I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Gears of War is the best-looking game I have ever played. It's a truly stunning achievement in terms of visuals, presentation and sound. Never before have I been given so much to look and marvel at while actually playing an adrenalized shooter. It's a fantastic achievement, and it's also easily the best reason to own an Xbox 360 to date. Now that that's out of the way, I also need to hammer home that while the single-player game is a good amount of fun, Gears' real hook is the superb multiplayer game. You'll be all done with the main story after eight or so hours, and even though there are three difficulty levels to play through, the legs of Gears is certainly in abusing foes online.

GameSpy has given a lot of love to Gears over the last 18 months or so. Ever since we saw the first trailers, right up until the Hollywood red-carpet promo event a few weeks ago, we've been gagging for more. It says a lot about a game to have nearly the entire console staff (and some others besides) constantly talking and chattering away about it. I have no doubt that Gears of War is a very strong candidate for our upcoming Game of the Year awards, so without harping on too much, let's look at what makes the game a true winner.

Set in a bleak future on a planet named Sera, a dark figure sits in a jail cell. The figure is disgraced COG soldier Marcus Fenix -- who just happens to be harder than a coffin nail soaked in titanium. Things are not going too well on the planet's surface. After the human colonies were assaulted by a force of subterranean beasts known as the Locust, a raging war broke out and the humans pretty much had to destroy their entire civilization to stop the rampaging Locust. Fast forward some four years, and we find Fenix's COG partner, Dom, knocking on the jail cell door.


From here, an epic story unfolds and sees Fenix and a team of three other COGs take on a tidal wave of Locust in an effort to somehow decimate the underground colonies of creatures once and for all. All told, the story lasts about eight to 10 hours on the first stroll through, but crank up the difficulty from casual to hardcore or even insane, and you'll be looking at a little bit longer for subsequent completion runs. Gears rewards you with achievements throughout the single-player campaign for completing the various chapters in order and for secondary objectives like killing certain monsters or collecting COG tags from fallen allies.

It's in the single-player game (or the mighty fine two-player co-op split-screen or online mode) that you'll get to see and experience all of the monsters, weapons and gorgeous environments that the game has to offer. From war-torn courtyards, mansions and coliseums to underground networks of caverns and industrial processing plants, Gears ponies up possibly the best-looking environments I've ever seen. There are a few occasions where textures pop in, and the frame rate takes a little hit here and there, but on the whole, Gears moves along at a steady pace and rarely puts you in a position where you'll die due to technical glitches.