Playing Gears of War 1 for the first time in 17 years.

[GearSolidMetal]

Way back in 2006 I bought Gears of War 1, played it once, beat it once, and never played it again. Its a series I've always meant to try again, and so I just did.

Thankfully, its well optimized for the Series X and runs as a smooth 60FPS/1440P. The graphics look awesome and have aged gracefully. The environments are uniquely inspired by ancient greece & roman architecture. The character models are as if humans evolved so all men are naturally 400 pound Brock Lesnars.

The gameplay is a bit rudimentary, but that's probably because the series success inspired so many other games to 'borrow & improve' upon its basics.

The story and character development... is its weakest aspect. I really had no idea what the purpose Marcus Phoenix & the squad had in every level, or their role in the war... no sense of scale of what you were doing was supposedly going to end the war or if it was just a tale of four straggler soldiers just trying to survive.
There's a portion of the game you travel to the 'Phoenix Estate' which is Marcus's family home, but there's no significance to it whatsoever. Marcus makes a comment that his father's ignorance led to the beginning of the war... and that's it.
There's basically no character development, or really much character between the rest of the squad.
Even the final boss, General RAAM, you only know from killing the Liutenant early in the game. There's no sense of rivalry or hatred between him and Phoenix, so there was little sense of satisfaction in his demise.
And the ending is brief... and *poof* its over.
You get the sense there's alot of deep narrative potential that's completely wasted.
I'm pretty sure that's why I only played through it once, and mostly forgot about it.

[Edit- I just realized I complained about the story for longer than I praised the game's graphics & gameplay. Don't misunderstand that, the graphics and gameplay are very solid. I just tend to far deep into negatives sometimes.]

I played through the entire game in two sittings. Its short, and I believe this was the first game to introduce the trend of 'Short & Intense Campaign with a robust online presence' that COD later became mostly known for.

Overall, I recommend playing it through.
I believe its included on XBox Gamepass, as well as the rest of the series. Or you can find the Ultimate Edition for very cheap. I bought it at a local trade-in shop for $8.


Somewhat off-topic : Although my biggest issue is the weak & undeveloped story, I'm curious if it was eventually fleshed out. Did the sequels improve upon it? How about the book series? Possibly worth checking out?

 

[HereticBD]

The original "Bro Force", LOL.

Yeah, the story is about on par with "Fast N Furious". Does it get better in the sequels? A bit, but it's still mostly over the top nonsense. The "emotional" scenes, will only matter if you actually give a shit about these roided up meatheads. I for one, did not. I actually find videos of people crying over some of plot points, as if it was a culmination of some emotional journey, a bit silly. It's all stupid as hell.

That said, it works. The games themselves are great, and the stories are good enough to keep you going. Just don't put too much into the whole "One of the greatest video game stories ever told!" hype. You'll probably have a bigger emotional attachment to an ant you just stepped on. It's all about the fun, and big fuck you set pieces.

Pound for pound, one of the greatest looking games ever made. I can remember watching 60 second demos on the internet way back, and thinking it looked too good to be true. Like it wasn't possible. It looked like a CGI cut scene. Not only was it possible, it was smooth as hell. Everything worked as it should. It really did deliver on it's lofty promises. Halo was a feather in Xbox's cap, but GOW really made the one-two punch, and helped the Xbox 360 in it's brief period of dominance.

 

[rikwebb]

I played through it a few months ago and all i could think was how dull it looked to me but enjoyed how it played after not playing it since release, currently playing through 2

 

[Law Talkin’ Guy]

When I bought my One S back in 2017 it came with the Gears remake. I still haven’t played it, but I did play Gears 1 and 2 on my 360 back in the summer of 2010 and then finally got around to playing 3 in I believe 2014 or thereabouts. Not a bad series. As far as cover shooters go, they’re the best imo. I prefer their raw combat gameplay to Mass Effect 2 and 3 honestly. Mass Effect are better games overall, but the cover shooting mechanics are better in Gears.

I wouldn’t mind replaying the whole series some day, or at a minimum the remake, followed by Judgment, 4 and 5 as I’ve never played any of those three.

 

[Morning Star]

I could only imagine how slow the movements would be compared to the newer iterations. Yeah the story was basic, the best parts of the 1st game besides the combat and splattering of enemies was all the interactions between your squadmates, also the atmosphere was awesome. Beat it on insanity mode with my cousin. That shit was ridiculously hard on the final boss. Took us like 40+ mins and 10 tries.

Yes, for #2 and #3 they put a much bigger effort into narrative that had continued in the more recent games. It's never going to be some BioWare level story but they at least addressed that complaint. I've played pretty much every main release of Gears. Story mode is fun and you can easily just do a PUG in the new one's if you're solo. But the thing that keeps me coming back is Horde mode. Probably one of my favorite multiplayer modes in any video game.

 

[spamking]

I think I've played through 1, 2 and 3 . . . started 4, but haven't finished it. Pretty solid game overall.

 

[93confirmed]

The multiplayer was badass back then.

 

[method115]

Good games I got a 360 just for this series and Mass Effect. They had great local coop also. Me and my ex played through the whole series.