X06: Gears of War gameplay video

Game Mode was set to easiest for X06.

After such a strong X06 what's with all this sudden Xbox360 negativity on Joystiq?

Every man and his dog has been saying Gears of War looked great, captured the frantic pace of an action movie, and seemed to play very well too.

All of a sudden we're getting implied comparisons to Brute Force and complaints about enemy AI - even after Joystiq reported earlier that the game was set to Casual play for X06.

We all hope this one doesn't suck (except the Sony fanboys), but lets have a little balance here!

What a woefully inaccurate assessment.

EVERYONE I spoke to at X06 spoke highly of Gears Of War. Everyone. Having played the single player demo there, I thought the cover mechanic worked really well, arguably delivering what Perfect Dark Zero should have done in that department. Likewise, the feeling of covering team-mates and moving forward under supressing fire is really rewarding in itself, especially when you then flank the enemy (and yes, the AI does flank you). The presentation values go without saying and you really felt as though you were thrown in against the odds. I was genuinely surprised, not only by the quality of the game but that very few people had anything negative to say against the game, given the generally cynical outlook of journalists, bloggers, etc (although this Joystiq news story has clearly proved me wrong).

And this isn't even mentioning multiplayer, which I also thought was fantastic.

Still, what do I know, right? Let's all judge it on the video.

This has been noted all over the internet. The game mode was set to easiest for XO6. I agree with the grenade explosions and I dont like the swinging grenade thing. The david and goliath sling shot needs to be cut.

this game looks like every other half life wanna be out there. LAME, i mean cant we come up with somthing better than run gun armor shoot......getting old, and i though this was a "next gen" game, well this is not impressive seeing how this was supposed to be released as a launch title. you wanna see next gen check out Assassins creed!
http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2006/09/28/x06-assassins-creed-gameplay-video/

Notice there isn't much to any area destruction, also after getting chain-sawed the only thing that gets bloody in the screen. Don't get me worng it looks cool but GTA has this. You chain saw someone and the screen get blood on it you crash into a building nothing happens to it unless it's made of glass. Even the weak grenades didn't smudge the blocks they was hiding behind. The water fountain wasn't taking any damage like chunks of it breaking are anything like that.

Easiest, Schmeasiest the game is Kill.Switch with prettier graphics, change human enemies into "locust horde" and bosses into (insert sci-fi creature/machine) boss here. Just like most 360 games it is over-hyped and will have a flash in the pan initial sale but of course no one will track the returns once people get tired of the duck/cover run & shoot.

Seriously I don't get the hype.
I am SURE the game will be BEAUTIFUL.
I am SURE it will be cool for the first 50 times to Chainsaw an enemy(Are you still hyped about the chainsaw like the first time you used it in Doom?)

...and the hype begins.

I think it looks like it will be pretty darn fun, but if there's one company that values graphics over gameplay, that company is Epic.

I think once the final game ships with all the elements in place (all gameplay tweaks, and A.I.) we will have a game that we can not stop talking about. I'm really looking forward to this one in multi player and single player and all the co-op modes that it has. I really feel that Epic is doing everything possible to make the game not suck.

From what I understand, the grendades are being used in that demo to close the holes, or portals, or whatever in the ground that the enemies are coming out of.

That being said, The grenades don't do anything in Gears, at least as far as that demo shows. Why make grenades that do no damage? Lost Planet suffered from this inexplicable problem as well.

Halo already perfected the grenade- two different types, actually, in 2001. Halo 2 could have just copied it, but didn't. And it looks like Gears is making the same stupid- but very obvious and rediculously fixable- move.

I'll be honest with you - based strictly on this video, I'm not ultra-hyped for this thing. Believe me - I WANT to like this game and look forward to it but just like Halo 2 before it, I don't want to get sucked into the hype and then get disappointed (Halo 2 did that to me in a BIG way).

Nothing about this video pumps me up. And I'm glad people are saying that the AI is on the easiest difficulty setting because some of the enemy actions are so bad it's hilarious! I love at the end where the main character jumps out of that circle and 'takes cover' behind that tiny little lamppost thing. There's a locust guy right behind it. All the enemy has to do is reach over and unload with his gun but no, he just stands there, because - gasp! - your character is 'taking cover' (/sarcasm).

Of course, I'm not going to base all my opinions of this game just on this video. I'll continue to not follow the hype of this game. I'll simply wait until it's released and judge for myself. Here's hoping to a killer app.

Pretty much anyone paying attention knew that Brute Force was gonna suck looong before release.
Remember that months before release Brute Force starting being delayed, and weird stories about Bungie being called in to help Digital Anvil started surfacing.

Now, keeping in mind that I haven't played these demos like some, it looks like everything that Brute Force screwed up, GOW gets right. (hey- you brought it up)
I love the much-improved the animations (which sucked in BF), I love the character and creature designs (sucked in BF), Gears of War has excellent and cohesive art design (SIBF), has actually brought NEW IDEAS to the sci-fi shooter genre, and the whole game seems to have that visceral impact that only the greatest action titles can pull off.

Still, it probably all depends on the difficulty.
If the game is too easy, I can see it getting repetitive after 4 or 5 hours. If Epic can bring some "ah shit, I don't know if I'm gonna make it" intensity to the whole thing, then this will live up the the hype. All the other pieces are in place.

Gears of War is under an unfair microscope, for sure- although that's to be expected with all of the hype put behind it.

Epic and CliffyB look like they're cruising right along to the finish line, cocky as hell the whole way- might be annoying to some, but I find it a really good sign.

I'm backing up the hype train and calling this one out as the biggest critical and commercial console hit of the holiday.
(well, besides Zelda. I imagine that's got the edge in review scores locked up automatically)

i knew it. from day one that this game would be repetive. we all know that duck and shoot always suck. look at kill switch for example. now guys don't worry MS will pay all the respectable sites money to give this game a high score so even if it does suck you won't care since every one gave it a high score.
and they need to fix those lame grenades and lost planet is 10x more fun

The internet vid does not due it justice at all, download the X06 montage from the Market place on Xbox Live and it looks amazing

"My word," he says while adjusting his monocle. "How many times must we shoot a gun at an adversary. And grenades...Don't get me started about grenades." He chuckles before taking a sip of aged merlot. "Oh dear. I'm afraid I have no use for such anachronistic game play conventions. Come everyone, let us retire to the study for a proper game of chess."

Meanwhile, in the sprawling metropolis, the unwashed masses drop the pretentious horsecrap and actually have fun playing a video game.

Don't worry. I heard the FMV is awesome. :-/

#5 you're an idiot. How is it like Half Life? Because you're shooting things? Last time I checked Half Life was a FPS...this isn't.

And what is Next Gen about Asassin's Creed? BECAUSE YOU HAVE A SWORD?!?!?!

Don't get me wrong..I am very excited for both..but you're just an idiot.

and #13 Just shut up. Please. ONE video comes out and you think you know it all. Not only that, almost EVERY thing negative in the video has been explained.

Jesus christ I hate people some times.

NextGen? The enemies aren't even responding to where they're shot. And no battle damage (like other posters have mentioned) on the surroundings. This is just a graphically polished current gen game. Where are our fully interactive environments?

This game has plenty of:

Blood. Guts. Violence.
and
Blood. Guts. Violence.

Therefore, it will be bought and noticed by many, many people.

'Nuff said.

Whoa, the Assassin's Creed video looks amazing.

you all are morons, wait for the game, AND THEN talk shit or praise.

doooomskies out

Tony my man you need to chill. Don't let the haters drag you down.

As for the video, I'm mixed at the moment. The animations and art design have me totally stoked. On my HD TV with the dolby cranked up, this game is going to be a showcase I'm sure. However, I completely agree that the grenade system looks lame and the enemy AI leaves a great deal to be desired. If the AI magically corrects itself with a quick trip to the option screen, then I'm a happy man.

Regardless, I've got my pre-order in and I've got my fingers crossed that it lives up to at lease some of the hype. At the very least, the achievement looked easy to get! :)

Talk about dumbass AI, omg what a let down that is.

Sony is officially done!! Throw in the towl Sony! Please! You have no chance. Thank God MS entered gamming. If they wouldn't have entered we would be playing crappy Final Fanstasy and Metal Gear for another ten years.

Mass Effect will be tens times better than any FF game!
And I loved FF7 & 8. Now we have a variety and not the same stagnate games!

"Repetitive shooting"? That's got to be the dumbest phrase I've ever read on Joystiq.

It's an action shooter. Then I guess Halo 1, and 2 are horrible.

18.

Do you have a 360? Is it hooked up online?

Anyway, download the IGN GOW Demo Video. There is a scene where the locust horde blowtorches their way thru a door. The guy positions his character behind a downed column and waits for the locusts to come thru the doorway. When they do, he shoots them in the leg. Why would he do that? Well, he eplains, "if you shoot them in the leg they go down and you can get some good head shots in while they are getting back up." Enemies don't respond my ass. These are creatures from underground, bigger, stronger and more bad ass than humans. It takes a lot of bullets to kill them, that is why you may think they aren't "responding".

There was this scene where he somersaults from one point of cover to another. He shoots out of one side at the enemy, and ducks back in, then he crawls to the other side of the cover. Meanwhile the enemy is taking some shots at where he was. Then he pops out the other side and gets a few shots in while they are shooting at where he was.

ANother scene, squad mate shoots at a locust who is real close to the player who is hiding behind cover. The enemy focuses and shoots at the squadmate who is shooting at him from far away, allowing the player to come up on the side and chainsaw the enemy as his attention is being drawn away.

Really cool looking gameplay to me.

I've been underwhelmed by this game ever since the first gameplay E3 video. It looked boring and repetitive then, and it still looks that same way. It's a pretty game (for the most part, the guns look terrible) but I honestly don't care that much for graphics.

I see this one going the way of Brute Force.

"Sony is officially done!! Throw in the towl Sony! Please! You have no chance. Thank God MS entered gamming. If they wouldn't have entered we would be playing crappy Final Fanstasy and Metal Gear for another ten years.

Mass Effect will be tens times better than any FF game!
And I loved FF7 & 8. Now we have a variety and not the same stagnate games!"

Moron. You do realise that MS aren't actually developing any of those games themselves? They could be done on either machine but MS has paid for exclusives. Yes death to Sony, let MS dominate everything. Fool.

I'm glad the analogy to Brute Force was brought up, because I thought the same thing. This game is getting such an amount of hype, I was beginning to think that Epic had everyone drinking the koolaid.
I hope it is everything that is hyped and promised, but I'm skeptical. Remember all the positive previews of Brute force. I appreciate the reality check, that this game could blow.

I don't think it will, and for MS's sake I hope it doesn't they don't need another Brute Force for this holiday.

I love the graphics engine. Hopefully gameplay will live up to the graphics.

regarding #24
dude, i hope that was sarcasm.. all fanboism aside

Bad AI? are you guys kidding me? That looks awesome, the part near the end wasnt bad AI, the dude was trying to chain saw the enemey but the enemey kept backing off, you can hear him starting the chain saw over and over untill the end, where he gets it right.

Regarding the AI, the demo was set to the easiest difficulty for X06 to accomdate the widest possible audience. This is NOT the default setting.

This was mentioned days ago.

I don't think it's fair of your analysis of the gameplay due to the fact that Epic has stated that the AI was turned down so you could actually see gameplay without dying. Assassin's Creed doesn't have that luxury and that is why after they get into combat the demo was over because of one hit kills. I know Rare tricked us with them saying "AI is turned off" with PDZ when we saw the videos but Epic is different and I really think there is more to the AI then just this.

Also the puny grenade explosions is great, it doesn't take away from the combat and will give people more of a reason to shoot rather than just throw grenades like on Halo 2.

Woah! Was that REAL-TIME WEAPON CHANGE?!?!

Now the 360 is just as awesome as the PS3!!

Woot!

I said it once and I'll say it again, from the demos that I've seen it's safe to say that this title is looking good. But not so good that I have to start saving for a 360 yet. In the videos that I've seen, the action looked too hectic to be handled appropriately with a control pad in first person view, hence, the 3rd person treatment. To me, intense shootouts don't work very well in 3rd person view as you feel detached. But ok, if the game is going raise the bar, then rest assured most of us will adjust to the gameplay quickly. I just wasn't thrilled at all with the special effects in this "nextgen" title. Did you see when the hero was spraying the concrete blocks with bullets where the foes were hiding behind? where are the concrete chips flying off of it and block desintegration? all we see is dark concrete block walls to hide detail and some smoke coming off it as well as the weak-sauce grenade explosions, Epic, that's not nextgen. I recommend Epic Games takes the team working on GOW to an armory and shoot some real rifles on various materials and throw a couple of live grenades so they can see what kind of explosion a little baseball sized grenade makes. But I liked the Musical Chairs Game played by the hero and a foe around a light post, trying to riddle the other with bullets. Marketers are hyping this title up as 'The Halo Killer'. The freakin Bungie Strangler himself, right!?. But any rational gamer knows that Gears Of War has NOT proven itself yet worthy enough to get those accolades pinned on it's chest. I don't understand all this brouhaha on the web with GOW from the videos that I've seen. Let's see if Epic can give GOW a royal polish, serve Bungie Studios, and make me acquire a 360.

@ maximus

MS paid for the exclusives...no sh*t! They are using there money the right way you sony punk lol!

It is better to have MS dominate the gaming world than Sony.

Reason 1. More creative games because MS has more money to throw at developers.

Reason 2. MS makes upgrades to their system, in a year they will upgrade the CPU chip to reduce heat, Controller.

Reason 3. Sony will just thow another Metal Gear, FF, DMC until the end of time.

Reason 4. Sony doesn't upgrade controllers.

Reason 5. Sony is crap!

i dont care what anybody says. im not going to buy a 360 for a game with futuristic pirates that throw cheap grenades

Oh, my! Could it be that Joystiq is regaining some sense? Or, is it another ploy to generate hit by pissing a segment of their readership off?

I have said it, Gears is kill.SWITCH on steroid. It will be dark (to increase the illusion of antialiasing), it will be full of flashy graphical effects, the controls will remind you of RE 4, the online portion will be significantly below the single-player levels.

I so hope I am wrong.

Hey, I bet Gears of War 2 will have dual-wielding.

Well don't buy a 360. The PS3 has so much more to choose from! lol

@28

"Moron. You do realise that Sony aren't actually developing any of those games themselves? They could be done on either machine but Sony has paid for exclusives. Yes death to MS, let Sony dominate everything. Fool."

Fixed.

The game is going to sell a crap load whether you like it or not. Every video I've seen of this game has been impressive. The game's A.I. does a better job than throwing in real people to play the hordes. If it were real people human vs hordes all you would get is run and gun. The last thing you people should be talking about here is intelligence.

/sigh expectations have just grown exponentially since the SNES days. Games have improved so much yet people can never be satisfied. Assassin's Creed is also an unfair comparison since there are not many games out there like it. Hitman is the only game I can think of where you go in take assassinate a target then escape. GOW is in the shooter genre where there are dozens of other games.

I do agree that Halo was no Brute Force, but Halo was no Brute Force either. That game was weak in some areas and strong in others. If it was playable over live we would be having a different conversation. We actually still play Brute Force in our house as it has some of the best coop and link system play that the xbox produced. Certainly it was a 6 out of 10, but it was not the ultimate turd, it just was not up to the polish and par of Halo. It was oft delayed, over budget, and pushed out the door to tepid reviews. If it had been given the production level of Halo it might have been better. Enough about that.

However, there is no comparison to GoW to Brute. Further, I don't really see much comparision to GoW to Halo. They are very different looking games.

I don't expect GoW should be or like Halo in anyway. I expect GoW to play like GoW and be a bit more like Unreal Tournament than anything else for obvious reasons.

Joysiq, I usually defend you, but I kinda see you going off the deep end recently. You used to be clever and kinda above this low-brow commentary on the gaming business.

So, why don't you review the last six months to the year before and maybe you can see where you are going wrong.

my only 2 complaints about this videogame is the extreme low-resolution and the fact that most of the time the player is constrained to a little circular area.

looking good. I guess straight FPSs are a thing of the past...

"Moron. You do realise that Sony aren't actually developing any of those games themselves? They could be done on either machine but Sony has paid for exclusives. Yes death to MS, let Sony dominate everything. Fool."

Wow, you're so clever. So the way forward is for MS to copy Sony. Excellent.


@The Intangible Fact

You should be in school. Come back when you've grown up.

Classics..

"Reason 1. More creative games because MS has more money to throw at developers."

Ahhh so money = creativity. You don't realise just how niave a comment that is.


"Reason 2. MS makes upgrades to their system, in a year they will upgrade the CPU chip to reduce heat, Controller."

Right so nobody else has then? Have you seen the slimline PS2, obviously not.


"Reason 3. Sony will just thow another Metal Gear, FF, DMC until the end of time."

Forza2, Fable2, Halo3, Fuzion Frenzy2, Super Mario whatever. They all do it.


"Reason 4. Sony doesn't upgrade controllers."

Neither do MS, they made a smaller controller for the japanese market and it became popular in the west too.


"Reason 5. Sony is crap!"

And there ends any respect left for anything you post.

Sony flopped

Hmmm, the number of people who posted and actually have a 360? I'd guess..... about 4.

wow the xbox fanboys have turned on themselves. this was supposed to be their flagship title. "oh we are teh roxxorz cuz we got gow!" xbox fanboys are the worst.