Welcome to the tenth installment of Gaming on a Budget, my series of reviews specifically tailored to people with a limited budget for games. I wanted to save something special for number ten, so I decided on a game I was hugely excited about before I had it. And now, I alternatingly love it and hate it depending on how the game is going for me at the moment. So strap on your combat boots, fire up your lancer chainsaw, and prepare for Gears of War.
My usual policy is to not get too crazy into explaining the rules for a game. After all, you can easily just read the rulebook online or one of the reviews that does cover them in detail. But this game is pretty unusual on a lot of the rules and gameplay mechanics so I’m going to have to go into them a bit. There are kind of a lot of rules though, so bear with me here.
In GoW, pretty much everything that happens is driven by cards. There is an AI deck that runs the locusts (the monsters for non-GoW people), cards for the various weapons, cards for scenario setup and the various stages therein, and cards that present players with the actions available to them. There are also character cards for the players, and locust cards for the enemies. Seriously, there are a lot of cards here. There are of course the usual assortment of tokens and dice and such too, but you will spend most of your time on the cards.
The most pivotal of all are the player cards, with each one having its own set of functions/actions and with most having more than one marked by bullets. Let’s say it lets you move 1 space as the first action, and attack once as the second action. During your turn, after you draw your two cards, you can play one card from your hand. If you played that card you could do both things in order, or pass on either thing and just do the one. Or, you could discard the card to either move 2 or attack once. You could also discard it during a locust phase or other players turn for one of three alternate uses marked by a symbol on the top left of the card. Sound like a lot? Well, it is. 558
With all that versatility taking down the swarm should be a cakewalk right? Well, no, GoW is an extremely hard game due to one little bitty detail. The cards are also your hitpoints.
Yeah, you read that right. The cards that you can play for innumerable abilities/actions/picking stuff up/helping a fallen comrade also represent your HP. Spend too many and you will fall easy prey to the first locust to decide to jump you. This leaves you with some very dicey and critical choices. You are being attacked, should you try a counterattack and hope you can kill it before it attacks you? Well, that will cost you a card/hp to try. Or maybe use a card for a +2 dice defense bonus, but then you are guaranteeing a lost hp in the hopes of not losing more.
The choices go on and on like this, and for the vast majority of the game you are teetering on the edge of a razorblade, even if it may not seem like it. After a round in which my fellow gears and I had managed to finish off the last locust on the map, I drew an AI card that due to our present circumstances and positioning spawned -6 new locust- all around us. Needless to say we were just short of crestfallen.
Gears of War also makes use of an interesting system to determine line of sight. If you are not in cover and are firing at an enemy outside cover you simply see if a clear line of sight can be drawn from area to area, as your character is in no specific part of the room. However, if cover is involved (which it usually is) then you will draw a line from a sort of diamond symbol on the thing providing the cover to either a spot on the area for an enemy not in cover or to another diamond for an enemy in cover. This is done with a handy dandy straight line stick, like the one from games like Star Wars: X-wing Miniatures. Now, enough rules, let’s see some pros and cons.
Pros:
The tension is amazing in this game. Every last little thing has the potential to get you and your teammates killed. I’m not exaggerating on this, a bad choice and a bad roll or two and you are done. Game over, maybe try Parcheesi?
The artwork is very appropriate to the source material, and could best be described as ‘grim and gritty’ with lots of black and grey and brown. You like color? Well, there is plenty of red to be found too…
The miniatures are awesome, with a good variety of monster types and lots of little details on the player pieces. 237