Gears of War is a tactical third-person shooter where the player controls Marcus Fenix, a member of Delta Squad, to save the human inhabitants of the fictional planet Sera from an enemy known as The Locust Horde. The story, played over 5 acts with 30 chapters in total, has the humans reunite their strength after fighting over cheap energy in the Pendulum Wars for many years, to face this new alien threat.

Unlike many other shooters, the emphasis is not on brute violence, but rather team-based actions and cover-dependent tactics. Gameplay requires to look for cover options all the time, from which the player then attacks, along with turns and rolls to quickly pop out. By holding a button, a "roadie run" is performed, to sprint to another location. Marcus is part of a full squad, but another human player can take on the role of Dominic Santiago to fight cooperatively (split-screen, system link or online). At times, the paths will even be split up to face different challenges. Players can only hold two weapons, a sidearm, and a few grenades. There is a selection of submachine guns, sniper and assault riles, grenades, grenade launchers, and pistols, but the main gun is the COG Lancer Assault Rifle, which can also be used as a chainsaw bayonet in close combat. There are also a few exotic weapons, such as the Torque Bow with explosive arrows, or the Hammer of Dawn, to make an orbiting satellite fire a laser at targeted enemies.

All weapons need to be reloaded manually. By timely pressing a button on a meter, the weapon is reloaded, with more damage and at a faster rate with perfect timing, or it gets jammed when timed poorly. Instead of health bar, the game has the Crimson Omen, a cog-shaped icon that fills up with blood when the player sustains damage.

Next to the Co-op multiplayer, there is also Versus, with three game modes: Warzone (deathmatch), Execution (deathmatch, but with the addition of certain "fatalities" to take out enemies completely) and Assassination (team played focused on killing the opponent's team leader).

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Alternate Titles

"战争机器" -- Chinese spelling (simplified)
"GOW" -- Common abbreviation

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User Reviews

Gears of War is one of those games that no matter what your genre prefrence is, you have to pick it up.	Sam LaSelva (10)	unrated
You don't know how much you need a chainsaw until you've played this.	havoc of smeg (10888)
Definitely On Par With Halo!	Reaver (1772)	unrated
Just don't think about it too much	CrackTheSky (36)
Action packed all the way.	David Bryan (25)	unrated

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The Press Says

Yahoo! Games	Nov 12, 2006		100
Thunderbolt Games	Nov 19, 2006	10 out of 10	100
FileFactory Games / Gameworld Network	Nov 12, 2006	97 out of 100	97
GameCola.net	Jan 01, 2007	9.6 out of 10	96
IGN Australia	Nov 12, 2006	9.5 out of 10	95
New Age Gaming	Jan, 2007	94 out of 100	94
IC-Games	Dec 14, 2006	93 out of 100	93
Christ Centered Game Reviews	Jan 10, 2007	89 out of 100	89
Game Critics	Jan 27, 2007	8 out of 10	80
Eurogamer.fr	May 17, 2007	8 out of 10	80

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Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
Gets too much credit for the gameplay	40	Late (97) Oct 10, 2010

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Trivia

Novels

To date, five books based on the Gears of War universe have been written. All five are written by Karen Traviss and are canon material:

The first, Aspho Fields, bridges the gap between the first and the second game, as well as the battle of Aspho Fields, with takes place pre E-day during the Pendulum Wars.
The second, Jacintos Remnant, takes place after Gears of War 2, as well as one year after E-day.
The third book, Anvil Gate follows up from the ending of Jacintos Remnant, as well as the siege of Anvil Gate during the Pendulum Wars, during which Col. Hoffman was in command of the COG forces involved.
The fourth, Coalitions End, continues the story of Jacinto's Remnant and Anvil Gate, as well as bridging the gap between the books and Gears of War 3
The fifth, The Slab, deals with Marcus Fenix's time in Jacinto Maximum Security prison.

References

The achievement unlocked by defeating a berserker on hardcore difficulty is called My Love for You Is Like a Truck. That is a reference to the film Clerks (1994) where it is used as a line in a fictional, Russian metal song: "My love for you is like a truck, Berserker!"
The character of Augustus Cole (the "Cole Train") shares a name with a character to have appeared on the X-Files television show. The season two episode, Sleepless features a super-soldier of the name Augustus D. Cole, portrayed by Tony Todd, who has been modified to never require sleep. It is unknown if this is a coincidence or deliberate.

References to the game

The game is referenced in the movie Live Free or Die Hard where one of the characters is playing it at the beginning. It also appears in Disturbia where a teenager is killing some time with it.

Trailer

The game's teaser trailed used Gary Jules' Mad World as the soundtrack. That sequence was later spoofed through a teaser trailer of Battlefield: Bad Company titled Bad World. A link to the clip is available in the related links section.