Gears of War - Xbox 360

I write this as the Chiefs are getting their brains beat in by the Chargers. Is there any point in watching the second half? It's only 14-3, but it feels like 141-3. We can't even block a punt correctly. But I digress.

I honestly can't remember the last time I played a game that wasn't a sports game. It might have been Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, about four years ago. So I was kind of hesitant to pick up Gears of War for the Xbox 360 the other day, but I went ahead and did it anyway because I've heard so many good things about it. From what I had heard, it was the game to have. So whatever, I'll give it a whirl. Merry Christmas to me.

First of all, the only game I have ever played remotely like it is GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 back in college. It was groundbreaking at the time. Sure, the single player mode was awesome, but where it really caught on, for me at least, was in the multiplayer mode. Basically, four people could plug in and try to kill each other. Perfect for a college dorm room. Of course back then, there was no internet capability for a video game console, so we were stuck with a 4-way split screen on a 20 inch TV. I look back at it now and can't believe it was ever fun. But it was great. And Gears of War is about 100 times better.

For the multiplayer mode, you can go online through Xbox live and do basically the same thing as you could with Goldeneye. I haven't tried it yet, so I have no idea how many people you can squeeze into a single session, but it has to be like 10 right? I feel like I've been cheated or something, because this would have been a great way to suck up the Truman State University bandwidth back in the day. Come to think of it, we might have crashed all their servers.

But the single-player mode is pretty cool too. From what I can tell, you play the role of this guy who is imprisoned on a planet that has been taken over by some kind of killer breed of locusts. You have a big gun/chainsaw hybrid weapon, and you go to work. There are some grenades, a sniper rifle, and some other weapons of course, but the main weapon is the assault rifle that doubles as a chainsaw. Of course, that's probably all you need anyway.

I really suck at this game so far, but at least it's fun. Kind of a nice way to relieve some stress. But still, it's just another reason why I wish I was about 10 years younger.

Score: 10 out of 10