Genre: Third-Person Shooter
Developer: Epic Games
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

The Unreal engine is becoming more ubiqitious throughout the industry every day, and version 3.0's features are put to full use in Gears of War; beyond shader model 3.0, HDR, and loads of ultra high resolution textures, the art style is wonderful; the game manages to successfully straddle a line between uniformity of color pallete and grittiness, and unique character for each locale featured. All things considered, Gears of War is the best looking game I have ever seen.

All of the standard military cliche characters are present; the hard-ass, monotone protagonist, the Southern accent hick "Sarge", and the go-lucky side-kick. However, like the graphics, Gears achieves balance with its audio. Despite the obvious cliches, voice acting never goes overboard or becomes an irritant. This extends to the music as well: the soundtrack is high-intensity orchestra, but is careful to not fall into the same ridiculous over-dramatization that plagues most Hollywood-style orchestral selections. The aural presentation in Gears is like feng-shui of game design.

Gears of War answers the question of how to further evolve the now antiquated shooter; add strategy and depth without making it complicated or cumbersome. To this end, Gears utilizes a GRAW-like cover system, but makes it so simple that it only requires the use of one button. Re-loading involves a second, optional keypress that, if timed correctly, makes reloading faster and adds bonus damage to subsequent hits. Maps provide plenty of places where you can flank enemies during fire-fights, but without making the levels unnecessarily complex. These are among the many ways that Gears of War is a landmark evolutionary step in the design of the shooter.

Like Mario Bros, Doom, Halo, and all the great games of the past, Gears of War oozes with its own character and soul, and when you combine the intangibles with the embodied attributes described above, you are left with something special. But most importantly, Gears of War is really, really fun, especially with a friend in split-screen co-op. I'm not sure if Gears of War will necessarily go down as a member of the all-time top echelon of games, but it will certainly be viewed as a landmark title for the genre, and I expect that many of its conventions will become standard-fare shooter material in the near future.