only marginally better than their predecessors. Developers usually just add higher resolution textures and maybe some more robust programming to the games and then ship them. Granted they’ve usually been working on less-than-ideal developer boxes which are nothing more than standard PC’s with a few extra pieces of software and hardware. Look at Halo compared to Halo 2. The difference is readily apparent to even the non-gamer.
What do I personally think about Gears of War? It SO lives up to all the hype! Rick and I had a chance to sit down for maybe an hour and a half total last night to play and I loved every second of it. The first few minutes were kind of tough getting used to the gameplay and controls, but after that it was so good. The game really wastes no time in immersing you in the storyline.

What really sets the game apart from other shooters is the tactical side of things. You can’t just run and gun solo like you can do in Halo or Unreal Tournament. You have to take cover and stay hidden most of the time. If you’re out in the open, you’re a dead man. This would be aggravating for all but the most adept of players in other games, but not Gears of War. There’s plenty of debris and other places to hide and the controls make it really easy to move from a covered position to a firing position. The camera is in a 3rd person position rather than a first person position and it makes it a lot easier to keep track of what’s going on around the battlefield.

So if I don’t ever come back, you can just assume I’m holed up in the basement taking down Locusts.