As a teenager, I had a lot of fun playing Gears of War, especially co-op and multiplayer. And while it didn't exactly pioneer the showcased mechanics as a third-person shooter, I think it perfected them in a lot of ways. This game and Dead Rising 1 were the two big early 360 knockouts, IMO.

As I was growing up, I got a little annoyed that the gaming spheres (that was considerably hipster-ish for late 00s/early 10s standards) turned their noses at Gears of War, calling it generic, boring, and with an uninteresting visual art style. Things I couldn't disagree with more. People dog on stuff like how there's convenient covers throughout the campaign, but the game is designed around that, so I think it's fine. The snappiness of clinging between walls is also a lot of fun.

I think the game sells its intensity extremely well with all of its little touches, like how the camera bobs, the damage meter being this tamped gear in the center, and this is all especially supported by its super-gritty art style. Don't get me wrong, it's all SUPER exaggerated and considerably obnoxious (look up the lead artist, he looks JUST like the locust enemies lmfao), but I think it's great, and it all serves a purpose.

Well-paced, gritty third person action, with its intensity cranked to the max through its competitive multiplayer. But for those that don't want MP, the 1-2 player campaign is great fun with some variety to keep it interesting from beginning to end.

This game became extremely influential, and led to some of my favorite games that came out after this. And part of me likes to think --maybe at a more subconscious level-- this game was meant to be a successor to Contra. It has a lot in common with that run-n-gun series in a way nobody cares to realize.

A much better put together game than the first one but also a lot more streamlined compared to the first. Where 1 feels like its throwing darts at the wall and sees what will stick. 2 is a lot more of a straight forward Point A to Point B action game. There isn't anything particularly wrong with that but its an observation i want to make and keep in mind with my replay of the series and see if the memory of "the series slowly devolved into and lost its identity to the pop culture idea of itself" is actually true. Gears exists in pop culture and memes as the dude bro action game for beer guzzling frat boys but you see in the first two games they are trying to be more than that. Sure its still filled with stuff put in the game because the devs thought it was cool, which is a design philosphy i am all for. But it tries to have more of a story than but some of it goes by so fast that it comes off comedic.

You spend an entire game trying to prevent the sinking of a city only for Marcus to hear a single voice recorded sentence of his father saying they should sink Jacinto and he is now going "we have to sink the city before they do." It looks and sounds stupid because its a complete 180 in a matter of seconds after hours of build up in the opposite direction. When you stop and think about it the idea makes sense. Marcus is a man that has been consumed by a world at war for 15 years and if this is the hail mary to stop it in one fell swoop he is gonna take it, for the good of humanity even if its a very difficult decision to make. As said by Adam Fenix in the game "end the war at the cost of humanity's last refuge"

To go back to the topic of Gears slowly leaning in to the memes of itself and morphing into the games everyone thought they were there is no better example of this than Marcus's voice performance by John DiMaggio. This was one of if not the biggest thing parodied at the time of the series peak in cultural relevance. In this first game his performance is a lot more subdued but in 2 DiMaggio is a lot more gruff sounding. He is putting a lot of tension on the muscles of his throat to give his voice this gravely texture to it which results in Marcus sounding a lot more aggressive. I can't say for certain what was the cause of the change in direction and if it caused more parody and memeing than what already existed but it definitely felt like it didn't help and was a sign of where the series was being steered towards.

Overall a good game if not a little bit more forgettable in areas than 1 because its mostly just hallway fight after hallway fight. Excited to replay 3 which was my favorite