Gears of War

[Roland]

The Single Player Campaign was either cut short or never was the strong focus of the game's development, I'm left to imagine. A filler mission or at least a cutscene indicating that the Lightmass train had just been commandeered by the Locust would have helped a bit. You're right— it was very disjointed. Once the data was recovered (and there's the matter of just why Marcus' father was in possession of such vital information without Command's knowledge), Delta Team suddenly had a train to catch— a train that inexplicably contains both the WMD of human salvation and a swarm of Locust being led by their field general.

That's akin to making a WWII shooter game where your platoon is dropped aboard the USS Indianapolis with the atomic bombs aboard, and finding the ship swarming with Japanese soldiers— with no plot development that justifies this.

Simple cutscene suggestion, Epic: we find COG High Command was actually playing it smart and held the train at the station (because only the heir to the Throne of Morons would actually send the train towards its target without first feeding the neccessary data into the weapon!) but the good ol' Locusts overran the station and captured the train, running up the engine to escape Coalition counterattack and prevent the weapon from being activated. Lieutenant Stroud radios Sergeant Fenix about the situation and Fenix decides to divert his team to a platform ahead of the train in order to intercept it. That's all you need in order to make some sense of what happened.

Great gameplay, unforgettable atmosphere— but the SP story was strung together like some mod a gamer wrote up using a construction set: get this item, then find this location, get another item, and get it to another location.

Definitely seeding for a sequel. One that would feature the Queen, further revelations into Marcus' father's past activities, and just whom Dominic is looking for among the Stranded.

Actually, I enjoyed the Single Player experience very thoroughly, right up until that last part. It was just so disjointed, it threw me off for a bit, and so going through the Train level, the whole time I was scratching my head going "Huh?" It was kind of distracting from the gameplay.

I still think it's a great game. The story is enough to satisfy, and it flows beautiful (until the end, anyway). I'm glad I bought it, and I think it's worthy of at least some of the hype. It IS a killer title for the 360, and the graphics on it really help stem the tide in the "hardware spec wars" between the 360 and the PS3.

Gears was delayed several times, pushed back to nearly coincide with the PS3 launch. Maybe that's why the ending is so disconnected from the rest of the game?