Epic, using their highly respected Unreal 3 game engine, have developed a third-person shooter starring Marcus Fenix. Marcus is an imprisoned Coalition of Ordered Government soldier (known as COGs), set free to help the remainder of the COGs eradicate a subterranean threat, 'The Locust Horde'.

By moving away from their first-person and into a third-person perspective, Epic have been able to make Gears of War a far more tactical game than they have in the past. Now the player has the ability to use cover to either advance relatively unseen to your enemy, or shoot from safety. However, what you can do so can your enemy. So whilst you are ducking for cover and trying to outflank your enemy, you can bet your bottom dollar they are doing the same to you.

This tactical way of thinking offers up plenty of ways to play the game. For example, you might be hiding behind a small broken wall, so you lean up with the Lancer assault rifle loaded. Two things happen: first of all, you can now see your target so you start to shoot, but your target can now see you, and shoots back. You empty your rifle which now gives you more options, and when you reload do you try to nail the active reload which gives a damage boost on the newly replenished ammo, and a faster reload to boot, or go for the safe reload, which won't jam if the timing is wrong.

After the reload has finished, do you look over the wall again to finish off your enemy, or wait till your health has regenerated? If you wait for the health to regenerate, you will loose the advantage of the active reload. So you could start the reload as your health has nearly finished replenishing, but in that time your adversary may have moved. All this within the space of two seconds.

During the single player campaign, the Locust will come at you from emergence holes in the ground from where they have burrowed up from below Sera's crust (the world in which Gears of War is set). They are a finite enemy and after you have killed enough for the particular event you have triggered, the hole will close over, leaving a crater in the ground as a reminder of the battle you won.

You can, however, stop the Locust in their tracks. By throwing a frag grenade, it will seal the hole and no more Locust will emerge. Again you are faced with a choice: hang back and shoot the Locust from a distance, or try to get within range of a grenade throw to seal the hole. Before you make that decision,though, if you try to seal the hole and you squad mates become incapacitated, who will give you covering fire? But worse still, upon whom else can the Locust fire?

If (we should really say when) a squad member is incapacitated, he can be revived by pressing the X button when you are close by. You can't do this when in cover mode, so you will have to be exposed to enemy fire. In one such battle we experienced, the squad had advanced a little further than our man, and were taken out. As the chapter involved traversing an exposed bridge, with an enemy-held Troika (mounted gun) at the opposite end, and two or three emergence holes that open up sequentially at the other end, we had to let them be.

This was almost our undoing. After emptying the Lancer assault rifle (660 rounds) then refilling it only to empty it again, we started using the Boomer rocket launcher. Then, after using our four frag grenades seal a hole we couldn't even see, we had to resort to the pistol with a total of 40 or rounds or so and eventually finished the last of the Locust with six rounds spare. At least in this situation, because there is no enemy to respawn, your squad is automatically revived.

The single-player game will keep most gamers entertained for hours upon hours; multiplayer, though, is the best part. There is a few different game modes to be played over Xbox Live, system link (LAN) or split screen. The first mode is co-operative play with a partner assuming the role of Marcus' friend, Dominic Santiago. Throughout the game in co-op there will be times when the players will take different routes to complete an objective. In this scenario Marcus will choose his one and Dom will take the other.

If either Dom or Marcus becomes incapacitated, the game ends and you are reverted to the last checkpoint. A co-op game is super-simple to set up: if you are playing and you see a friend sign in to Xbox Live, just press your guide button and invite him. He will automatically take control of Dom and the game doesn't need to be restarted.

The other game modes are Warzone, Assassination, and Execution. All modes are team based, COG versus Locust, and played over a certain number of rounds as the host sees fit. Members of both teams spawn with a Lancer assault rifle (including chainsaw bayonet), a Gnasher shotgun, the Snub pistol, and one smoke grenade. Throughout the different maps there can be any number of power weapons to be found.

How the game modes differ is subtle, but makes for interesting play. Warzone is the base variant, last team standing wins can be either a whole team or one player left and any player can use any weapon. Assassination has a few subtle differences, in that both teams have a leader, Colonel Hoffman for the COGs and General Raam for the Locust. But the game is won by killing the opposition leader. There is one more subtle difference with this game mode in that initially only the leader can pick up power weapons. But he can drop then after that, and anybody on his team can pick them up.

The last mode, Execution, is similar to Warzone, but the kill has to be up close and personal - a melee, or curb stomp for example. One other small difference is that if you end up in the 'bleed out' position in Execution, by repeatedly tapping A you can revive yourself.

As for the power weapons, there are about half a dozen or so to find, the commonest being the Longshot sniper rifle. The name says it all as with the Boomer rocket launcher. There are two others that require a small amount of explanation: the Hammer of Dawn, and the torque bow. The Hammer of Dawn is an orbital weapon that requires a ground level site. First you find a target (it's orbital, so can't be used on an inside target), prime the sight with the left trigger, pull the right trigger to focus and then fire. The effect is devastating; the enemy will be torn apart.

When was the last time you fired a bow and arrow in a video game? Well that is exactly what the torque bow is. Again prime the sight, and then you can fire a small explosive dart by squeezing the right trigger. The longer you hold it, the more likely the dart is to stick into your enemy if it contacts. Soon after the dart explodes, if it's lodged in your enemy, he will explode with it.

One of the criticisms we have seen (from people that haven't played the game) is that eight players isn't enough for multiplayer. This is so untrue. Due to the simple fact there are no respawns in the game, if the maps were big enough to handle 24 players as people seem to think the game needs, it would get very boring very quickly to all those players that got taken out relatively early in the game. With this in mind, the eight-player limit is perfect.

After spending two weeks playing Gears of War we still have to admire how awesome the graphics look. Now for the not so good bit; thankfully it is so minor it is barely worth the mention. The button used to both crouch and run is A. When running to get a power weapon in multi-player, if you don't get you line of travel through obstacles just right, yoiu will inadvertently end up crouching behind a small wall only to jump from one to another before getting back on track, subsequently missing out on said power weapons.