4/5 ★ – elkniodaphs's review of Gears of War.

Gears of War, a "pickup truck Warhammer," would never have been my first choice. Appreciating the brutalist architecture and the work of interior decorators who apparently shop at the same Ashley's as Morpheus can only get you so far. Other elements need to push the game over the finish line, and we're too far out from release to rely on Cliffy B. and his magnetic ego to prompt a sudden interest. My sudden interest came from seeing that a friend of mine was playing Gears of War 5. An odd choice for her, but as Whitman noted in Song of Myself, people contain multitudes. Apparently, my good friend is just as adept with nurturing her fragile crops on an idyllic farmstead as she is curbstomping alien heads to cascading viscera. Marcus Fenix was clearly designed to reflect what Cliffy B. thinks is cool, and Marcus Fenix isn't even that cool. Fenix gives Dog the Bounty Hunter vibes with the look of Dave Bautista. Fenix isn't someone you'd want to "hang out" with, he's the kind of guy that would smash a television if his favorite Thrashball team lost. Dave Bautista, on the other hand, very much likes puppies and would not smash a television. Your AI-driven squad seems perfectly capable of handling the onslaught of Locust hordes popping up out of the ground. This is refreshing when compared against other squad-based shooters where the player character accounts for 98% of your squad's efficacy. Progress happens in five minute chunks. You will fail, on occasion, and be made to try the five minute chunk again, but eventually you will succeed and earn the next checkpoint. Each encounter is a rung on a ladder, and the rungs are never spaced so far apart to make the climb a difficult prospect. My most indelible exposure to the game came shortly after release while me and about a dozen other people sat together in a Wal-Mart parking lot camping out for the Wii's midnight launch. Someone brought a television, an Xbox 360, a power supply, and a copy of Gears of War. I sat, curiously watching as this guy ran cables across the curb, and Wal-Mart security never gave him any pushback. We all gathered around and took turns with the controllers in co-op and played through the whole campaign in one sitting, an effort that was fueled by coffee that my partner would bring to me from trips into the store. I was surprised to find so many Gears of War enthusiasts camping out for the Wii, but again, people contain multitudes.