Gears of War [X360]

Xbox 360 owners, meet Microsoft's great hope for the holiday season: Marcus Fenix, grizzled ex-marine, jailbird, and chainsaw-packing bad-ass. No, he is not available for children's parties, but if you have gross, bulbous-headed Locust invaders to dismember, then he's your man. Gears of War carries a tactical combat payload that's a real blockbuster: consider this superbly designed shooter essential playing.

Like all good action storylines, Gears of War's plot doesn't waste too much time with its introduction. It's set on Sera, a generic-looking planet that's home to a mysterious underground power source and a sleeping alien menace, which the human population conveniently awakens some 14 years before the game takes place. Convenient to the game's plot, that is, not convenient to the human population, which was largely massacred before any kind of defense could be mounted. Yup, you guessed it: as the game opens, humanity is fighting back, and Marcus, newly sprung from his jail cell, is the arrow's point.

Although it's a third-person game, viewed from behind like Resident Evil 4, it uses the Halo-style dual stick control system that'll be familiar territory to just about any gamer. Gears of War doesn't hesitate to pile on its own twists, though, and the first of them concerns the game's focus on cover. Marcus can use almost anything in the game's post-apocalyptic world to hide behind, popping out to take pot shots at similarly concealed bad guys. For once, your opponents are mostly smart enough to do the same thing to you, only occasionally loitering in the open waiting to be shot.

Firing from cover like this makes firefights a fluid affair, as you and your enemies sprint, roll and leap from one piece of cover to the next. It's supported by a superb control system that puts all these actions - yes, all of them - on the same button. It really couldn't be easier, and with all those moves it looks fantastically cinematic.

"The hallmark of Gears' weapon design is the balance of powerful tools with critical, exploitable weaknesses, and it's executed with real finesse."

Meantime, your squadmates are doing exactly the same thing, guided by convincing AI that seldom requires a prod from the game's built-in order system. Genuinely fresh-feeling first-person shooters -- and for all its third-person pretensions, Gears is an FPS through and through -- are rare, but this cover-focused approach hits the mark. More importantly, it still feels exciting once the game's initial impact wears off.

Fans of Epic's games will know what to expect from the weapon selection. The traditionally PC-focused developer is renowned for coming up with creative ways for players to blow each other to pieces, and Gears of War is a fine addition to this proud tradition. Witness the game's Hammer of Dawn, a weapon that allows its wielder to call down the wrath of an orbital satellite, frying unfortunate enemies in seconds. Overpowered? Considering you have to hold still for some seconds to lock in your target, no. The hallmark of Gears' weapon design is the balance of powerful tools with critical, exploitable weaknesses, and it's executed with real finesse.

But the best toy of all is actually attached to the game's mainstay weapon, the assault rifle-like Lancer. It's a handy under-barrel chainsaw, perfect for dismembering enemies in gorgeously gory bouts of close-up violence. Opponents thus mutilated can't be revived by a teammate, and just holding the melee button in the general vicinity of an enemy is enough to trigger the attack. "I could do this all day," Marcus says, and we know what he means. Again, the chainsaw isn't the game-breaker it might seem - one stray shot from another enemy and you'll suddenly be left staggering, distracted and vulnerable.

The game has a very easy-going damage model. Take fire and a red Gears logo appears slowly, eventually getting stamped with a red skull -- that's when you keel over. Duck behind a wall, pillar, or burnt-out car, and it'll fade out as you recover. All your allies (including your teammates in multiplayer games) can be revived, after they "die", by reaching their corpse and tagging them.