Gears of War

E3 06: Gears of War Demo Impressions from the Microsoft Conference

LOS ANGELES--It's no surprise that Microsoft is leading its pre-E3 media briefing at the famed Grauman's Chinese Theater with Gears of War, the intense Xbox 360-exclusive third-person shooter from Unreal masters Epic Games. Lead designer Cliff Bleszinski began the conference by jumping into a demo set right at the beginning of the game, in which hero Marcus Phoenix had just escaped from prison and was attempting to meet up with his compatriot, Dominic Santiago, to reach a helicopter and escape the malevolent Locust hordes that have ravaged humankind.

The action in this early level was a lot less "canned demo" and a lot more "actual game" than we've gotten from Gears of War in the past. It began with Marcus fighting his way down a long walkway and out into a yard full of columns, low barriers, and other points of cover. Ducking behind cover will play a big part in Gears' core shooting gameplay, and we saw exactly how dynamic this action will be during the demo, as Marcus could not only jump down behind cover that was in front of him, but also dash across an open walkway to get behind another cover point automatically. Once the courtyard had cleared, the Locusts began to cut right through the door at the far end with a cutting torch, eventually blowing it open so more of the beasts could pour into the area.

The actual shooting is about what you'd expect from a third-person shooter, but Epic has added a bunch of little touches to make Gears present itself in a much more intense fashion than the rest of its ilk. The blood effects are really a sight to behold, for instance--spraying down a Locust soldier let loose viscous, ropey streams of blood in every direction. When you zoom in for fine-tuned aiming, the camera gets in really tight with Marcus' head, and explosions will shake the camera around independently of his perspective. Similarly, the camera occasionally dropped down low to the ground, documentary style, when Marcus broke into a sprint. All these little effects added up to create a more hectic, realistic-looking action experience than you get out of most shooters.

As Marcus moved out into the demo level's final open area, we saw a few more of the unique mechanics that will hopefully set Gears apart from the pack. In one instance, a Locust soldier popped up right in front of a barricade Marcus was ducking behind, and he promptly popped up and delivered a shotgun blast that blew the enemy's arm right off (which then gruesomely came to rest right on the barricade). Later, Marcus snuck around a wall to confront another enemy up close, which is when we realized he conveniently had a chainsaw mounted on the underside of his rifle. He then performed some sort of up-close grapple move, after which he fired that chainsaw up and ripped right into the foe.

After taking out enough of the Locusts, Marcus made a mad dash for the incoming chopper--and just in time, since some kind of towering, multilegged beast began to emerge from the ground as he fled. The demo ended there, but in just a few minutes it left us itching to play Gears of War now that we've seen the direction in which Epic is taking this new property. Stay tuned for video of this demo and others from Microsoft's press conference soon, as well as a metric ton more coverage as E3 steamrolls onward.