Last year I won an Xbox in a competition [LINK]. It arrived a few months later, then sat in it’s box, un-opened whilst I worked on various things. My bro-in-law gave me Gears of War[LINK] for Christmas 2006 so that was reason enough to finally hook up the machine itself.

GoW has quickly become the flagship game for the 360 and showcases many of its advanced features (1080i, detailed graphics, XBox Live and so on).  You might say GoW is the new Halo (until Halo 3[LINK] and Lost Planet [LINK] at least).

I won the 360 Core system which didn’t come with a hard drive or any kind of storage, as a result the 360 could not save any games. So my first task was a trip to Best Buy to pickup the incredibly expensive 360 20GB hard drive for $100.

The drive snapped in and I was up and running. Luckily the console sits next to my router so a wireless adapter was not required to get internet connectivity on the 360. After about 20mins I was hooked up, the console updated itself and I was signed in to XBox Live (my gamertag is supermonkeyman7).  I got a free month at Live Gold status but with free multi-player games on the PC there’s no way I’ll pay for access once it expires.

Gears is a great game and the team really nailed the immersive experience. It’s your typical third person shooter but with plenty to shoot at and gorgeous graphics.

You play Fenix, an army mallet-head and you fly along behind him. He’s incredibly thick. A context-sensitive A button is the main interface. If you’re near a pillar, press A and the dude hides up behind it. If you’re near a low wall, press A and he crouches behind the wall. Takes some getting used to but works well.

There’s also a crouch and run type thing which you can do from one hide-out point to another. This is quite cinematic, similar to a journalists report from Desert Storm.  The only gripe I have is the steering of the dude when you do this. He’s big and doesn’t exactly turn on a dime.

In related news, the 2nd generation 360 has just been leaked and boasts true 1080p HD output (as opposed to the 1080i of v1) along with a 120GB hard drive [LINK]. That’s more like it.