Marcus Fenix

Gears of War review: Time to rev up that lancer!

Please note, dear readers, this is a review of Gears of War 4’s campaign and not any of its MP modes. If I get time to play any of them, I’ll post my thoughts, but that said, I like single player campaigns more than MP so that might be a while …

I’ve always been a fan of the Gears of War video games.

Son of a gun: JD Fenix

Son of a gun: JD Fenix

In fact, I’ve always liked the series much more than Halo, to be honest. Maybe it’s  the over-the-top characters with larger than life calves and that it has a gun that has a freaking chainsaw attached to it, but I always liked the dude bro chemistry between original Gears characters Marcus Fenix, Dom Santiago, Damon Baird and Augustus “Cole Train”Cole as they battled the Locust.

Set 25 years after Gears of War 3, you fill the combat boots of James Dominic (JD) Fenix, the son of Gears legend Marcus Fenix, and this time around the COG (Coalition of Governments) that Marcus and his pals Dom, Cole and Baird fought for so long ago are now the enemy, with JD and colleagues Kait and Del sort of revolutionaries fighting against the machine that is now the COG.

This is a much more vibrant Gears of War game, at least compared to the dark, gritty colour tones of previous games in the series, and while it’s not unicorns and rainbows it’s nice to see colour that isn’t various shades of brown and grey.

Gears of War 4 Drone BattleGOW4 takes a while to warm up and much of that is down to the fact that for the first couple of hours all you battle are COG robots called DeeBees. Don’t give up, though, as once you start fighting the Swarm – the new enemies – things pick up for the better.

Despite a new developer, Gears of War 4 feels like a Gears game and by that I mean it’s a tightly scripted affair where rooms are combat arenas full of knee-high walls and barricades that you can hunker down behind and pick out the horde of enemies, one by one. JD smacks into walls with a satisfying thump (you can almost feel the masonry crumble as a shoulder slams into it) – and there’s always plenty of cover to move to as you advance. There are new weapons too, to mix things up a little so you don’t have to reply on the faithful lancer all the time: One that fires saw blades, while another fires projectiles that drill into the ground then explode.

Gears of War has always been about arenas where you enter a room, clear out the enemies then move towards the objective. It’s never been about open-world exploration where you can wander off the beaten track.

Narrative has never been  a strength of the Gears games and it’s pretty average here but JD Fenix is a likeable character that grew on me the more I played the game and in a nice nod to the previous Gears titles, it was nice that Marcus Fenix becomes part of the team during the latter stages of the game.

A welcome return: Marcus Fenix makes a welcome return in GOW4.

A welcome return: Marcus Fenix makes a welcome return in GOW4.

It was nice seeing The Coalition give us an older, more grizzled (could he get more grizzled?)

Marcus Fenix, a military man who has lived life as a civilian for 25 years and now lives on a farm, growing tomatoes and generally leading a quiet life (there’s a nice sequence where JD, Marcus and co make their way through Marcus’ tomato plants and Marcus complains that his plants are being destroyed).

The Coalition hasn’t reinvented Gears of War here, and I don’t think anyone expected that they would, but I felt that the middle sagged a little, with the game becoming bogged down with traipsing through Swarm-infested lairs. As you’d expect, the ending has set us up for Gears of War 5.

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Gears of War 4 looks wonderful on Xbox One – it could be the best looking game on Xbox One right now – and on PC, and it’s the third game to be released as part of Xbox’s Play Anywhere scheme where if you buy a digital copy on PC or Xbox One, you’ll get a free copy on the other platform and despite having a four-year old graphics card, I played most of the campaign on my PC. It’s incredibly scalable and my PC managed solid frame rates of close to 60 frames a second at 1080p using a mix of medium and high graphic presets. I was pleasantly surprised.

For a fan of Gears of War, I found number 4 in the series (let’s just forget that Judgement ever happened, shall we?) incredibly satisfying. It delivered all the things I wanted in a Gears game.

Now that The Coalition has got its first album out of the way, let’s see what direction the series heads in the future.

 

 

Gears of War 4 MP beta

I was lucky enough to get early access to the Gears of War 4 MP beta which is happening now.

I tried to get some game time in on Sunday afternoon but there was literally no-one playing. I had better luck last night, NZ time, though, as obviously more Americans were awake and joined in.

Coming from The Coalition (much of the team worked on previous GOW games), Gears of War 4 takes place 15 years after GOW3 ended and stars JD Fenix, who is the son of GOW main character Marcus Fenix. The full games is scheduled for release on October 11.

I’m not great at MP games (regular readers will have read my piece on how my fingers just can’t keep up these days) but I played a few rounds of MP Team Deathmatch on Sunday night and my lack of MP skills didn’t disappoint but a nice touch is that once all you’ve used up all your allocated spawns you can’t rejoin the game so eventually it just becomes one against those on the opposing team (if they’ve whipped your team’s butt). The beta has three maps: Foundation, Dam and Harbour,  two game modes: Team Deathmatch and Dodgeball and there will be an open beta from April 25 to May 1.

New features include active reload all the time now, not just when you need to reload, and if you get it right it gives you a nice little XP bonus and you’re also able to pull an enemy from behind their cover and shank them. I didn’t manage to do any of that: I was too busy remembering what buttons did what on the controller it’s been so long since I’ve played any GOW MP matches. The full game will match players with a similar skill level, which suits players like me, and weapons in the beta include the lancer/hammerburst, gnasher shotgun, snub pistol and combat knife (useful for stabbing things). Chainsaw duels are here, as are the executions.

Here, watch this five-minute clip of me dying a bit but actually get a kill (or two, I think) in.

Gears of War Ultimate Edition review: “Hell yeah, baby, everybody wants to see The Cole Train play”

The Gears of War series is one of improbables: Improbably large men with biceps and calves thicker than one of my thighs, improbably insane weapons (the chainsaw bayonet, anyone?) and improbably overwhelming odds but from the moment I played the original GOW way, way back in the mid-2000s on my Xbox 360, I was hooked.

Yes, it was a game oozing with bromance between muscle-bound soldiers Marcus Fenix, Baird, Dom Santiago and Augustus “Cole Train” Cole as they took on ugly, ground-dwelling foes known as the Locust on the planet Sera, but it was loud and proud and embraced that bromancing and machismo wholeheartedly. Also, you can chainsaw enemies in half.

Gears of War came out at a time when most action games were first-person shooters but Epic Games eschewed that for third-person and it worked incredibly well. You could almost feel the thud as Marcus and his pals slammed into cover. Frankly, GOW wouldn’t have worked as a FPS.

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Same scene, different console: Embery Square as seen on the Xbox One ...

Same scene, different console: Embry Square in Gears of War Ultimate Edition looks much more battle-worn and decayed than the Xbox 360 version [top]

Developer The Coalition (which is made up of many of the staff who worked on the original Gears of War) has given Gears of War more than just a touch up with a palette knife: This is a game that has received a major graphical overhaul, including completely redone cinematics, and while the remake of such an influential last-generation game may have lost some of the impactful lighting that the original had, GOW is a stunning looking game that properly realises the vision that Epic games had back in 2006.

The original game had an almost blurry look to it [compare the screenshots of the Xbox One vs the Xbox 360 images] and never has Marcus Fenix and the rest of Delta squad looked so human and so emotional [Baird, especially, looks much, much better].

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More realistic: Delta Squad looks more human in the Xbox One version than in the Xbox 360 one [top]

More realistic: Delta Squad looks more human in the Xbox One version than in the Xbox 360 one [below]

This new-look Gears of War is the exact same game as it was almost 10 years ago: a cover-based shooter where walls and knee-high barricades are your friend, although there is the addition of some content that only appeared on the PC version.

It’s the same story line, the same characters, the same game code, the same kill the right number of Locust so you can progress, the same thrill you get when you nail an active reload. It just looks much, much nicer thanks to the gruntier (I’m sure I just made that word up) Xbox One – and I don’t have a problem with that. This is a game that isn’t afraid to embrace its strengths.

There are some game play tweaks, which are nice additions: It now has drop-in, drop-out co-op play so a player can join in mid-mission when you need some help taking on the Locust hordes and you can now change weapons while you roadie run, which is helpful.

Look at those eyes: Marcus Fenix looks much more human in Gears of War Ultimate Edition.

Look at those eyes: Marcus Fenix looks much more human in Gears of War Ultimate Edition.

That said, you also get the same quirks that the original had. Gears of War was made at a time in video game development when quick saving wasn’t common so GOW Ultimate Edition has the same uneven checkpoint system the original had meaning if you die before you trigger the next one, you’ll be chewing through those same Locust again.

The “You take one path, we’ll take the other” game mechanic also feels a little old, and yes, squad AI is still whacked at times where squad mates will get in your way as your fire your weapon or take a while to catch up when you race ahead. I had to replay the first encounter with a Beserker several times (almost to the point of giving up) because Dom wouldn’t get out of its way, killing him, or the Beserker itself didn’t respond to the noise I was making. That was frustrating to say the least.

As far as re-masters go, Gears of War Ultimate Edition is a mighty fine one that holds up tremendously well despite being nine years old, and it’s testimony to how good a console shooter the original was. It was also a game that tried to mix up the shooter formula of the time – and it worked. I still remember the first time I encountered the terrifying Beserker or came face-to-face with Theron guards in the original. Playing GOW Ultimate Edition bought back those memories for me.

Look, for fans of the original here’s the chance to play the game again on your fancy new Xbox One console. For gamers new to the series, it’s a chance to finally play a game that would go onto to establish itself as a foundation franchise for Microsoft.

*Thanks to Xbox NZ for a downloadable copy of Gears of War Ultimate Edition. Multiplayer servers aren’t online for the public yet so I didn’t test the multiplayer which, to be fair, is probably just as well: I sucked at MP when the original Gears of War came out, I doubt I’ve got much better since then.