My first attempt at enjoying ‘popular’ computer games resulted in me firing my copy of Modern Warfare onto the dual carriageway.* So you would think I would have more sense than to dive back into the ‘American Shooting’ genre that makes up 90% of the Xbox catalogue. However I am nothing if not ‘sense-less’ and so dived straight into playing the most popular Xbox game that isn’t Halo of all time – Gears of War.
Right away I should say that Gears of War is probably the most homoerotic game I have ever played, a bold claim considering I used to own pit fighter. A less experienced reviewer might claim it was the most homoerotic thing they had never experienced, but they obviously don’t remember the time that guy kept putting his arm around them and telling them how funny they were. I’m guessing the main market for this game is sexually confused teenage boys who enjoy seeing men’s veins bulging out of their thick necks. You can definitely identify with the characters as the entire game revolves around them trying to deny their homosexuality by pointing phallic objects at other big men or getting inside them with chainsaws. I’m glad to say that by the end of the game the four main characters have killed enough men to feel comfortable rolling around on the grass with each other and having a bit of a play fight. The moral of the story is that there is nothing wrong with being gay but watching four fantasy muscle men kill things does not make you gay because violence is excellent – especially violence against equally muscular men.
Just remember, because this is a modern game you have to do everything as a ‘squad’ because one person fighting all those monsters would be a ludicrous proposition but one person and three unreliable idiots doing it is perfectly feasible. Your ‘Squad’ does change a little bit, but mostly you know that it can never go over four so if an extra person joins you someone else is going to get ‘done in’. This seems to happen early on in the game to demonstrate how bad war is (very bad) but near the end it doesn’t happen because of marketing. So who are the members of your muscleman squad? Allow me to introduce them and pretend they have distinct personalities.
Mark – Mark is the main character who starts of in prison for unknown crimes. (Killing his wife) however in times of war they need every man they can get, especially men who have spent all their time in prison taking steroids and learning how to talk in a gruff voice. Luckily Mark already has lots of war experience (from killing his wife) and it doesn’t take him long to get back into the swing of things. His main motivation is to escape the memory of so many prison rapes by throwing grenades into big holes.
Dom – Dom’s real name is Dominic but he likes to go by ‘Dom’ in honour of Dom Jolly. He is the main assistant of Mark and spends a lot of time looking at him adoringly. He dose mention that he has a wife but if he can’t be that bothered about her or he wouldn’t be spending all his time hanging around with men.
Whiney Man – I can’t remember the name of the whiney man because he wasn’t grotesquely muscular enough to be worth remembering. He does however look an awful lot like Cid from FF7 only instead of swearing and driving space ships with faulty oxygen tanks he makes fantastic wisecracks. The whiney man seems to spend a lot of time making funny jokes about how there are not enough women about but secretly he’s just making sure everyone is on the same page. (The page of man love)
Coal – In my humble opinion Coal is the most hateful character in all of computer games, even more so than the prince from Warrior Within. He looks absurdly inhuman even compared to his muscle-bound comrades but more importantly he is VERY ugly. Coal loves killing things and he is often found telling everyone about how great he is at fighting and how he can’t wait to find some more men to ‘get’ with his chainsaw gun. One day he will realise that he can connect with men in ways other than fighting them but until that day comes he remains the world’s most irritating virtual space soldier.
The game itself is basically Phantasy Star Online but instead of RPG elements you can stand behind things and instead of leaving behind meseta the enemies leave behind blood. Also every character is a ranger. It is most like Phantasy Star Online in that enemies keep appearing from nowhere and then the music goes “ten ten ten ten TEN TEN TEN” to make the atmosphere more tense. Also a lot of the levels are underground caves so you could play those and pretend you were on the caves level of Phantasy Star Online or you could just play the caves level of Phantasy Star Online. The choice is up to you.
Fans of Gears of War (Known as Gearophiles) might accuse me of being slightly unfair as the main point of the game are its cooperative elements. i.e. yet another game relying on your own social interactions to make up for its failings. I tried playing the co-op with Brother Jonas Bruner but he was constantly getting killed or trying to chainsaw me in the back. If anything it was even less fun as was continually making racist remarks or talking about Saint Seiya: The Hades.
My main disappointment with this game was that because it was called ‘Gears of War’ I thought all the enemies would be cog robots and gear operated spiders. However the enemies aren’t cog robots at all they are just more muscular men. Furthermore the heroes work for an organisation called COG but they do not seem to operate any clockwork style machinery. The only cog you ever see is the one representing the mysterious health system, what’s wrong with a health bar epic megagames? Also why is the ability to run named ‘roadie run’? how is it different from normal running?
Overall I give this game a COG soldier out of an annoying car bit.
* Thought for the day: Does Call of Duty have anything to do with Call of Juarez? Also how come the spellchecker accepts Juarez as a word?
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