Gears of War is a classic cover-shooter that throws you right into a brutal war against the Locust Horde. You take on the role of Marcus Fenix, a tough gear soldier fighting for survival. The campaign is intense, and the over-the-shoulder cover shooting feels great. However, the story is pretty straightforward and the multiplayer, while fun, can be really punishing for new players. Still, chainsawing enemies in half never gets old, and for fans of action-packed shooters, Gears of War is a must-play.

A sci-fi dystopian 3rd person shooter, Gears of War doesn’t strike you as a mainstream game but with a co-op focused campaign, a warlike environment, and a dynamic group of characters Gears manages to mark its claim. The game is a true ‘cover-based shooter’, however there comes a variety of gameplay in different scenarios where players have to time runs from cover to cover, lead a boss into a vulnerable zone, or enter into a (poorly made) vehicle level. The action overall is fun, if a little unpolished. The story is a convoluted mess that allows the cast to fight, regroup, and blow stuff up. The dialogue of the group are little gems as you have seriousness alongside sarcasm and egotism.

A good start to the franchise but just not there yet. The story itself is quite boring to be honest, it's mostly carried by delta squad.
The art direction while often criticized is actually incredibly strong, it truly creates a hopeless hollow world and you can really feel how humanity is on it's last legs.
I feel Gears 1 has really suffered from it's success , lots of clones of it popped out in the 7th generation and it kickstarted the grey and brown art style trend for half of the generation and it just takes away from it when you come back to it.
A rough title carried by its heart.

My whole childhood.. to my opinion the best shooter franchise we ever got and is definitely the reason I hooked to gaming.

A very dark and gritty universe with unfortunately not a big emphasis on the story which unfortunately is a setback for the overall experience but to be fair this first installment was more of a gameplay showcase which is fine for how big of a coin flip this game was.

The gameplay however is a masterclass, cover shooter with gore everywhere is definitely comical ( shoutout the headshot sound ) and is very dear to me

This game was a big disappointment, the fact that I finished it was too much for me because from the first 20 minutes I wanted to uninstall it. It totally feels like a mobile game, it's boring, ugly, basic and bad. The design of the world is horrendous and even depressing because of how bad it is, the game is boring from start to finish, I spent weeks playing it because it didn't last more than a one-hour session without having to close it, almost all the weapons are bad and not even They don't even provide a "pleasure" when killing except for the shotgun, the designs of these are ugly, the designs of the characters, whether enemies or allies, were also horrendous, the story was almost non-existent and the characters did not have a minimum of charisma, in addition that they were useless, they had terrible AI along with the enemies. Little variety of things and basic and horrible mechanics, the mechanic of reloading weapons is interesting but nothing special, when receiving damage instead of the screen turning red like any common game, an ugly red logo begins to appear in the middle of the screen that does not indicate anything. Full of bugs, very bad scenarios and more than anything repetitive and ugly, the worst boss fights I have seen in a video game, terrible controls, the character turned and covered himself with the walls all the time without me wanting it, the difficulty is very strange, because you would have walked like you were Rambo but then they would kill you instantly out of nowhere. And many more things that I'm not going to add, but this game is garbage, I can't understand what people see in it, I even read that it was better than Vanquish (? That's an insult to Vanquish, and no, I'm not comparing this game to Vanquish at the time of writing this review, but this game is garbage.

Game doesn't care about its plot. Enemy types are diverse and landscapes are cool and colorful. Controls are sloppy (run, take cover, and dodge roll are all bound to A). Game feels a bit too unforgiving with insta-gib enemies at times.

Verdict: Hasn't aged well. Too many other great 3rd person shooters you could be playing from that generation, let alone that console, to warrant spending time with cough Vanquish cough. Don't waste your time with it unless you really want to experience all 3 original games in order.