Gears of War 4 Review
A new director picks up years later where the revered original creator left off. An iconic but now-aged hero plays a prominent role, comforting old fans and tugging on their nostalgic heartstrings for much of the story while passing the torch to a new generation of heroes. The plot structure follows many of the same recognizable beats of the tale that started it all, and by the end you’ve been on a great ride that is both familiar and new at the same time.No, I’m not talking about Star Wars Episode VII, though there are a number of interesting (if coincidental) similarities between it and the approach Microsoft’s taken to its first internally developed Gears of War game. Gears of War 4 is set 25 years after the events of the original trilogy, with Marcus Fenix playing the Han Solo mentor role, while his son JD and JD’s longtime friends Kait and Del sub in for Rey, Finn, and Poe. As the torch is passed to a new generation, I was left reassured that this is in many ways the same Gears I know and love. Loading
The new DeeBee and Swarm enemies require welcome new offensive and defensive strategies to combat them.
“
Let’s get something out of the way up front: if you’re looking for Gears of War to be completely reinvented, Gears 4 isn’t that game. That full-on reboot day will likely arrive eventually, but everything about this entry in the series hews closest to the first Gears, which is probably the one I’d also choose to emulate: the mystery of a new, unknown enemy lends a survival-horror feel to the gritty shooter tone, the occasional fork in the road offers both gameplay variety and replayability, and the plot revolves around a search for family – here, it’s Kait’s missing mother Reyna Diaz in place of Dominic Santiago’s wife Maria.That’s not to say Gears of War 4 doesn’t bring new elements to the series’ cover-based shooting formula. On the campaign side, the new DeeBee robot enemies and Seran Swarm foes attack differently than their Locust predecessors, thus requiring welcome new offensive and defensive strategies to combat them.
For instance, the larger Heavy DeeBee jump-jets over cover and self-destructs when it takes enough damage, while the skybound, front-shielded Guardian is best flanked from multiple sides in order to expose its weak spots. And the Swarm’s Pouncer flings deadly quills from its tail and hops on top of cover, pinning you to the ground like a Hobbes from Hell if you stay in one place for too long. All of these put a lot more pressure on you than ever before in a Gears game, and are especially inviting for challenge-seekers playing on higher difficulty levels.Loading
Variety is a welcome pillar of its eight-hour trek.
“
On a similar note, Gears of War 4’s new weapons integrate nicely into the established universe alongside the familiar Lancer and Friends, both in campaign and multiplayer. The Buzzkill fires lethal, high-velocity sawblades that spectacularly instagib foes when they connect. The Overkill packs a wicked, if short-range, double-barrel shotgun-esque punch that’s especially gratifying when other human players feel its wrath.
Finally, the DeeBees’ EMBAR is a no-scope rifle that’s not nearly as cumbersome to wield as the traditional Longshot.
Design-wise, the new Gears campaign succeeds thanks to stellar execution of a focused game plan. Variety is a welcome pillar of its eight-hour trek, as, aside from one exception in Act IV, you’re never in one place doing the same thing for too long. Gears 4’s campaign – playable in two-player split-screen or online co-op (and even supports cross-platform play with the PC version) – packs several gameplay styles, including a few thematically appropriate instances of Horde mode along with a couple other enjoyable changes of pace. (A friendly suggestion: do not watch the Gears of War 4 Launch Trailer; it gives away a few of the campaign’s fun gameplay surprises.) And laudably, Gears 4 never relies on the annoying design trope of requiring you to run a frustrating gauntlet through large groups of the toughest enemies you’ve already fought individually in order to reach its conclusion; it’s got a much smarter endgame up its sleeve.
Loading
Gears 4’s most graphically impressive moments are tied to the weather.
“
Visually, this Gears doesn’t pack the same jaw-dropping punch the original did back in 2006 when it showed the kind of leap forward that the Unreal Engine was capable of, but it is a very pretty game throughout. That’s not because it’s one of the first Xbox games to support HDR if you’ve got an Xbox One S and a capable TV, because while I could tell a difference compared to non-HDR, it’s nothing to write home about. Gears 4’s most graphically impressive moments are tied to the weather, with Windflares (basically giant electrical dust storms) producing swirling dust, swaying trees, and dancing foliage. Smartly, the heavy winds actually affect weapons that fire relatively slow-moving projectiles such as the aforementioned Buzzkill, whose shots will arc such that they become almost useless at their normally reliable medium range, forcing you to choose your gear extra carefully in the inclement weather.
Like its fellow first-party mainstay Halo, Gears of War’s campaign has always been complemented by great multiplayer. That hasn’t changed with Gears of War 4. Both Versus and Horde, like campaign, have evolved rather than been reinvented, with predictably fun results. Gears multiplayer has always managed a brilliant balance of tactics and fast action to go with its borderline-cartoonish violence, giving it standout appeal over the glut of other multiplayer shooters. Gears 4 brings 10 maps and plenty of modes – most of which are great, tried-and-true staples from other games or previous Gears entries. A standout is Arms Race, which is basically Call of Duty’s Gun Game, in which each team in a races to get three kills each with every weapon in a certain order. It works just as well here. Escalation, aka Domination or Territories, on the other hand, simply drags on far too long as a best-of-13-round duel. If Gears 4 were patched to cut that in half, Escalation would join the other modes in the winner’s circle.
Meanwhile, the now-expected private-match customizability also grants Versus plenty of staying power to play exactly how you want.LoadingThe five-player Horde mode, however, is once again where Gears’ multiplayer shines brightest. The tower-defense elements introduced in Gears 3 have been iterated on for the better here. Killed enemies drop resource chits that must be collected and brought back to your Fabricator – your mobile emplacement builder, basically – and deposited into a team-shared pool used to erect fences, sentries, turrets, and more as you fight through 50 waves of DeeBee and Swarm foes. Every tenth wave brings out a random boss to contend with, such as the Snatcher, who steals downed allies and carries them away, or the Kestrel, an attack helicopter who forces you to change your eye level. And a new class system emphasizes teamwork by encouraging specialized roles that grant specific action bonuses. For example, the Engineer is more lightly armed but can repair damaged emplacements.
My group’s best run ended at wave 42, and we immediately jumped back in for more. So expect many hours of replayable fun with your friends.
PC Version Update
After spending time with the PC version (included free with digital purchase of the Xbox One version, and vice versa), I’m happy to report that performance is buttery smooth – my GTX 970-powered PC never dipped below 60fps, and it would’ve been consistently higher if not for the refresh-rate limitations of my aging monitor. Keyboard-and-mouse controls feel great and are as configurable as you’d expect from a PC game, with only the default binding of the gamepad’s A-button functionality set to the spacebar annoying me enough to want to re-bind it to the left shift key. Cross-play is completely seamless – I played Horde on Xbox One with two PC teammates (marked as such by a monitor icon next to their gamertag in the lobby) and two console teammates, and both progress and achievements carry over to either version. Aside from 4K resolution, which I wasn’t able to test, the PC version’s biggest draw is a 60fps campaign, which is capped at 30fps on the Xbox One.
It’s not a problem at all on console, but it’s noticeably smoother on a capable PC.
I never expected to compare Gears of War 4 to The Force Awakens, but I couldn’t be happier to do so. Like the latest chapter in the story from a time long ago in a galaxy far, far away, Gears of War 4 is directed by a new generation of creators, shares a lot of similar narrative structures to the beloved first piece of the trilogy it succeeds, and is an experience you’ll walk away from with a big smile on your face – in campaign, Versus, and Horde modes alike. It’s about as good of a franchise reawakening as I could’ve hoped for. J.J. Abrams would no doubt appreciate what Gears 4 accomplishes.
Gears of War 4 review
By Arthur Gies
on October 06, 2016
at 3:01am
| Game Info |
|
Platform Xbox One |
|
Publisher Microsoft Studios |
|
Developer The Coalition |
|
Release Date Holiday 2016 |
Note: portions of this review previously appeared in our pre-review check-in with Gears of War 4 in September.
Gears of War 4 is about home and family.
That might sound weird. Gears of War as a series has dealt with accusations of hyper-masculine excess and an emphasis on gore and violence since it was first announced more than ten years ago. And it’s not that those observations are wrong, exactly — the characters have always been larger than life, the men in particular wide and heavy, and the violence of the series has always been extreme and enthusiastic. But beneath or even in parallel to that aspect, there’s always been consistent themes of friendship, of relationships of support and camaraderie that would seem corny in most other games but, somehow, work in Gears of War for a passionate fanbase.
New Gears developer The Coalition’s job with Gears of War 4 is many-fold. To bring the series back to relevancy five years after it last had an impact; to serve as a standard-bearer for the Xbox platform; to legitimately lay claim to a property started by another studio.
And, maybe, to do something fresh with a series that seemed to reach its logical endpoint.
Oh, and to make a great video game.
The Coalition doesn’t succeed on all fronts. Gears of War 4 at times seems to have more ideas than it has time or bandwidth to explore. This often results in a game that feels like a refined reboot rather than something truly new or different. But Gears of War 4 serves as an effective statement of intent, bringing Gears forward and competing with the modern vanguard of competitive shooters.
It’s also a hell of a lot of fun.
As Gears of War 4 begins, decades have passed since the human race narrowly survived the Locust War (with a tight, playable history lesson that gives a brief timeline of events). After the events of Gears of War 3, the Locust threat was over, and humanity began to rebuild.
The line running through Gears of War 4 is family
The survivors of the Coalition of Ordered Governments, or Cog, live in cities closely supervised by a government with a tight grip in place.
This is partly to ensure the survival of a human race almost snuffed out by the Locust War — the world is full of propaganda that tells its story, like books and posters espousing the heroism and service of breeding for the future of the species. However, some survivors live outside the walls of large, robot-built cities at odds with the Cog, engaging in raids on certain Cog storehouses for supplies and living in a state of cold-ish war.
Sitting somewhere between these factions is J.D. Fenix and his best friend Del Walker, who have gone AWOL from the Cog and joined an outsider group with their friend Kait Diaz. But when a mysterious new threat invades their settlement and steals away their friends and family, J.D and his companions go to the only neutral party they can think of to find help — J.D.’s father and Gears of War protagonist Marcus Fenix.
Gears of War 4 is a more focused, less sprawling story than the last few entries, following the three friends through the forests and ruins of Old Sera as they try to find their friends and family.
It feels more action-horror than action sci-fi, and it can be as enthusiastically violent as previous games — sometimes even more so, as there’s even more combat chatter than before and J.D. is a less morose lead than Marcus ever was. But the line running through Gears 4 is, as I mentioned before, family. A lot of time is spent exploring the strained relationship between Marcus and his son, with a lot of perspective on both sides of the equation.
Meanwhile, Kait’s relationship with her mother Reyna and uncle Oscar gets some space to grow and develop as well. And J.D., Del and Kait’s relationship also gets a lot of room to develop and grow — it’s not a two-way street the way it often was in previous Gears games. If anything, my main character disappointment is Del, who gets little in the way of any character backstory or history, other than being childhood friends with J.D. and having a less contentious relationship with Marcus.
The game’s overarching story is more effective than its predecessors or even most other action games in recent memory, in part because it’s comparatively simple. J.D., Cait and Del want to get their friends back, and they’re following breadcrumbs to do it. I also appreciated minor touches elsewhere, like small story moments that are optionally triggered that in turn affect later conversations slightly. It’s not game-changing, but it was a nice touch.
Gears of War 4’s story and character time works as well as it does for several reasons. The writing is matter-of-fact, avoiding over-stoicism and also overwrought fluff for the most part. It also helps that Gears of War 4 is stunning. It’s easily the best looking game on Xbox One, and a number of brightly lit daylight environments in addition to a flood of color everywhere else, particularly deep reds and greens, remove the «muddy» and «monochromatic» qualifiers that were often flung at the original Gears of War and its sequels.
From kinetic setpieces that feel ripped from action adventure franchises like Uncharted to quieter moments often pierced by brilliant storms in the distance, Gears of War 4 stands next to any other release this year.
But unlike many other action games, Gears of War 4 allows you time to explore spaces without fighting. Encounters can often be spaced apart by minutes, rather than seconds, and not usually by cutscenes. The Gears of War series has always been good at this, but The Coalition takes things a step further, often throwing red herrings your way about when a fight might break out. Previously, cover objects placed strategically always meant a fight was about to start. In Gears of War 4, the game might just be fucking with your head. It leads to a more refined but clearly present sense of combat tension.
When that combat breaks out, Gears of War 4 strikes a strong balance of familiarity and experimentation. If you’ve played other Gears of War games, then the basics should be easy.
You’ll need to rely on cover-based gunplay and smart, strategic positioning throughout each combat scenario. Movement is incredibly smooth, and Gears of War 4 feels like a natural evolution of the series that began modern in-game cover systems as we know them — even if Gears of War 4 is a clear step back from its immediate predecessor in one notable regard, as campaign co-op play only supports two players.
It was easy to fall back into old muscle memory and appreciate how sophisticated Gears’ combat is. The active reload system is a subtle but constant consideration in firefights with real effects in-game, for example. Companion AI is greatly improved from previous games — I rarely felt screwed or boxed in by my computer-controlled teammates, which is such a common problem in games with AI partners that its minimal presence here is worth noting.
Gears of War 4 also refines and expands on the sense of push, pull and defend at work in combat scenarios.
I felt less safe sitting in any one spot for more than a few moments, because there are so many enemies with means of overwhelming a position, whether through raw physical violence or weapons that circumvent any site-specific protection.
The new antagonists in Gears 4 underline this. DBs, automated robotic enforcers commanded by the COG government as a pacification force, are markedly different than previous Gears enemies. Their patterns of aggression are very different from the wilier Locust of previous games (and the time I spent shooting at the new monstrous antagonists the Swarm). They fight in waves and have little sense of self-preservation for the most part, which they make up for by taking a lot of hits and, in the case of larger foes, suicidal rushes once they’ve hit a certain damage threshold.
The Swarm has their own sense of give and take, and their biology has interesting effects on the battlefield. Many are born from fleshy pods around the world, which can be used as cover — but if the pod takes too much damage, it will burst.
If you’re lucky, that pod will be empty. If you’re not, things might get a lot more interesting in a hurry.
As a result of all of this, Gears of War 4 feels more active than other third-person shooters, including its predecessors. Environmental factors are also a much bigger element this time around. In the aftermath of the previous Gears games’ campaign against the Locust and the near destruction of the planet of Sera, the atmosphere is in a state of revolt, resulting in powerful and destructive windstorms. In-game, this has various effects, from the cosmetic — i.e., lots of rustling of vegetation and foliage, which looks great, but doesn’t do much — to the more dramatic in terms of its effect on game mechanics. Wind can grow violently strong, which in turn affects projectile weapons like Boomshots and grenades. In stronger weather, you can actually destroy some support structures to trigger environmental violence on your enemies (or yourself, if you’re not careful).
All of these factors are woven together into a game that is, at a basic level, a joy to play.
The guns are differentiated and interesting, each with its own quirks and use cases, and the feedback loop of shooting and hitting your target and nailing an active reload and shooting more is incredibly strong. Gears of War 4 could be far less complex in its environment design and enemy behaviors and it would still be fun to shoot things. There are even multiple boss fights in the game that are not miserable guessing games punctuated by death, which almost every other shooter beats its head against.
But not every idea is successful. The huge battlefields that often defined Gears of War 3 are replaced by smaller arenas. This doesn’t make the Gears of War 4 less fun — there are a lot of great firefights waiting to happen, and big, fun moments. But it can’t help but feel scaled back, which, in a sequel, can be a hard thing to reconcile.
I could also see spots where The Coalition seemingly thought about adding major new mechanics and enemy dynamics but drew back.
For example, later in the game, there’s one scene where DBs are fighting the Swarm, and when you get involved, it becomes a three-way battle. But this never happens again. Similarly, a cutscene shows a bizarre interaction between a particular kind of Swarm creature and a certain type of DB, but the thread is dropped and never picked back up again. And at a few points in the game, attempts are made to fold in elements of Horde mode, Gears of War’s wave-based survival staple, but these are arguably only successful half the time, and account for around 30-40 minutes of a game that took me eight-and-a-half hours to play to completion on the second-highest difficulty setting.
The Coalition/Microsoft Studios
The Horde hooks in question are directly related to the mode’s movable construction unit, called the Fabricator. The fabricator is part of The Coalition’s play to re-take the crown for best cooperative mode in an arena Gears franchise is arguably responsible for creating.
The ability to build emplacements and a new economy aspect add a great opportunity for experimentation and improvisation by teams.
Horde 3.0 (because it’s the third iteration) is almost everything I could think of wanting from this kind of mode by virtue of its economy and building. That said, I’m not totally sold on Horde 3.0’s new class system. It’s full of good ideas, but the dynamics feel off. Engineers are extremely useful, scouts (who get double points for energy collected from fallen enemies when it’s deposited before a wave is cleared) are required, and everyone else feels like a mishmash of overlapping roles with different weapon spawns. The absence of support classes outside of the engineer prevents other players from having a means of success that isn’t linked directly to the enemies they kill, and also an absence of variety of player capability in a mode where a single session could last hours.
Hours long sessions aren’t a bad thing. It’s going to be easy to dump time into Horde, both because it’s a naturally fun iteration of a game with really strong mechanics and enemy design, and because of the player progression systems in place.
The card upgrades are also interesting, though I’m not sure how the involvement of in-app purchases will effect them — The Coalition doesn’t seem overly concerned, since Horde isn’t a competitive mode.
But most importantly, Horde 3.0 offers what so many cooperative modes in other games — and even the campaigns of many other shooters — often fail to provide: breathing room. And not just the 30 seconds between waves, either. Horde 3.0 escalates, but it also resets somewhat after each boss wave, allowing the game to ramp back up after moments that feel especially climactic. It takes a break from kicking the crap out of you, and that keeps Horde’s tension from tipping into exhaustion, at least until you fail a wave a few times.
As for competitive multiplayer, as always, it will take time for Gears of War 4 to show whether or not it has the legs to keep an audience and build a community. But the ingredients are there, and it feels like The Coalition is off to a great start.
The decision to bump Gears of War 4’s frame rate in multiplayer to 60 frames per second, over the campaign’s 30 fps, offers specific improvements to the game’s controls and responsiveness (which were already pretty great). In return, Gears 4 is the best-playing multiplayer in the series. Twitch response is dramatically improved, and there are fewer moments where death feels like it came because you couldn’t turn in time.
The maps I’ve spent time with so far have a good mix of cover points and line of sight, and there almost always seems to be an opportunity for strategic movement and positioning. I’m more concerned with the number of modes Gears of War 4’s multiplayer is trying to focus on. It’s not that anything in particular is badly implemented. Arms Race is a fun gimmick for people who liked Gun Game in the Call of Duty games. Dodgeball — where each player has a single life, but is «tagged» back into the match when a member of the other team dies — is inspired, and leads to some great back-and-forth stories.
But I wonder how many of those modes will be alive a few months after the game launches, and whether that variety might hurt the community’s ability to coalesce around specific game types and grow from there.
Microsoft and The Coalition have also committed to an ambitious, if confusing, DLC plan where new maps will be free of charge for all content in most circumstances — offline being the exception. It would appear that Gears of War 4 and the Coalition are following Halo 5 and developer 343’s lead with an aggressive post-release update schedule of new content, which should bode well for the game’s longer-term prospects.
Wrap Up:
Gears of War 4 is a remarkably complete package.
When I was finished with Gears of War 4’s campaign, I remember wondering why it didn’t do more. The next morning, I was playing the game again, not out of obligation, but because I wanted to. Taken all together, Gears of War 4 doesn’t completely reinvent the genre, and it’s not always «bigger.
» But it’s a remarkably consistent, complete package with the kind of refinement and focus few other games can manage, providing excellent solo, cooperative, and competitive options that rank it as one of the best action games of 2016.
Gears of War was reviewed in part at an event held at The Coalition’s Vancouver offices over the course of three days in September, as well as time spent with a pre-release «retail» Xbox code provided by Microsoft. The game was played alternately on a Windows 10 PC and Xbox One S. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
About Polygon’s Reviews
9.0 Xbox One
Epic — Dozaemon on DTF
Finally completed the original Gears of War trilogy, which means it’s time to take stock. Without any preface.
1367
views
The first part of is like an experiment. Here we have the basic mechanics, we spend the whole game with it. Only the driving section stands out, allegedly taken from Halo.
But because of the unique environment, we are hunted by a bunch of night creatures, the trip is memorable and does not feel insipid.
But I personally did not like the color solution with a gray-green filter. It looks great in dark or overcast locations, but the rest of the time it’s just plain ugly. Now it is this filter that prevents you from enjoying the first part, at least for me personally.
Another minus is the ending. After the fight with the berserker in the greenhouse, which literally screams that this is a boss fight. Making the final boss chela with shelters is some kind of cringe. No interesting tactics, no cooler fights on chainsaws. Just a typical game shootout with cover, but on a train. And this despite the fact that I played the PC version, where the last act was extended. It feels like there was not enough money, the game itself hints that it is just a prototype, a test of the pen. nine0003
The second part of is already more like a standalone game.
In addition, elements for which I love parts 4 and 5 have already begun to appear in it. First of all, it is, of course, the nature of the planet. And it is a pity that we spend a lot of time in the tunnels of the locusts, and not on the surface.
The transport sections are better here, it was especially fun to ride the brumak. In general, the gameplay is varied, even compared to modern shooters. But in terms of plot, I don’t know, maybe because of the fifth part, which is actually the equivalent of a deuce for the new trilogy. But the beginning of the game, up to the moment from the departure to Mount Kadar, is purely a buzz, but after that it’s not so much. Perhaps the tunnels are to blame, although it was relatively interesting to look at the culture and architecture of the Locusts. nine0003
There are much more bosses in the deuce than in the first part. Here is the same riftworm, whose corpse we will later see in the top five. Although I must say that the battle with him was pretty boring.
But I liked the battle with the leviathan, the staging in the style of the jaws is a real thrill.
The only drawback is the faded picture. Therefore, it will not be possible to fully enjoy the nature of Sera. And if in the first game the filter added a touch of desperation combined with urban devastation, here it no longer works. nine0003
Troika , in my opinion, is the pinnacle of the trilogy. The first thing that catches your eye is, of course, a juicy picture, almost a fourth part. In addition, it is also the most modern part of the trilogy. It has the ability to adjust the sensitivity of the camera, finally!
This is a completely new direction in terms of visuals and presentation, just what I like in recent games. So the 3 is definitely in my top 2 best gears, the top 1 is still tied for 4 and 5 parts. So the troika can be released on pitch without any changes at all. Because it looks like new parts. nine0003
In terms of variety, the trio is certainly inferior to the last game, but here for the first time they give a whole section with first-person shooting, it was unusual.
The main thing was the variety of opponents, since now we are at war not only with the Locusts, but also with the Lambents. For almost the entire first act, we don’t fight the Locusts at all, which really refreshes the gameplay. In addition, for several chapters we are engaged in a kind of exploration of the world, which reminded me very much of the five. To notice such parallels for me was a separate entertainment. nine0003
In addition, unusual situations give variety. At one point, the game turns into deadland with its zombies in a bright environment, at another into a fallout with a dim city covered in the ashes of nuclear strikes, at the third into some kind of bioshock with dead scientists in a paradise. At times like these, it feels like the franchise is capable of anything. But the coolest is, of course, the fantasy shooter section. This is exactly what captured me in the fifth game.
Finally, a few complaints about the emulation. Finding shaders for the trio on the internet made the game significantly more playable.
But the periodic FPS drops still prevented you from enjoying it properly. It was especially strange to see drops in prerender cutscenes, while cutscenes on the engine were quite adequate. But most of all I suffered in the battle with the Lambent Berserker. Because of the drops, it was most uncomfortable and long to fight with him. I almost gave up when the bots could not lift me for almost a full minute. But in the end, they raised it and didn’t have to restart the battle, I didn’t see such problems again. Even in busier scenes. nine0003
Finally finishing the trilogy and putting an end to the locusts with your own hands was very cool. I will wait and hope for remasters for pitch. Maybe one day they will come out and I will be able to play gears in co-op!
Gears of War «Games» — Games Review
— I remember you owe me 20 bucks!
— Yes? Remind me after the war.
Gears of war 3: Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago
If you thought for a moment that today for review I again offer you some kind of alien «shooter» with hordes of monsters, a sea of fire and ashes, then you are right .
.. and wrong simultaneously. As one character from a very famous Soviet cartoon said: «We kindly ask you to take your children away from our blue screens.» nine0003
«Gears of War», in other words, we will talk about one of the best, in my opinion, trilogy of the TPS genre (author’s note: «third-person shooter») «Gears of War», parts 1, 2 and 3, developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios. I immediately ask the advanced reader in the world of games to forgive me for the fact that I deliberately do not mention in this article the recently released game Gears of War: Judgment, which is, as it were, a prehistory to the entire Gears of War trilogy, since, in my opinion, this game has almost no plot at all and has little to do with the trilogy I mentioned, which will be discussed today. nine0003
So what do you see when you plunge into the world of Gears of War? Actually, you will see what you should see in such a game! War, endless skirmishes, explosions, crowds of advancing alien organisms, fire, destruction, etc.
, etc. But do not rush to conclusions. Everything is much deeper, both literally and figuratively.
Of course, the war in the game is in the foreground, but still, all the events in the game revolve around two comrades, true friends from childhood — Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago. No wonder the mechanics of the game itself was originally conceived for the passage of the entire story just together. nine0003
And everything that Markus and Dominik, and with them the players, experience during this period of their lives, everything that they resist, they go through together. And believe me, this is not a simple story about how some creatures living in the bowels of the planet «Sera» suddenly decided that people are superfluous in this world. This is, above all, a story about a constant struggle and not only with a clear enemy. This story is about fighting with yourself, with your pain, hatred, love.
Music will confirm my words. Listen to these torn, lost, sounds making their way through the darkness.
nine0003
I offer you to review the three most beautiful, in my opinion, tracks, one track for each of the parts of the game, which reflect all of the above. And even if you don’t like games in general, listen to these tracks for sure! Who knows, perhaps it is this music that will prompt you to look into this world of video games that is not calm and not as simple as it seems to many.
The first track called «Mad World», used for one of the trailers called «Mad World» of the same name, for the first part of the game «Gears of War» by the great composer, singer and performer from the USA — Gary Jules (http://www .garyjules.com) will not leave you indifferent to the twists and turns of the story of Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago. nine0003
A track called «How It Ends», taken for the trailer called «Last day» for the next part of the game «Gears of Wars 2» and created by a punk rock team from Denver (USA) under the interesting name «DeVotchKa» (http:/ /devotchka.
