You can always find reasons not to give a game a review score of 10. Control issues (Gears of War has that). A.I. problems (that, too). Bad dialogue or story telling (yes on both). Linear levels, online lag, limited modes (yup, yup, and yup). But as I was playing through though the game, I found one consistently good feature: It was constantly impressing the hell out of me.
Let's go back to the bad stuff for a moment. Gears of War is an action shooter with tactical elements (or is it a tactical shooter with action elements?), so people will have an adjustment period for the controls. You can't run-and-gun like you do in Halo 2 -- you will get slaughtered. You have to learn to slide from cover to cover, using the environment as bullet shields. It's not complicated at all -- the "A" button does pretty much everything -- but tournament-level players won't like things like how you throw grenades (you really need to aim them, which takes too much time) or how you use the chainsaw on your rifle to melee attack an enemy (it's cumbersome and inconsistent in precision).
Your A.I. squadmates are rather helpful at first...taking out enemy Locusts here and there without making the game too easy for you. But eventually, you'll wonder if the game swapped in some look-alike substitutes that just got off a tiring ride on the short bus. Your partner, Dom, dies...A LOT...especially on the Hardcore difficulty setting. He is a constant liability, crying for you to revive him when enemies are all about, firing at the only other human that's standing around (which happens to be you). And on one late stage, Dom just flat-out refused to follow me into a train station packed with bad guys -- he got hung up in an alley and would not leave. If you can, let a friend take over Dom's role in co-op play...Gears is so much better an experience with a buddy.)
The story is ambitious (the underground-dwelling Locust burst through the Earth's crust to wipe out humanity), cliché-ridden, and you can tell how the story's going to end before you even reach it (a setup for Gears of War 2? No way!). And the dialogue? I didn't know people still said, "Sucks to be them." Cue eyes rolling.
My biggest complaint, however, is with the multiplayer options. What's there is a lot of fun, but that fun isn't going to last very long until downloadable content comes along (which developer Epic is working on now). Gears of War offers enough maps by today's standards (10), but not enough variety in features. All matches are four-on-four, which isn't bad in itself, but all three modes are just slight variations of each other. The standard War Zone is last-man standing (everyone always has only one life, elimination style). Execution is the same thing, except you can only off someone with a sniper headshot, chainsaw, or up-close-and-personal execution (like stomping his head into the ground). Assassination is the same as War Zone, only the match ends when the pre-designated "leader" dies. Compare this to Halo 2 with its 5 katrillion possible custom combinations of multiplayer modes, and you can already tell that Gears of War won't have the same longevity. It also doesn't help that the matchmaking system is broken.
You can always find reasons not to give a game a 10. But can the good stuff overwhelm the bad by such a wide margin in order to reach our highest rating possible?
I'm not going to talk about the graphics. You've seen the screenshots and trailers -- you already know how sick this game looks -- and yes, it really looks like that.Most of the game that's underneath is just as awesome, with a well-paced campaign mode (for the most part -- the middle drags just a teeny tiny bit) that's a little bit Halo 2 military sci-fi, a little bit Doom 3 frights, and a little bit Resident Evil 4 boss fights.
Each stage is memorable. Even as I write this a week after beating the campaign, I can recall dozens of "oh wow" moments, like the first time I encountered the shrieking wretches (that horrible noise they make will haunt you for days). Or when the blind, hulking berserker was stalking me by sound and smell alone. Or the part where I was defending my old home from a Locust onslaught (it felt like a smaller scale, more domesticated version of Lord of the Rings' Battle of Helm's Deep). Or when I looked at the face of an apartment complex, and dozens of drones were firing at me through the windows, their muzzle flashes strobe-lighting the darkness like we were on a CNN newscast, live from some war-torn third-world country. Or the parts where I have to blow up propane tanks because staying in the light will keep the flesh-tearing Kryll at bay.... They all combine for an unforgettable adventure through 36 hectic, desperate hours of a group of soldiers' lives.
You won't see any epic, you-against-an-entire-army battles that the end of the last trailer hinted at, but it doesn't matter because each individual kill is so damn satisfying. When you run into the first bunch of enemies, you'll be surprised at how many bullets each guy will take and how much blood he'll spill before keeling over -- it takes work and a little bit of strategy to take out even the lowliest of Locusts. Later, you'll drop drones to their knees just as they're running across a patch of darkness, so the Kryll can instantly swoop in and finish the job for you in a very violent, wet-sounding manner. And you'll probably never tire of redecorating a Locust's bodily interior with your vicious chainsaw.
Even in multiplayer, the limited modes seem to be less of an issue when so many encounters are so rewarding. I've literally jumped up from my seat in fist-pumping "yeah!!"-out-loud victory at least twice during our test sessions. One was when I caught three enemies at once in a single Hammer of Dawn orbital laser beam, making three bodies simultaneously blow up into bloody chunks to end the match -- another when someone had me pinned down with a turret, and I snuck around until I found a sniper rifle, poked out just far enough, then pop! It sounds awfully childish and/or shallow, but a sniper headshot is so much more gratifying when the target's melon explodes like...well, a melon.
I can go on and on, but you really need to play this visual and visceral masterpiece for yourself. When you do, you'll find plenty of minor problems, just like I did...but you can always find reasons not to give a game a 10.
And while I was playing Gears of War, all I kept running into was reasons to give it a 10
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