November 24, 2006 - While advertising is one thing, the gaming community is more in tune with hype. You know, that little voice that gets everyone telling you that you need to buy a certain game because it's the next big thing. That wave of unjustified awe that gets newsgroups buzzing and fan boys coming out of the woodwork proclaiming the second coming. We all hate hype. We all try to ignore it. Deep down everyone knows that tomorrow's next big game is really next month's discount bin resident. And yet, time and again we give in to it and are generally disappointed. And now, for the past year, we've only heard one game mentioned in the same breath as the vaunted Halo 3; Epic Games' Gears of War. Proclaimed a killer app by many, a system seller by most and a title that could easily eclipse the launch of two competitive consoles, a lot was riding on the Microsoft produced title. Oddly, and even uncharacteristically, Gears of War manages the Herculean task of not only living up to its own hype but impressing anyone who may have become jaded from it. Yes, Gears is like nothing you've ever played before and yes, you're going to hearing about it for a long time to come.

Long before most of us even had a clue of what it really meant, we knew the phrase; Emergence Day. To the unknowing it lived as a phrase with "judgment day" connotations and even without further explanation, we knew Gears of War took place after an apocalypse of some kind and we were almost certain that this was a struggle for humanity against impossible odds. Imagine all that from two words. Emergence Day. While the cynic in me thinks this was impossibly well engineered, planned and delivered, Gears of Wars wipes that smug smirk from my face and leaves me in the humble realization that this game is bigger than any catch-phrase. I've rarely seen a game breath with its own quasi-existence, but Gears does. From the now-trademark death-head wrapped in a gear to the face of its anti-hero, Marcus Fenix, GoW resonates with a human presence that it truly bigger than any console, company or hype. Gears has veritably established itself as a living thing without reign or control. Epic Games has truly created a monster here and anyone able to levy an attack against it simply has never had the pleasure of experiencing it from beginning to end.

While some may be disappointed to note that Gears of War doesn't truly tell the story of Emergence Day itself (you'll need to read the game manual for the description) it does deal with its repercussions. In a nutshell, an enemy known as the Locust Horde launched a surprise attack against humanity on Emergence Day. Rather than leave the Horde the cities and prisoners it had taken, humanity used its own weapons against itself, destroying all the spoils of war. Human survivors then took refuge in a fortified bunker and as the Horde levied an attack against it, our hero, bad-ass soldier Marcus Fenix defies orders and leaves to save his father. Arriving too late, Marcus not only loses his dad but is also imprisoned for dereliction of duty and sentenced to forty years in a god awful penitentiary. When we first meet Marcus, he's being busted out of jail by an old friend, given a gun and begrudgingly asked to help stave off the Horde from what is left of mankind. Gears isn't about a story though and rarely falls into a narrative of any kind. It prefers to simply let you see events as they unfold through the eyes of Marcus Fenix. And while there is character exposition and funny, though crude, dialog throughout, Gears is more about non-stop Black Hawk Down-situational action than a story driven adventure. There is rarely a moment of calm not punctuated by the cacophony of violence and events (and teammates) seems to only exists in a second by second basis.

While many will expect Gears to be a first person shooter, the action actually takes place from a third person perspective with the camera generally positioned slightly over Marcus' shoulder. This gives the player great peripheral vision which is highly needed in certain instances as well as a means to observes the amazing details in the environments. GoW does maintain an FPS pedigree however in that in seems to control move like first person shooter than a third person adventure. The left thumbstick controls your movements while the right thumbstick controls the camera. The true beauty of the control scheme though, comes in the way of its contextual use of the "A" button which, depending on positioning, allows you to find cover, jump walls, evade and roll, swat turn in doorways, slip from cover to cover and perform the impressive Roadie Run.