Gears of War is not your typical shooter, since most of your shooting will take place from behind cover instead of running through a level. When behind cover, you have several options available to you. You can blind-fire from cover, which is wildly inaccurate, or pop out and fire. The second option is more accurate, but it does leave you exposed to return fire.
When you take a hit, the screen starts to turn slightly red, increasing with the more damage that you take, until you are dead. The damage does recede after a short amount of time, however, which is another good reason to stay behind cover. Reloading in this game is very different than any other. When you need to reload you press the (A) button, then a meter pops up with different shaded areas. If you stop it in the large gray area the weapon jams, the small gray area it reloads faster, and the white area you get a damage bonus. My favorite weapon in the game was the main assault rifle, simply because it has a chainsaw bayonette. Even though this is more of a hide and seek shooter, you still have the option to cut someone in half. Glorious.
Gears of War is definitely all that it was advertised and more. I very much enjoyed reviewing this game and would recommend it to anyone.
