Review: Gears of War 3

So, I’m tallying the final votes for this here giveaway.  If you’re just hungry for a pair of signed copies of Tome of the Undergates and Black Halo, you might do your best to shoot me a good reason/bribe why you should get one before the next blog post.

This particular blog post is not going to be about winning, but rather about video games.  I think it’s been ages since I last did a review of any sort of video game and for good reason.  I don’t really feel qualified on talking about a lot of things other than story and how it appeals to me, especially when others can do it a bit better than I can.  But in this particular case, I kind of wanted to talk about it while it was still at least somewhat hot.

So, let’s have a chat about Gears of War 3.

If you are even remotely aware of video games, you have probably heard of Gears of War. The semi-flagship series for the Xbox 360, the Gears franchise has been running for a few years and has come out with some games that are widely acclaimed for their brutal, gritty style, square-jawed manly man protagonists who excrete testosterone from every unshaven pore and, most importantly, their revolutionary impact on the shooter genre by doing for cover-shooters what Steve Jobs did for computers (made it accessible and fun and caused a lot of people to go into angry fits because that jerk, Steve, in the dorm room across the hall thought they were cool now).

And yet, no one ever really touts the story.

In a lot of ways, this is a shame.

As a primer: Gears of War is a story about…Gears…in war.  On the earth-like Planet of Sera, the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG.  Gears.  Get it?) has spent most of its short existence battling over the energy-rich subterranean source of power known as Imulsion.  With humanity vastly diminished, the COG was ill-prepared for the attacks of the subterranean horrors known as the Locust: hulking, testosterone-laden manly men (except scaly manly-man with extra deep voices, so you know they’re bad) who burst out of the earth and shoot a bunch of people.  That’s where we start.  Two games later, Imulsion has poisoned the land and is creating things called Lambent, which are more hulking manly-men, but they glow a bright sparkly yellow, so you know they’re extra bad and also a hit at 8-year-old girls’ birthday parties.

I’m leaving out a few details, but honestly, not a lot.  The main thrust of the story is: “They bad.  Shoot them.”  That’s about it.  Gears of War doesn’t really do anything exciting.  It doesn’t really push a lot of boundaries.  Whatever moral ambiguity exists is clear-cut, unchallenging, unintelligent and not very interesting.  Character development is mostly limited to ham-handed emotional pulls that are specifically and shallowly designed to tug at your heartstrings and/or cussing a lot.  It’s not daring.  It’s not imaginative.  It’s not really well-fleshed-out.

And I thought it was really, really good.

I possess kind of an adoration and envy for how bullheaded this game’s story is.  It is completely aware of what it wants to be: a story of survival in which giant dudes fight other giant dudes in explosions of gore and gunfire and it moves forward with this really well.  The plot isn’t complex, but you don’t really have to be when you’re fighting giant, city-sinking worms.  The atmosphere and alien design, but it doesn’t really need to be when you can go from this to this.  The characters are shallow and uncomplicated and, as I said, their emotional pulls are very crass and very obviously intended to be an emotional manipulation.  But sometimes, that just works.

Gears of War 2 was one of my favorite games for this reason.  It decided, very early on, that it was going to be about giant men shooting the shit out of giant aliens.  And then it decided it was going to be the best damn man-on-alien-shit-shooter it could possibly be.

Hence, the envy.

Gears of War 3 is not one of my favorite games for the same reason.  It decided, very early on, that it wasn’t quite sure what it wanted to be.  And then it decided it was going to be the best damn I’m-not-sure-what-I-want-to-be it could possibly kind of sort of want to be eventually at some point.

There are new characters that never get introductions.  There are new plot devices that are just accepted as given.  The world has changed entirely and no one really seems to feel the need to comment on it.  The biggest threat to the world is the Lambent.  No wait, the Locusts.  The Lambent again.  No, zombies.  Now it’s a tender story about finding a father.  No, wait, it’s about saving the world.  No, hang on, now it’s about sticking it to the man.  Wait, now it’s humanity’s last stand.  Now there’s Locust.  Sorry, Lambent.  Sorry, what?

You don’t really need to know the details of the story at this point, if you’ve never played the game.  I’m not even sure of the story, either.  And that would seem like harsh criticism if it wasn’t followed by this next part.

This is the game where a straightforward muscle man shooter gets slightly daring.  And also horribly confusing.

At times, you get moments of incredible poignancy from the game.  Such as when Augustus Cole, former thrashball superstar, sees a cardboard cutout of himself and asks wistfully: “Do you ever think you died and everyone just forgot to tell you?”  And you start to think that maybe this game is about more than just shooting people and planting bombs.

And then you get this (2:30).

And then later, you get moments of almost heartbreaking atmosphere.  Such as when you tread through the city of Char, ground zero for the Hammer of Dawn, the orbital laser used to fry friend and foe alike in a last bid attempt to destroy the Locust.  The city is a macabre pantomime of itself.  The people who tried to flee the laser are preserved forever as hollowed-out, perfect casts of themselves in ash.  It’s an area too sacred to let war tread upon and the hulking soldiers who thought nothing of violently barreling through walls of stone and flesh alike tiptoe so as not to disturb the hallowed and fragile dead.

And then five minutes later, Ice-T’s cameo calls you a punk-ass bitch. (7:00)

All told, Gears of War 3 strikes me as a very confused individual.  It’s reached the point where it wants to reach out to something more, but is still hesitant and clings to its bitch-ass ways.  But it tries.  It evolves.  It puts a higher emphasis on story, even at the expense of the tried-and-true method.  In this, I find a little hope.

It used to be that shooters were the anti-RPG.  They were light on story, heavy on action and generally considered to have inattentive, hyperactive players.  But I don’t think that quite applies any longer, no more than the concept of an RPG player as an irate, overweight dude who dresses up in wizard robes in his spare time and hexes the neighbor kid (you stay the fuck off my lawn, Tommy).

Shooters, I think, are making the same concessions that RPGs are making.  While RPGs can’t really subsist on the stat-based, dice-driven, slow, methodical action that celebrated Baldur’s Gate, shooters can’t really stick to having their story be condensed to two paragraphs in an instruction booklet anymore.  I feel we’re slowly moving to the point that story will take precedence and will be the driving force of a lot of games, to the point that we’ll gush about Marcus Fenix with the same gusto as we gush about that dreamy Jaime Lannister and his fabulous golden fist.

And as we begin to hit the point where novelists of today are game-savvy, such as Abercrombie and myself, it wouldn’t at all surprise me if fantasy and sci-fi novelists start finding new opportunities in gaming industries as major players.  I do quietly sit with eager glee that one day, a writer’s name will be as prominent as the designer’s name in the end credits as we listen to the soothing sounds of Terrible Terry Tate unironically rapping to his own voice.