As winter blockbusters go, Gears Of War always seemed something slightly awkwardly placed to me. In the build up to the game being released over the pond numerous attempts by myself were made to finally crack into what all the excitement was about, yet screenshots and movies failed to impress and portrayed what to me looked nothing more than an average third-person Unreal Tournament spin-off from Epic Games. Having finally sat down and completed Gears – twice – the opinion I originally forged has changed somewhat, but possibly not as much as it could have.

Set in a nightmarish future where mankind has had to bring on a semi-apocalypse to cleanse the world of an invading race of locusts from the Earth’s core, the player is cast as disgraced veteran Marcus Fenix throughout the game’s approximated ten hours of play. Rescued from the prison he is being held in by best buddy Dom and being faced with the return of the locust enemy, the game wastes no time in throwing you straight into the action and having you get to grips with how it all works.

Anyone expecting to rattle around Gears Of War all guns blazing and make it through in one ungibbed piece will have something of a confidence crisis at this point, as from the very first battle it becomes apparent that the surrounding scenery is absolutely crucial to your progress, meaning those of you who patented the ‘run-and-gun’ technique of polishing off shooters will soon find yourself in several meaty chunks on the floor.

Finding appropriate cover for Marcus is thus paramount to his survival, and thankfully the control system assigned to this works well and feels natural. Dashing around is performed by holding the A button, and should you run into or against, say, a pillar or a barrier whilst doing so, Marcus will automatically duck or move himself to cover himself against said scenery. Once done you can shuffle to either end of your new shield or peep around the edges using the analogue stick, whereas a series of button presses carry out varying actions with your weaponry. This could have itself gotten confusing quite quickly, but thankfully Epic saw fit to flash a little instructional diagram when such a situation arises, meaning you always know what Marcus can do in the position he has found himself. For those wanting a little melee combat, the much-publicised chainsaw offers a gruesome yet strangely satisfying reward to those who manage the increasingly difficult task of scalping a locust warrior directly.

Combat itself is no pushover on the harder difficulty settings, with enemy AI showing pleasing amounts of self-preservation and large amounts of aggression when it comes to dealing with Marcus and his band of colleagues. The game can be played at three difficulty levels, and whilst the easiest is a good way of getting the controls and tactics licked it does come across as too simple, something that is very much to the detriment of a game trying to make you think tactically about every encounter. Likewise, the hardest difficulty level is teeth-grindingly difficult and will see you having to repeat sections over again. The fact that this mode is only available having completed the game once on the medium difficulty, which is still no walk in the park, is hence probably a pretty sensible plan on Epic’s part and will probably save a few people walking straight into the most difficult level and smashing their lovely wireless 360 pads with frustration.

Visually the game is utterly beautiful, which is probably the game’s trump card. Shattered landscapes lie twisted, smouldering and crumbling around you. Wonderful set pieces see whole sections of the surrounding buildings or walkways collapse and explode amid a shower of dust. Locust forces spring up from swirling emergence holes at random points in the middle of roads, with each enemy painstakingly designed to look as menacing and all-out evil as they can. Every corner of the game world has been carefully lavished with care and attention to give the keen-eyed gamer a chance to immerse himself in what truly is a believable and at some points awe-inspiring world.

So, the game is enjoyable and looks beautiful. Is it all enough to make Gears Of War a candidate for game of the year? Well, not quite. As much as you’ll find yourself enjoying ducking and diving between pillar and post fending off the locust swarms against the backdrop of a vividly painted vision of a world destroyed by relentless war, a few things conspire to hold Gears Of War just below the threshold of true excellence.

The main reason is simple enough: the game is too short. Spread over five different acts the game will take even the mildly competent shooter only around ten hours to complete. The story underpinning the game spends most of the duration gently bubbling, only to start to kick into action just as the final credits roll. Subsequent news that Gears is the first game in a planned trilogy goes some way to explaining this, but it is still a little disappointing to be in effect paying £4 for every game hour you get.

The second reason might be a thorny issue with some quarters. To put it bluntly, the whole story thread and characters are straight out of Encyclopaedia Generica and at no real point during proceedings do you ever begin to feel reasonably attached to any of the protagonists whose desperate struggle is being played out in front of you. Obviously Gears was never going to weave a rich tapestry when it came to the story or plot, but even with that in mind it seems a little bland.

Now, don’t go getting me wrong here. Gears is undoubtedly a fine piece of work, having well over two years of painstaking and at times fraught (if the supplemental DVD documenting the making-of is anything to go by) development and testing. What we’ve ended up with is a superbly polished and well-realised game world with a solid-as-a-rock game mechanic that works well within the parameters of what it’s been set to do. In layman’s terms, Gears Of War is unashamedly an uncomplicated shooter, and it has fulfilled that perfectly.