What Grinds My "Gears"
With time and finance being the fickle mistresses that they are, I often don’t get around to trying some of each year’s biggest releases until much later. I only just now purchased The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, for example, and I got around to Mass Effect over a year after its sequel released. Whether it’s down to preference or priorities, I’ve been “late to the party” on several major counts this console generation.
One of the biggest things on my checklist has long been the Gears of War trilogy. Initially released for the Xbox 360 in 2006, Gears of War made a name for itself as one of only a handful of truly worthwhile games in the early days of this generation. It was also the first game after Resident Evil 4 to utilize the “over the shoulder” aiming style and it is generally credited with popularizing cover-based shooting mechanics. These days there are dozens of examples of games that allow you to glue your character to protective cover with a simple contextual button press, but at the time Gears’ focus on this mechanic was a revolution in shooter gameplay. The series also offers a distinct twist on the standard shooter reload mechanic: pressing the reload button with proper timing can speed up your reload animation and impart beneficial effects like increased damage from all remaining rounds in the clip. It was a game with a lot of great ideas, ideas that have since gone on to inform the design of games like the Uncharted and Mass Effect franchises.
Playing through the Gears games has been frustrating for me precisely because they have such solid mechanics. The core shooting is satisfying and works well, it’s easy to see why the cover system was revolutionary, and the reload mechanic is an idea that should have been lifted by other shooters. Brilliant mechanics aside, the Gears titles fail to gel these mechanics together into a compelling, cohesive whole.
The series is hampered by poor storytelling across the board, with a somewhat interesting backstory taking a distant backseat to a very typical sci-fi war story. There are glimmers of good writing and execution, particularly in the opening 3 or so hours of Gears of War 3 which actually allow the characters room to breathe (and joke!) and spend a great deal of time fleshing out the world of Sera and the plight of its people. It even finds the time in the early going to theme an entire series of levels around former “Thrashball” star Cole, to fantastic effect. These glimmers of quality prove fleeting though, as the series’ better story moments and brilliant mechanics often get lost within its repetitious, grinding pacing.
Good pacing is generally comprised of both “peaks” and “valleys.” If the game stays dialed to 11 for its entirety all it does is exhaust the player. The best games know when to reset the player’s tension and adrenaline, just as the best horror movies know to take the time to generate suspense before a good scare. Action is more effective when it is followed by quiet, drama is more effective when juxtaposed with peace, etc. Whatever you call it, you need loud and quiet moments to affect a player’s emotional state and keep them engaged.
Some games have an easier time with this than others. I consider Resident Evil 4 to be one of the best-paced action games ever created. Each new area of the game presents a distinct action “puzzle” to be solved and the game’s levels and mechanics are rich enough to support a wide variety of tactics and approaches. The game’s real secret is its RPG-like progression and inventory systems which make thorough exploration of the environment an absolute necessity. This allows the designers to construct non-combat spaces that serve both a gameplay and a pacing purpose, and more naturally give the player some resting spots to reflect and to reset their emotional state.
For games that are more linear and direct, such as Uncharted, Gears, and Call of Duty, the solutions to the pacing problem are a bit harder to come by. Uncharted and Call of Duty solve this problem by constantly ensuring that they contrast moments of high action with quiet reflection. For example, the bombastic platforming-and-shooting gauntlet that is Uncharted 2’s legendary “train level” is immediately followed by a story and exploration focused trek through a peaceful remote village and atmospheric icy cave that is almost completely devoid of combat.
Call of Duty is the
internet’s popular creative punching bag at the moment, but I don’t
think anyone can deny how well Infinity Ward and Treyarch pace their
campaigns. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2’s “Cliffhanger” mission has to
be one of the best examples of shooter pacing I have ever seen.
Beginning with a vertigo-inducing climb up a wall of ice, the player is
then tasked with silently infiltrating an enemy compound under the
relative protection of a violent blizzard. The player can barely see
more than a few feet in front of their position in any direction, and
the heartbeat sensor mounted to their silenced rifle gives the player
the feeling of being a bat, blindly feeling out their surroundings with
only waves of sound and fleeting glimpses to guide them.
This calm before the storm is broken violently as the player is discovered and has to resort to detonating a bomb. With the cat out of the bag the player makes a bold, explosion-ridden escape from the compound, running and gunning their way through trouble. The mission ends with an explosive, high speed snowmobile chase, the player frantically dodging rocks and trees as they fend off assailants. From brooding quiet to a breathless finish, this mission demonstrates the best of action game pacing in one tight package.
The problem with the Gears series is that, with
very few exceptions, it just doesn’t contain any moments like these. It
is a shooting gauntlet, plain and simple. The only pieces of respite
provided to the player are brief cutscenes, which aren't enough to
reset the tension after all of the intense shooting.
A good example is the fight with the Corpser Queen in Gears of War 3. In and of itself the encounter is brilliantly staged. The player encounters a room full of vile, hatching eggs and it’s not long before their mother comes out to defend them. The player must aim carefully at the Queen’s only vulnerable spot, her eyes, while defending against her hatchling hordes. After finally blinding the mother she rampages through the caverns, causing a cave in that the player must quickly escape from. It’s extremely exciting and is a great boss fight that, in an interesting subversion of expectations, provides the player with no cover in this cover-based shooter.
The core issue is not the encounter, but how the preceding and succeeding encounters string together. There was never a distinct moment of quiet that allowed the mother’s introduction to achieve its full, creeping impact. The previous area was a long, labyrinthine gauntlet filled with fast-paced shooting and quaking explosions. After this intense boss fight the player is given no moment of respite, no chance to feel the satisfaction of their victory. They are instead hurriedly shuttled to the next combat encounter.
I wanted to love Gears. I really did. Its mechanics are
brilliant and I have nothing but respect for Epic Games’ designers. Only
a few minutes are required with one of the games to understand why
these ideas have been so widely copied and adapted. It is one of the
highest-rated shooter series on aggregate sites like Metacritic and the
series has sold enough to be considered an undisputed success. Epic’s
designers have much to learn about how to pace a game, however. They
never seem to feel confident that they have the player’s attention,
rushing them from one loud bang to the next in a desperate bid to secure
their interest.
