the gaps.”
A game like
Gears of War
differs so profoundly from
Super Mario Bros
. that the two appear to share as many commonalities as a trilobite does with a Great Dane.
Super Mario
requires an ability to recognize patterns, considerable hand–eye coordination, and quick reflexes.
Gears
requires the ability to think tactically and make subtle judgments based on scant information, a constant awareness of multiple variables (ammunition stores, enemy weaknesses) as they change throughout the game, and the spatial sensitivity to control one’s movement through a space in which the “right” direction is not always apparent. Anyone who plays modern games such as
Gears
does not so much learn the rules as develop a kind of intuition for how the game operates. Often, there is no single way to accomplish a given task; improvisation isrewarded. Older games, like
Super Mario
, punish improvisation: You live or die according to their algebra alone.
Gears
is largely the story of a soldier, Marcus Fenix, who, as the game begins, has been imprisoned for abandoning his comrades (who are known as COGs, or Gears) in order to save his father, who dies before Fenix can reach him. He is released because a fourteen-year war with a tunnel-using alien army known as the Locusts has depleted the human army’s ranks. This much we glean in the first two minutes of the game; the next ten hours or so are an ingeniously paced march through frequent and elaborately staged firefights with Locusts, Wretches, Dark Wretches, Corpsers, Boomers, three blind and terrifying Berserkers, and the vile General Raam. Along the way, players can treat themselves to the singular experience of using the chainsaw bayonets on their Lancer assault rifles to cut their enemies in half, during which the in-game camera is gleefully splashed with blood.
(Gears
is one of the most violent games ever made, but Bleszinski maintains that it contains “very much a laughable kind of violence,” like “watching a melon explode in a Gallagher show.”)
The story line and the narrative dilemmas of
Gears
are not very sophisticated. What is sophisticated about
Gears
is its mood. The world in which the action takes place is a kind of destroyed utopia; its architecture, weapons, and characters are chunky and oversized but, somehow, never absurd. Most video-game worlds, however well conceived, are essenceless.
Gears
feels dirty and inhabited, and everything from the mechanics of its gameplay to its elliptical backstory has been forcefully conceived, giving it an experiential depth rare in the genre.
Much of the resonance of
Gears
can be directly attributed to the character of Fenix. Video-game characters tend to be emptily iconic. Pac-Man, for instance, is some sort of notionally symbolicbeing. Mario (who was originally known only as Jumpman) is merely the vessel of the player’s desired task.
Tomb Raider
’s Lara Croft is either the embodiment of or a satire on female objectification.
Halo
’s Master Chief is notable mainly for his golden-visored unknowableness. Fenix, encased within armor so thick that his arms and legs resemble hydrants, his head covered by a black bandanna, and his eyes as tiny as BBs, is different. He shows constant caution and, occasionally, fear. Although he can dive gracefully, his normal gait has the lumbering heaviness of an abandoned herd animal. His face is badly scarred, and his voice is a three-packs-a-day growl less angry than exhausted. Unlike the protagonists of many shooters, the Fenix of the first
Gears
rarely seems particularly eager to kill anything. The advertising campaign for
Gears of War
was centered on a strangely affecting sixty-second spot in which Fenix twice flees from enemies, only to be cornered by a Corpser, a monstrous arachnoid creature, on which he opens fire. But it was the sound track—Gary Jules’s spare, mournful cover of the 1982 Tears for Fears song “Mad World”—that gave the spot its harsh–tender dissonance.
A game like
Gears of War
differs so profoundly from
Super Mario Bros
. that the two appear to share as many commonalities as a trilobite does with a Great Dane.
Super Mario
requires an ability to recognize patterns, considerable hand–eye coordination, and quick reflexes.
Gears
requires the ability to think tactically and make subtle judgments based on scant information, a constant awareness of multiple variables (ammunition stores, enemy weaknesses) as they change throughout the game, and the spatial sensitivity to control one’s movement through a space in which the “right” direction is not always apparent. Anyone who plays modern games such as
Gears
does not so much learn the rules as develop a kind of intuition for how the game operates. Often, there is no single way to accomplish a given task; improvisation isrewarded. Older games, like
Super Mario
, punish improvisation: You live or die according to their algebra alone.
Gears
is largely the story of a soldier, Marcus Fenix, who, as the game begins, has been imprisoned for abandoning his comrades (who are known as COGs, or Gears) in order to save his father, who dies before Fenix can reach him. He is released because a fourteen-year war with a tunnel-using alien army known as the Locusts has depleted the human army’s ranks. This much we glean in the first two minutes of the game; the next ten hours or so are an ingeniously paced march through frequent and elaborately staged firefights with Locusts, Wretches, Dark Wretches, Corpsers, Boomers, three blind and terrifying Berserkers, and the vile General Raam. Along the way, players can treat themselves to the singular experience of using the chainsaw bayonets on their Lancer assault rifles to cut their enemies in half, during which the in-game camera is gleefully splashed with blood.
(Gears
is one of the most violent games ever made, but Bleszinski maintains that it contains “very much a laughable kind of violence,” like “watching a melon explode in a Gallagher show.”)
The story line and the narrative dilemmas of
Gears
are not very sophisticated. What is sophisticated about
Gears
is its mood. The world in which the action takes place is a kind of destroyed utopia; its architecture, weapons, and characters are chunky and oversized but, somehow, never absurd. Most video-game worlds, however well conceived, are essenceless.
Gears
feels dirty and inhabited, and everything from the mechanics of its gameplay to its elliptical backstory has been forcefully conceived, giving it an experiential depth rare in the genre.
Much of the resonance of
Gears
can be directly attributed to the character of Fenix. Video-game characters tend to be emptily iconic. Pac-Man, for instance, is some sort of notionally symbolicbeing. Mario (who was originally known only as Jumpman) is merely the vessel of the player’s desired task.
Tomb Raider
’s Lara Croft is either the embodiment of or a satire on female objectification.
Halo
’s Master Chief is notable mainly for his golden-visored unknowableness. Fenix, encased within armor so thick that his arms and legs resemble hydrants, his head covered by a black bandanna, and his eyes as tiny as BBs, is different. He shows constant caution and, occasionally, fear. Although he can dive gracefully, his normal gait has the lumbering heaviness of an abandoned herd animal. His face is badly scarred, and his voice is a three-packs-a-day growl less angry than exhausted. Unlike the protagonists of many shooters, the Fenix of the first
Gears
rarely seems particularly eager to kill anything. The advertising campaign for
Gears of War
was centered on a strangely affecting sixty-second spot in which Fenix twice flees from enemies, only to be cornered by a Corpser, a monstrous arachnoid creature, on which he opens fire. But it was the sound track—Gary Jules’s spare, mournful cover of the 1982 Tears for Fears song “Mad World”—that gave the spot its harsh–tender dissonance.
Similar Books
