What is Gears of War? Is Cliff Bleszinski really all that talented? Gears of War is a welcome change of pace. Cliffy B. is talented, his writers aren’t, and I’m probably going to get flak for saying this, but neither are his artists. The Gears setting is gross and putrid and ugly and unsightly; a blight on this Earth. However, the gameplay hidden beneath is gold. Say what you will about its shotgun and chainsaw dominance, but the game is a mystical piece of work. I don’t like Cliffy, I think he’s a douche, I think he’s stupid, I think he’s a cliche typical fratboy out to please them as far as the context of Gears goes; but when it comes to gameplay and content, he shines. I respect his choices with GoW, the first and the second. He designed a game that was no longer about skill and dexterity with the analog sticks, and it’s not about holding down the trigger. It’s about timing. To be a bit speculative, it’s the future of turn based gaming.

The mechanics of the game do not require free thinking or talent with the sticks, they require timing and an understanding of what happens when, where, why and how. You don’t jump at whatever angle, from whatever distance at whatever height. You always vault over it the same way, you always start in the same spot and land it same spot, and the height of the object always stays the same. When you dive roll, you always go the same distance, you always get stuck in the same animation for the same length of time, you always go in a single direction. Attacks? Meleeing has delays and incurs delays and you cannot shoot instantly after meleeing. Shooting even has a timer: your gun cannot instantly fire. Running requires ducking and not being able to shoot for a given time. There is recoil from taking damage. Even reloading requires timing to be the best.

The game is based around timing.

That’s why the game is so popular amongst everyone, the hardcore and casual crowd alike: the gameplay is unique. It fused the standard run and gun affair with a brand new take: timing, not skill. It requires analysis, practice and endless trial and error before you have a masterful understanding of it. It’s a brilliant game in this sense, and it gets my love for it. I think it deserve more attention payed to its multiplayer aspect, where gameplay reigns supreme, instead of its joke of a story and singlepayer. This is the reason that the game is still the best over-the-shoulder shooting game to date. It knew what it was doing, and its entire gameplay styling was focused and pushed to this angle, whether they knew it or not. Balance issues aside, the mechanics of this game are unique and absolutely spectacular in comparison to the generic rehashing and reusing of die hard, trusted mechanics, that FPS games have suffered from for so long. That’s why people love it, they just don’t realise it yet.