I\'ve been playing Gears of War for about a week, and while it is very good, I\'m not entirely satisfied.
There is nothing original about the story whatsoever. In fact they blatantly lifted several ideas from a few famous movies.
The path is extremely linear. Even though there are a few instances when the player can choose to go left or right, the choice is irrelevant as far as I can tell. I acknowledge that most games must be linear to conserve system resources, but some games feel more linear than others. For example, Half Life 2 is also linear, but the path feels very wide, so the player has many opportunities to explore things and screw around playing with tools and weapons in creative ways. In Gears of War, the path is really really narrow. Combine that with the fact that the environments offer very little interaction, and the game begins to feel a little repetitive.
I\'m a somewhat bored with all the character models looking like huge musclebound lunks. I don\'t know why game designers are so enamored with making their characters look like defensive linemen. That was also something that appealed to me about Half Life 2. In that game, there was a great variety in body types among the non player characters.
I\'m not sure I agree with the player health system. I do like that fact that it gets rid of the health powerups, but I don\'t understand how your player regenerates health so quickly between encounters. It seems unrealistic, but I guess I shouldn\'t be looking for realism in a game like this.
I know I\'ve only listed negatives above, but I should also say that the game is enjoyable. I\'m going to keep playing, and I will probably finish it. I just regret that the game didn\'t really "break out of the box" of traditional console shooters. It didn\'t really shatter boundaries like I was expecting from all the glowing reviews.