What's with the friendly AI?
Controlling Marcus is a doddle. By pressing the ‘A’ button you can run, the motion slightly blurs and the clunking sound of your character with his weapons and ammo strapped to him is just one of the many excellent audio highlights. The ‘A’ button is also used to take cover, something that you’ll need to do at every opportunity. Run towards a doorway, wall, car, set of steps or almost any static object in the environment keeping hold of the button and he’ll dive for cover. Whilst in cover you can shoot without raising your head, although aiming will be less accurate, or you can adopt a position where you can lean around an object or bob your head up and down in order to use the target reticule for pinpoint precision. If there are two static objects next to each other you can move from one to the other in a smooth motion only briefly breaking your cover and making you vulnerable to attack. Using cover is one of the most important tactics throughout the game and many of the battles will see you patiently needing to dive in and out of cover and slowly moving up the battlefield in order to adopt a prime position on your enemy; if you walk out of cover for too long you’ll get annihilated. Fortunately, you won’t have to do battle alone as you’ll have three willing team mates who will fight by your side throughout the missions.
Click for larger imageUnfortunately, far more attention was paid to the superb enemy AI in Gears of War and in comparison the friendly AI don’t react as well as they should. Your team mates often get in the way, go steaming ahead and die when it would have been far better to stay back behind cover and frequently don’t react well to situations.
Once you reach a certain point in the campaign you’ll be able to issue orders to your team mates, such as re-group, attack or defend. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see any real change in their behaviour and they’d often do whatever they felt like doing regardless of my orders.
Click for larger imageAs a result, the single player campaign is far better in the superb co-op mode (which can be played online!) with a human team mate who understands tactical play and knows when to break cover. The often unimpressive friendly AI doesn’t spoil the game, but they do make silly decisions that occasionally had me shaking my head with frustration.
