Hands-on Preview : Gears of War

The guys over HEXUS.net were fortunate enough to spend some time yesterday playing one of the year's most anticipated games, Gears of War.

"...from the moment that we clutched the 360 controller in our sweaty palms and witnessed the first 30 seconds of the multiplayer map called Gridlock we were quite literally stunned. I exchanged a few glances with the HEXUS.gaming Editor Nick Haywood which was enough to tell the story. We didn't have to say anything; it was the language of the gamer, the twinkle in his eye, and his ever widening smile that told me that he was thinking exactly what I was thinking. It was a moment where I just wanted to lay bare my inner emotions and shout at the top of my voice. It was moment that defied all logic as I struggled to come to terms with how the first moments of a videogame had messed with my soul. I literally took up position behind the cover of a car and sat there shaking my head in disbelief, frozen with awe, but occasionally brave enough to take a few pot-shots at an enemy on the far side of the map. As a person who's been gaming for 18 years, playing Gears of War is undoubtedly the highest I've ever felt. Forget drugs and alcohol, everything you need to get that adrenaline pumping is coming our way in November..."

[TheMART]

"we were quite literally stunned. I exchanged a few glances with the HEXUS.gaming Editor Nick Haywood which was enough to tell the story. We didn’t have to say anything; it was the language of the gamer, the twinkle in his eye, and his ever widening smile that told me that he was thinking exactly what I was thinking. It was a moment where I just wanted to lay bare my inner emotions and shout at the top of my voice. It was moment that defied all logic as I struggled to come to terms with how the first moments of a videogame had messed with my soul. I literally took up position behind the cover of a car and sat there shaking my head in disbelief, frozen with awe, but occasionally brave enough to take a few pot-shots at an enemy on the far side of the map. As a person who’s been gaming for 18 years, playing Gears of War is undoubtedly the highest I’ve ever felt. Forget drugs and alcohol, everything you need to get that adrenaline pumping is coming our way in November. "

"While it’s true that we only played two of the multiplayer maps, it’s clear to see that Gears of War is pushing the boundaries of conventional gaming by bringing us an all action shooter that is more tense and exciting than any game you will have ever experienced before. We’re still buzzing about the time we’ve spent playing the game and feel it’s our duty to spread the word about the highly pleasurable experience. The blend of tactical play, jaw dropping action, superb control system, stunning detail and well designed maps surpasses anything that we’ve witnessed or played…ever. Gears of War is so good that we’ve been on a come-down since we had to leave it behind. It’s all we’ve been thinking about ever since and we’re in no doubt that it’s shaping up to be one of the greatest games of all time and one that should inspire other developers to follow suit. The era of next-gen shooters is upon us and you’d be foolish if you didn’t want to be part of it. ‘Emergence Day’ is on November 17th and it shouldn’t be missed.

Epic Games have managed to create a powerful experience for gamers, one that can’t be compared to any game currently on the console. Gears of War is world’s apart from any shooter title currently on the Xbox 360; if it wasn’t for having to catch a train home we’d still be there now. "

OMG it's just living up the hype, what do I say even take it further. Nothing seen before like this... It'll rock this Christmas sales. Wii and PS3 hide, far far away in a cave because this kind of game you can't cope with!

[kmis87]

MART, you seriously need to get a life. Every news story for you is just an oppurtunity to bash ps3, and now it looks like you might start bashing the wii too. I bet you Gears will be a really good game, but I would also bet that it won't be the best selling game of q4.

[TheMART]

Read well man. I am not bashing the consoles. I am saying that NOTHING like this on ANY other console will be out competing with it period.

If you read the hands-on you'll agree.
That's not bashing, that's reality. I will get a Wii myself also besides my 360. BUT this is how I feel about this game.

Furthermore: this WILL be the best selling title of Q4. Name me an other title selling (next gen it is! and exclusive) much, more then Gears.

It's like 10 million userbase on 360
500k for PS3
And let's say a million for Wii.

I bet 60% of all 360 users will buy Gears. Just to have it. Like Halo did last gen. That will be 6 million copies over time. This Christmas? I think we'll see at least 2 million sales of Gears!

[kmis87]

Well, now that you've limited sales to next generation titles only (I was going to say Final Fantasy XII), I would say that Zelda will definitely sell more. According to reports about Wii production we will see many more than 1 million sold before Christmas, I've heard estimates upwards of 5 million (the units should be easy enough to produce as it has been described by Nintendo as Gamecubesque). I would say almost all of these people will buy Zelda as it's the best game at launch by far and it's the long awaited Ocarina styled Zelda game that Gamecube fans didn't get. If I wanted to be a prick I could also say Wii sports will outsell Gears, but packin games shouldn't count really. If my predictions are correct then Gears would need an attach rate of 50% to match Zelda (lower than your 60% prediciton). That's a ridiculous number, Halo and Halo2 both failed to reach those kind of numbers. They were closer to 30%. Zelda will achieve a very high attach rate because it is the standout first party title of the launch (It won't match Mario 64's rate though). You can disagree with me about Zelda (or FFXII) outselling Gears, but we'll see how everything shapes up after Christmas.

[TheMART]

Yeah, we'll have to see at Christmas, but I can say this:

Gears will be selling more then Halo. It's just very accessable. It has no jumping jacks like in Halo which ruïns the online play for beginners. It has a co-op which will make the game selling itself.

Just imagine. I own Gears. My mates don't own Gears yet. They see it at my place. They get excited about the co-op. They buy. We play. You go through it together, get the achievements together.

It'll suck people into the game. Mark my words. 60% is a low estimation even. Every 360 owner that I read or hear about wants Gears. Just a few are saying it's not their genre. But even if you don't like shooters, this is accessible. The controls that even beginners can understand, up to the most anticipated title of the year.

It's larger then Halo. Halo was picked up by FPS fanatics, but the mass only picked it up later.

This one is bigger from the start. For real. Nothing will sell more next gen this Christmas. And Wii having 5 million units sold by Christmas? Don't think so if analysts (unbiased) say it'll be about a draw for the three in sales. If 360 sold about 10 million this Christmas, Wii will not be sold half of that. Every Christmas millions of consoles are bought, but not 5 million of one. And not everbody buys Zelda. Most real young kiddies just want to swing the tennis and golf bats. Mario is selling to them that don't want hard gameplay, Zelda I think is selling much but not that much as Gears will.

And even Sony fanboys that are tired of waiting on CGI Killzone 2/3 will be sucked in. Imagine it. Standing in the shops, seeing the demopods. Gears running. 600 dollars in the pocket burning there... SWITCH! 360 fanboy in an instance

[kmis87]

If you think 60% is a LOW estimate you're crazy. The most popular games rarely get over 20%. Grand Theft Auto had like a 15% attach rate. Super Smash Bros. Melee was only about 30%. And Gears is not much more accesible (you spelled this word incorrectly once and then correctly later on?) than Halo. The level of violence in the game and the need for strategy/cover guarantees that it won't find the mass market that Halo reached. If you look at the other 360 games that have sold well you will see how 60% would be nearly impossible to get. COD2 has a less than 25% attach rate. Only two other titles (GRAW and Oblivion) have managed to reach more than 1 in 6 360 owners. 60% simply will not happen, Mario doesn't even reach that number on Nintendo consoles.

I'm basing my Wii sales estimates on the fact that traditionally launch window units sell out. They might not make that many, and even if they do they might not sell that many. Whatever, I still think Zelda will outsell Gears. I'm not saying Gears won't sell well, I have it number three or four this holiday season. It would be a lot easier for me to argue that FFXII would outsell Gears, but since you qualified your statement in the first post after I made my response I'm finding it harder to argue.

On a side note, In the Netherlands (I think I remember you saying you were from there, I'm not 100% sure that was you though but I think it was) do they have public demos of M-rated games? In America I don't think they do that. Most demos are E, E10, or T rated.

[TheMART]

You're a bit contradicting there.

You say the highest to get is about 20 to 30% and you say Zelda will do 50%...

Then 60% is impossible. Mmmhhhh

Well let's turn it around. GRAW sold about 1,5 million copies world wide at the end of June, when there were 5 million consoles sold.

That is over 25% there. Dead Rising, nice game but not as good as Gears, sold 500k in just two weeks. 360 has spending customers unlike PS2 that sells not so much games.

GRAW is nice, but not everyone wants it. Now read the forums about Gears of War. Go out and read them. I dare you to ask how many 360 owners don't want to buy the game.

This will become the fastest selling game of all time and selling the most overall.

[kmis87]

I think that at launch a Zelda game can get 50%, but then as console sales increase and the amount of games available increases, its attach rate will return to normal levels. Back when the N64 launched, Mario 64 had an almost 100% attach rate. At launches games can generate larger attach rates because of the limited variety of games out there. Obviously this won't be as extreme as the N64 launch when 2 games were available, but out of the 20 or 30 launch games, zelda is one that I can see the majority getting. Take Call of Duty 2 for example. Does anyone think that it would have sold as well if it had more competition at the time it was released? Gears is not a launch game. The 360 has been out for a year. There are quite a few games out there that people can go to instead, and there are best seller games beginning to come at reduced prices.

GRAW has not sold 1.5 million by June according to my sources:
http://www.vgcharts.org/wor... That is supposed to be as of August 2006. I personally don't believe that Gears will somehow manage to sell four times as much as any 360 game to date. I just don't see that possibly happening.

Your Gears of War forum poll is a perfect example of a logical fallacy. To prove my point I'll give you this scenario. I can go on a forum for recovering alcoholics, take an informal poll, and find that the vast majority of Americans are recovering alcoholics. If you go to a forum where Gears fans go, you're going to find a disproportionate number of people who plan on buying Gears on day one.

I think that the last statement you made, "This will become the fastest selling game of all time and selling the most overall," proves that you aren't thinking rationally here. The original Mario sold over 40 million units. If we go with my previous criteria that packins don't count, than you still have Mario 3 at over 18 million. No game is going to sell over 18 million this Christmas, or probably even this generation. Games like FFVII, Halo, Grand Theft Auto, and Metal Gear Solid all sold around half of that and became cultural phenomenons. I'm not trying to say that Gears isn't going to be good, because I think it looks amazing. My original point was just that FFXII will outsell it and I think Zelda will outsell it. I don't know why you take offense to me not believing that this will be the greatest game in history.

[TheMART]

Well funny you use that site to take it as 100% true, but well. Let's see then on other games

According to that site, Super Mario Bros sold just over 29 Million, not 40. Still a lot but that's a different number there.

Super Mario on the N64 sold just over 11 million. 100% attach rate? So there are only about 11 million N64 units sold? Don't think so.

Gears isn't a launch game, that's right.
But it's a title that make anyone go WOW. Like really say damn this blows me away. There's nothing like it.

And for those millions of people shopping for Christmas, see some minor games on PS3/Wii, where for PS3 all units are sold out because there are only 500k available, those Millions of people will shop other consolestuff. For them Gears is a sort of 'launch' title. They don't know what happened a year ago. They take it now.

I am not talking about a specific forum here. Not the Gears addicted forums, just any for 360.

If Dead Rising sells 500k in just two normal weeks, maybe even normally slow selling time for games (summer) imagine what Gears could do @ holidays/Christmas when millions of customers are on the search and walk into the best looking, playing and story telling game.

[kmis87]

Actually it lists Mario as having sold 29 million in America and 40 million worldwide. But according to topgamer that website is outdated. I guess wikipedia can't always be trusted lol. My point still stands though. Gears will probably not reach a 50% attach rate; no matter how awesome it turns out to be games just don't sell like that, especially when there are numerous alternative games out there of different genres. This is in no way a knock on Gears, it's actually a complement to the respectable 360 games library. I bet that Gears will become the best selling 360 game to date, but I don't think that it can break sales records. It could very well become game of the year, but I don't think it will sell more than 5 million this year or 40 million total. I think any sensible person would realize that I'm not saying anything bad about a game when I say that it will not be the best selling game of all time. I'll go out on a limb and say no wii, 360, or ps3 game will sell 40 million. That doesn't mean I'm bashing the game.

The Mario example was just showing how a game at launch can have a ridiculously large attach rate because of the limited number of alternatives. At the n64 launch the best game out of a very limited assortment was mario 64, which gave it an initial attach rate near 100%, which eventually declined to a near 30% rate as more quality games were released. People going to buy 360 games this holiday will also have the chance to buy games like Dead Rising, Lost Planet, GRAW, Oblivion, Madden, Fight Night, Fifa and Pro Evo, FEAR, Rainbow Six, Double Agent, Call of Duty 3, and, I think, a number of games at reduced prices like PDZ, PGR3, Call of Duty 2, and Kameo. That's a large library of games that will take sales from Gears. My Zelda PREDICTION revolves around there not being any wii games that look to be nearly as good as Zelda or have that same kind of mass appeal. Therefore, at launch, Zelda could gain an abnormally large attach rate that would then decline as more top quality games are released in a wider array of genres. That is simply my analysis, feel free to disagree, but please stop mischaracterizing my argument. I'm not making up data about the attach rate of mario 64 to justify myself so please don't play it off as such.

Your argument based on the forum posts is still fallacious. The only person on a 360 forum that will go on there and say anything negative about their flagship title of the moment is just going to be a sony fanboy with nothing better to do.

This last part is just going to be a summary and a rebuttal to power of green's statements about me. Gears of War is, in all likelihood, going to be the best selling 360 title of the entire year and will probably vie for many game of the year awards. I just disagreed with the statements that it will be the best selling game of all time. I said that in this holiday season alone, FFXII and probably Zelda will outsell it. I don't know why this statement offended so many. I'm not "angry" about the quality of the game and I wouldn't call myself a "loyal Sony fan." My roommate for grad school has a 360 and will NOT be getting this game. It doesn't really appeal to him; he would rather play Top Spin, Virtua Tennis, and Madden. I WILL be buying it (and Lost Planet and Blue Dragon) in August of next year so I can play it during grad school. I don't know why a game I have every intention of purchasing turning out to be awesome would make me angry. The ps3 will still be my main console. I have a full library of playstation one and two games that I still play, and there are some new releases coming up (FFXII and God of War 2) I really want to play. Plus the ps3 has many of the brands I like the most (Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy, Ratchet and Clank, Metal Gear Solid). That doesn't mean I can't enjoy the 360 and its titles. If you guys can't understand that then there's just no helping you.

[Deceased]

I already pre-ordered the collectors edition, I can't wait for this game. This is the only game ever that i get excited about when reading or seeing any information about it. it will truely be a mind-blowing experience.

[Silverwolf]

Sure bet this will be the best selling game for a long time.

[splintercellman]

this game is going to be awesome. Now I want to see some more info on the kill zone for ps3.

[Capt CHAOS]

This is the game that will surely drop some 'other console' jaws.

[JPomper]

Man, I can't wait for this game.

[sjappie]

A few weeks ago I had some doubts about the game, but man this is gonna effin rock, can't wait to get my dirrty little hands on it. Within the next few months my social life will be no more than just a memory.

[omansteveo]

Doing a sneek peak after hours on the 21st im there..this is not BS we got it in our marketing yesterday

[Dusk]

I could really feel through the article the excitement this previewer had while playing Gears. I know the exact feeling he talked about and it really makes me want to play this game as soon as humanly possible.

[PS360PCROCKS]

I always knew it would be this good, the hype was their, but mainly it was because it was from one of the best designers and publishers out their, oh yea and "deceased" I am the same way, I see the news and I read it and it's cool and all, but I get excited when I see news for GOW

[Boink]

pre-ordered, will be the biggest selling thing till halo3

[FKN Unbelievable]

Just even saying this makes you one.

"Gears will be selling more then Halo. It's just very accessable. It has no jumping jacks like in Halo which ruïns the online play for beginners. It has a co-op which will make the game selling itself. "

It even easier to kill you in the air. Btw it will sell but outsell Halo 3? You must be smoking bird seeds. Like i said Gears will hold us down For a while (Which is a good thing.) so Bungie can take thier time and work out all of the Things that made 2 a pain in the ass especially super-Bouncing,Mods and its inconsistencies.

[OC_MurphysLaw]

Sorry...but looking at the next gen systems...there really is no way this game will not outsell every other game in Q4 for next gen games. By number of consoles in households and the hype this game has around it... Unless this tanks in reviews its gonna crush everything...even Zelda.

Zelda will do well...as will RFOM but given they will only have x amount of units sold vs the 360 which has a big head start and will be selling MANY units based on this alone...there just really isn't a way for this not to be the #1 title (again assuming it is that good).

I can't wait for it...should be a great game. And yes ...its gonna give the Halo series a run for the money if its as good as this preview suggests.

[power of Green]

I think people will be even more excited when they releases the game, Epic has only shown about 10% of what the game will offer./ "kmis87" It's best not to fool yourself about the Quality of Gow and Most 360 games that are going to be built to utilize 360's hardware, you should check out some PS3 tittles and not worry about something that makes you angry. Only time can tell if 360's top notch state of the art gameplay with it's up coming tittles will be able to punch through Sony loyal fans.

[Mikey_Gee]

.... fact is, if you are not honest enough with yourself to admit from EITHER CAMP that this game will be something to SET THE BAR and really take us "GAMERS" on a roller coster ride we have not had in a long long long time .... my friend .... your only fooling yourself.

Fanboy or not ... if you can't relize this .... you are beyond any level of scence or reason.

[power of Green]

Dam! man, Lets be real i think MS will have the better gameplay in most of it's tittles but to say look out PS3 and Wii is a little over the top when Sony fans force themselfs to hate MS's consoles.

[Mikey_Gee]

No NO .. sorry for the misunderstanding ...
I am just talking in GENERAL .. all this HARDCORE fanboy crap is really getting on my last nerve.

"ANYONE" who cannot give this game PROPS has some serious issues and is being nothing other than "SPITE FULL"

That's all I am saying .... IN GENERAL ... not directed to you or I would have put it down as a REPLY under your post.

And BTW, RE-READ my post ... nowhere in it did "I" Say ( look out PS3 )

I have a PS3 on pre-order ... why would I bash my own investment.

Anyone on here that knows me (or my Tag name) knows I will have both the PS3 and have the 360 and more than likley the Wii as well ... I give PROPS on BOTH SIDES of the fence ... that is why HARDCORE FANBOYS (from all sides) piss me off so much.

[power of Green]

I did not say you said PS3 look out. I forgot to put a period after "lets be real" whoops!. I was speaking in general from what was stated in the artical.

[power of Green]

You know what i'm sick of, is this Fanboy bullshit geek nerd fuc terms that mean nothing in the real world. Like i said i would not be a gamer if it wasn't for the arcade-ish gameplay of 360 games, period!.

[NextGen24Gamer]

That VG chart hasn't been updated since May. It says August but those numbers were reported in May. I used to watch the vg chart till I relized the numbers don't change. Graw has remained in the top 10 games sold since it launched. Its well over 1.5 million by now. And as far as Gears of War. It will be the hit of Q4 PERIOD. Next gen or not. It will get game of the year Honors, it will win awards for 2006 across the board. Its looking to be unbelievable and unmatched in Graphics and just plain ole Fun. I don't think the hype will match the actual game. They have purposely left out the coolest aspects of the game. We have only seen glimpses of one level. WOW.