Gears of War is Microsoft's answer to the assault of PS3 and Wii's holiday releases. It's their flagship title for the season and, as such, has garnered comparison from other big-name titles, including Halo and even Resident Evil 4. Indeed, Gears of War is the first truly AAA title since the Xbox 360's launch. It took a year, but, as playing through this spectacular game will teach you, patience is a virtue.

Gears is not your typical run-and-gun shooter, but it doesn't play quite like Rainbow Six either. The camera is reminiscent of Resident Evil 4 -- third-person, the character to the left of the screen. When you aim your weapon, the camera zooms in to an over-the-shoulder viewpoint allowing for more precise aiming. The third-person viewpoint plays a larger role, however, in the game's intuitive cover system. Staying out in the open will get you killed, and fast. To succeed, you must take advantage of anything --- a couch, sandbag, concrete slab, or pillar -- that can conceal you and act as cover. Pressing A near a viable surface slaps you up against it. From here, you have two options. Pressing the L trigger goes into the aforementioned over-the-shoulder viewpoint; good for aiming, but you often stick out your head or entire body to make the shot. The other option is blind firing, which is accomplished by simply pressing the fire button. You can aim, but not very accurately; you remain concealed while doing so, however. Moving between cover is also as simple as it should be; press A again, and you'll move dynamically based on the scenario. For example, you may swat turn to a nearby pillar for a better viewpoint, or hop over a low piece of cover. After a while, it becomes second nature, and you'll worry about how to flank an enemy or what cover to use instead of fumbling with the controls. Explaining the cover system really doesn't do it justice; it has to be played to be truly appreciated. Other aspects of the control -- "active reload", which allows you to quickly reload your weapon and even get a small damage boost with a well-timed button press, the "roadie run", which speeds up your character at the expense of lateral movement and offers a cinematic shaky camera angle, or the vicious "curb stomp" maneuver, which finishes a downed enemy off by smashing their head into the ground, are also quite visceral and satisfying.

Throughout the relatively short campaign (8-10 hours first time through, depending on the difficulty level), you will be pitted against a variety of alien creatures ranging from simple foot soldiers to huge, hulking bosses that require more than raw firepower to take down. You're not the only human fighting the war against the alien race known as the Locust, whom live underneath the earth and are destroying the human race. There are usually three other humans battling alongside you. The good news is that they're smart enough to take cover, blind fire, and deal some damage, but unfortunately they aren't of that much help. You'll likely take out most threats single-handedly, and spend more time than you'd like healing your downed AI comrades. While this is an annoying quirk while playing by yourself, it all but disappears when playing through the game with a friend cooperatively. The entire campaign is playable in co-op, and it's integrated seamlessly. This is, by far, the best co-op experience I have ever played, and it's partly due to the fact that the game was built around cooperative play. Your main partner in crime, Dom, goes from an idiotic AI mess to a real-life human player who will actually be smart enough to heal you when you're downed. Playing over Xbox Live, system link, or split-screen with a friend makes the experience that much better -- you have the freedom to construct strategies on the battlefield, which makes the game more enjoyable, and oftentimes less frustrating. Maybe you think one person should pick up the sniper rifle and the other a shotgun, or perhaps you can flank opposite sides of a room to take out the Locust before they know what hit them. If you're playing the campaign solo and a friend hops on Xbox Live, you can actually send him an invite and have him take the place of Dom at that exact point in the campaign. It's this level of polish that really pushes GoW into AAA territory.

The campaign has a surprisingly diverse set of locales -- a far cry from the generic ruined landscapes I was expecting. There is some truly beautiful scenery to behold, all designed with an immaculate attention to detail and an incredible art style. Gears of War is the best looking video game to date, and definitely sets a new bar for what next-generation gaming can offer. A technical and artistic marvel, it looks jaw-droppingly phenomenal on every possible level. From the spooky twilight of caverns that seem to stretch out for miles with intimidating stalagmites and gloomy fog, insidious industrial landscapes during a powerful rainstorm, to the destroyed, charred remains of better times on earth. Even on a standard-definition set, GoW looks decidedly next-gen, a feat not accomplished by many other 360 titles. Of course, if you have a display capable of outputting HD, it will look that much better. Games just aren't supposed to look this good, and besides some texture pop-in, Gears of War is visually flawless and is the gaming equivalent of an air-brushed supermodel: it actually looks better than real life.

Weaponry plays a large part in any shooter, and GoW delivers with some intensely powerful weapons that yield bloody, bloody satisfaction. A point-blank shotgun blast will blow your enemy to pieces. A sniper rifle shot to the head will blow his head off, the squish of brains and bone audible to all nearby. If that's not violent enough for you, the Lancer machine gun has a built-in chainsaw bayonet, which you can use to literally slice enemies in half. The screen is splattered with blood and any sound is drowned out by the piercing scream of your foe's pain as you rip him apart. As if that's not violent enough, you can actually step on the head of a downed opponent and smash his skull to pieces against the concrete As you can imagine, this is quite a degrading kill, especially in the games 4v4 multiplayer modes over Xbox Live. While the game's wonderful gibs are quite the spectacle in the campaign, it's much more gratifying to know that the bloody body parts around you belong to some 13 year old racist jackass on Xbox Live who likes to tell everybody in the lobby how high they are. 4v4 may seem a little sparse, but I prefer the intimacy the player limit and smaller maps provides. Maps are mostly symmetrical and designed around the team mechanic; free-for-all deathmatch would not work here, and thus is not included. Instead, there's a handful of game modes in which you are only granted one life. All of them are variants of elimination-style team deathmatch, however. Teamwork is necessary as you can heal teammates and formulate strategies to take out the other team. The ten included maps are varied and just as gorgeous as the campaign, which is a true feat considering how many other games use a dumbed down visuals in multiplayer. None of them feel too big or too small, and they are all designed around strategic use of cover and teamwork. Since the maps are symmetrical, it's an even playing field for both the humans and Locust, with some of the heavier weapons tending to spawn in the center of the map. Going in for a chainsaw or curb stomp kill after downing an enemy often means running to enemy lines -- the other side of the map. Thus, it is a risky maneuver but elicits much satisfaction upon successful completion. You can, of course, quickly finish an enemy off with regular weapon fire to ensure that his teammate won't heal him.

While the versus multiplayer in GoW is very balanced and fun to play, it is not without some minor technical quirks that deserve notice. Connection errors are abound -- I've had nothing but trouble trying to join matches, and I'm not alone in my misfortune. It will often take several tries to join a match, but better luck is had when hosting a game. Secondly, this game would have benefited tremendously from a Halo-style matchmaking/party/playlist system. Currently, it's impossible to hop on Live with a friend and join a ranked match with him. Not being able to invite friends to ranked games -- even ones that you host -- is annoying, to say the least, but is even further compacted by the fact that all of the multiplayer achievements can only be obtained through ranked play. Playing with and against friends is usually a much better experience than playing with seven strangers, and it's disappointing to not be able to create a party, invite a buddy, and search for a ranked game together. I really wish that all Xbox Live games would implement this system, as it's partially what made Halo 2 so addicting to play online. While I can see myself playing adversarial Gears of War for quite some time, I can't help but think the experience would be even better without having to wait for a game or fumbling around a menu system trying to join a friend's ranked match without the convenience of invitation. Hopefully, Epic addresses this issue, because the lack of such a matchmaking system and my inability to join matches regularly are my only real complaints with Gears of War's otherwise incredible multiplayer experience.

In short, Gears of War is an absolute blast that really nails the core of what makes a game great: intuitive control, great pacing, incredible graphics, and a thorough layer of polish. This is the Xbox 360 game to get, and probably will be for quite some time. Finally, the 360 has a game with legs, that you will undoubtedly go back to over and over again. So long as Epic can keep the multiplayer experience fresh (and with their track record, I have no doubt about it), Gears of War will have a permanent home in your Xbox 360's disc tray.