Veni, Vidi, Drooli

What do you do when you're given the opportunity to sit through demonstrations of three blockbuster titles on giant screens? I came. I saw. I drooled.

I attended the Sneak Peeks session at E3 and got to one title for each next-gen system. Presented were Gears of War® for Xbox 360™, Red Steel™ for Wii™, and Metal Gear Solid® IV for Playstation® 3. The Xbox 360 title, Gears of War, was, of course, my mission. I wish you could have been there to see it, because words can not it justice.

Look at the end of the gun. Yeah, that's a chainsaw.

Gears of War
Cliff Bleszinski, Lead Designer at Epic Games, introduced Gears. He explained that bringing this story-based game to life proved quite a challenge. Gears began with the simple idea that Epic wanted to make using cover cool. They've built in cover actions that go far beyond just ducking behind a wall. Your character can dive behind a wall and slam into it. You can move between covered spots with a variety of moves that replicate what trained field agents would do, including rolling, spinning, diving and ducking.

Bleszinski said about the game "It's actually like a sci-fi A-Team™, and it plays out really interestingly." In the demo, the main character is dropped into what appears to be a recently abandoned prison. There you are, all alone, and then the whole place is under siege. Helicopters fly by over head, shooting down into the building—and those are the good guys. Fortunately for you, they're called off as soon as they know you're in there. 

This is where you start to get nervous.

Creep-out Factor 100%
And that's when the craziness begins. You find bodies, full and partial, hanging all over the prison. It's not pretty, though the graphics clarity and physics engine that makes them swing when you—urp!—bump into them, makes them very impressive. You meet your enemy for the first time in an open courtyard riddled with debris. This debris, of course, serves as the perfect stage on which to show off the dodge, duck and cover moves that Epic Games so cleverly built into the system.

There's shooting and chain-sawing, blood and guts, sweat and at least one tear (mine, as I pined for the game). In the end, you're still alive, and those things that were attacking you have called in reinforcements. You race for the helicopter, your extraction, and get into it just in time to lift off and see the emerging mass of the first boss below you. It rises up out of the ground, and it's not entirely clear whether you'll manage to get away in time. The horror is palpable.

Screams like a girl in 5, 4, 3 ...

Gears of War is a third-person action game that's almost a full-on shooter. They've included nifty gameplay elements such as the fact that you get a reload time bonus if you time your button pushing with the flashing reload bar. Miss it, and you suffer a jam for a second. The graphics in the game are wickedly sweet. The environments are interactive. The very first boss who shows will make your jaw drop. Oh, and let's not forget the chainsaw on the end of your gun. You'll drool too. Trust me.