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.