Gears of War Truly is a Destroyed Beauty

Yesterday morning I completed Gears of War on Hardcore for the second time, which took me about a week. The game's them is all about "destroyed beauty," and the more I played it and replayed it, the more fitting I found that statement to be; not for the theme of the game, but for the game's Campaign itself.

For Gears of War is, of course, quite beautiful. Gorgeous graphics, great environments, and the gameplay is so fast and intense while at the same time being a bit drawn out and even conservative thanks to the cover system, it's all an interesting blend. The music itself is so well composed, I really enjoy the opening Act V theme.

But then of course there's that damned inadequate check point system that mares everything. That ridiculous farce of a save system takes the beauty of Gears of War and simply wrecks it. After completing the game a second time, I still can't believe how hard Epic dropped the ball on this one, something that should have been blatantly obvious. When you're game becomes an exercise in tedious, repetitive frustration due to one of your design decisions, this is usual a wake up call to re-examine that decision.

But they did not, and as such at many points I wanted to hurl my controller at my TV simply because I was sick of repeating miscellaneous battle whatever for the tenth time because some Boomer I encountered 10 to 20 minutes later got lucky. What this Check Point system does is take away any feeling of accomplishment a player has in the battles. It also limits replay value.

There were multiple instances where I wanted to try a different weapon combination or different tactics from what I used on my last play through, trying to keep things fresh and add a little variety. This is the single greatest strength to the amazing versatility of Halo 2's Campaign, for instance. However with the Gears of War check point system, this type of play is not encouraged? Why, because if I want to try something fun and the game hasn't check pointed in the last 20 minutes... you get the idea. So unfortunately, Gears of War is also much more linear than it should have been.

So sad, that Gears of War truly is a destroyed beauty.