"Anyone who has played or seen the Tecmo-published shooter Quantum Theory will likely agree"

Yeah, but almost no one played Quantum Theory.

While I generally like darker sci-fi, I'm not much of a fan of TPS games, and am I the only one who associates the chunky aesthetic with Warhammer 40,000? That's what literally comes to mind mind when I see Gears art.

I'm not doubting the quality or the impact on gaming, though. Gears was a huge boon for Microsoft, especially early on.

Ah! Beat you by 2 whole minutes :)

Nintendo Wii knows that feel bro.

I thought it first, darn it!  Then .. uh, I went to get a drink or something, so ..

On topic, yeah, Unreal Engine as well.  I've never been a fan, personally, though I understand that it's good for the industry.

Says the people who took the ideas from Kill.switch and ran with it.

lol

This "copycat" thing didn't effect Gran Turismo or Call Of Duty so why should Gears get that "copycat" pass?

I agree with him. I don't care much for the looks (that's more an of UE3 thing than anything else) being copied but the gameplay and brutality are bigger to me. By the time Gears 3 rolled around, I could only put a couple hours into it before I felt bored. But the game itself is great. And it had been almost 3 years since Gears 2. But in between there were so many co-op third person games that played just like it or extremely close.

Call of Duty is experiencing the same thing imho. The games themselves are as good as ever. But the whole level up, XP, unlocks, perks, etc elements that they made extremely popular, are now in so many FPS and even other genres, it affects how quickly I get tired of playing CoD.

Look up kill.switch. Nuff said.

I remember sentiments like that, then I remembered there were games like that on the PS2 and cover systems date back even further. Gears of War was just popular, the UE flexed its muscle and they made a game where everything fit in the cover system, like god damn legos. It wasn't even the first game to use one button for everything in a cover system.

Gears gets way too much credit, at least the wrong kind of credit. They did a great job putting it all together and delivering it, but they didn't invent it.

The amusing part was I bought a 40K game "Space Marine" and remember people saying it looked like it ripped off Gears of War.