Gears of War

Gears of Bore.

Huge guns?  Check.  Muscular, homoerotic men?  Check.  Online multiplayer?  Check.  A single-player that revolves around constant action?  Check.  Blatant plagiarism of other franchises?  Check.  Looks like we've got the recipe for an extremely popular game.  Or, in other words, a game that really sucks.

Outside of the online multiplayer, which is pretty good (though not so much for me being a single-player gamer), I've long been incredulous that people actually find the campaign "epic," "thrilling," "innovative" (gtfo), and whatever else.  The only inventive thing here is the well-done cover system, and damn do they ever force you to make use of it.  In fact, probably 80-90% of this game will see you ducking behind cover, shooting, running to more cover, throwing nade into hole, and then repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat, etc etc.  Yeah, fucking THRILLING.  As with virtually every other game I've bashed so far, be it God of War or Dragon Age or Resident Evil 5 (which is a ripoff of this game lmao), anybody who is not easily amused by BOOM BOOM BLOOD will be bashing their head in with the nearest blunt object within an hour of starting this game.  Thank GOD the sequels learned to mix the action up some, because otherwise constant facial abuse would have my face in similar condition to the guy's from Mask.

The Kryll!! Wait.. didn't I see these things in some Vin Diesel movie?

Let's look at the egregious unoriginalities in this game next.  First, you fight against the Locust which look like orcs with guns.  But that's ok cuz orcs are cool.  Then you've got the taken-from-Halo story which was taken-from-The Lord of the Rings or whatever-other-story about Man-is-fighting-a-brutal-war-hopelessly-out-manned-and-outgunned.  But I'll give this a pass too because there are so many other games that do the same.  But it just gets laughable when you see the blind Berserker, ripped straight off of Resident Evil 4's Garrador.  The main scene in which you fight it in Gears plays out in almost the exact same way too!  Apparently, somebody told the developers how much of a ripoff they were, and so the Berserker isn't seen in Gears 2 and is slightly tweaked in Gears 3.  And then there's the Kryll, shamelessly ripped out of the movie Pitch Black, and the developers don't even give a shit because one of the characters even makes reference to how hard getting past the Kryll would be because "it's pitch black."  Laughably, the level isn't even hard (like the rest of this cakewalk of a  game).  And then there's the thing with the long legs from The Matrix, but the ones in Gears look a little different, so I won't complain too much there.

The Gears characters love penetrating their enemies with long, sharp guns.

Ok, so obviously this game is like God of War in using blood and guns as its selling point instead of blood and guns and GOOD GAMEPLAY.  You get virtually nothing but action and the obligatory driving level.  But additionally, this has got to be one of the most homoerotic games ever made.  Every main character is a heavily muscled male with a gruff voice and hot temper.  The most famous part of this game's combat is using the Lancer gun to chainsaw your enemies.  And man, the Gears team loves penetrating Locusts with their long, hard guns.  Usually, they ram the Lancer into the Locusts from the front in a peculiar missionary style, but they also like to get them from behind in the more brutal doggie style.  Sometimes, two guys will gang up on one, typically with one taking whatever urinary orifice the Locusts possess and the other taking the anus or Locust equivalent of such.  In the multiplayer, it's not rare to see male "rape chains" in which one person gets penetrated from behind, somebody sees and wants in on the action and penetrates the original offender, another person enters the fold and waits for the latest exchange to end before taking the survivor from behind, and so on.  The victim will often shake with orgasmic pleasure upon insertion of the Lancer phallus.

5/10