Gameplay
Like many others I expected an intro explaining the whole situation with humans being at war with the Locusts. There is no intro at all. Why this was ignored I have no idea, even flashbacks during certain points in the game would have helped a great deal.
The game starts off with Marcus serving time in prison, but is delighted to see his old squad mate Dominic Santiago who has arrived to break him out of prison. The horde is descending onto the prison, so they’ve got to move fast.
You later meet up with your other squad mates. As well as your partner Dom, there is Augustus Cole aka Coletrain who is a former Thrashball player and is the big black burly macho type, the kewlio of the squad if you will. Lastly there is Damon Baird who I find very funny with his quippy one liners and mindless banter over the radio comms.
Right off from the start, you’re plunged into action as the horde arrives. Escaping from the prison acts an introduction to the control system, a tutorial of sorts. During your first battle you’ll learn one thing, cover is vital! I ran around shooting away and quickly died. A quick read of the manual at this stage allowed me to work out how to use concrete blocks as cover, and I was then set to kick ass! After being revived by Dom (I kicked some ass, but still died…) I returned yet again and this time got past that portion of the level.
The locusts during the early levels appear from emergence holes which suddenly erupt from the ground. Lobbing a grenade closes up the hole, preventing any more locusts from crawling out. Later on in the game you will be required to avoid dark spots as you’ll encounter a new type of locust who will feed upon anyone who strays away from lit up areas. This section of the game is rather impressive, and good team work is needed here to progress.
These locusts are clever buggers too. They’ll retreat if under too much fire, as well as attempt to flank you if you remain under fire in an area for too long without moving forward. You’ve got to use tactics, while trying to maintain cover. It can be quite frantic at times as I found out last night when during a Co-Op game, myself and Pr were pinned down in a square, and I kept repeatedly running of ammo, which ended up in me cowering near Pr until he killed a locust close to us, so I grabbed the gun from the fallen locust’s body and we then fought through that scene.
GoW consists of five acts, each having several chapters within. Overall, according to most gamers the single player campaign should take approx 10-14hrs to complete on Casual. At the start there are only two difficulty modes available to the gamer. Casual and Hardcore are available, with Insane being unlocked when you finish the game on hardcore. I’m currently going through the game on Hardcore co-op with me mate Pr and easy it ain’t – as it should be but we ended up dying on multiple occasions before we get past it. I should also state that if you complete an act on Hardcore, then you will get the achievements for Casual also which is quite neat. I hate to think how hard Insane must be, but it has to be done.
I have to commend Epic on their level design. There are so many memorable moments in this game just because they’re created with so much passion. GoW will cause development houses to question their game design methods, without a doubt. Some of the levels are just so dripping with atmosphere that it’s hard not to get immersed. Level design has so much attention to detail that on your second run through the game, you’ll see objects that you previously never saw before. This game has done what Half Life 2 did to the FPS genre – it’s once again raised the bar for future shooters.
Playing GoW is a very enjoyable affair, but by no means perfect. Epic has created some seriously lush environments, but there’s a big problem with this. You’ve got the most advanced graphics engine to date and there’s no doubt that it is incredibly powerful, as GoW’s later levels will no doubt prove. You rarely get a chance to marvel at the gorgeous surrounding architecture because you’re always on the move. Sometimes it’s hard to take in the surrounding beauty because of the game’s rapid pace.
My main problem is that it still feels quite linear; being an action based third person shooter it has to be. I guess and there isn’t any way of avoiding this. Thankfully the action is enough to make you push the linear factor completely away.
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