Gears of War - The 360's Most Important Title | Retcon_404

Gears of War was a franchise created by EPIC Games for the Xbox 360 back in 2006. Utilizing incredibly smooth cover-shooting gameplay and revolutionary graphics, it wowed audiences and became the 360's first break out hit. Let's take a look back at how Gears of War changed the Xbox 360 and the gaming landscape as a whole.
-- THIS VIDEO CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR GEARS OF WAR --
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[@Masterho310]

Every playstation game in the 2000's wanted to be Gears of War.

[@flipyapd2321]

And Halo

[@theredcomet4301]

you’ve easily become one of my favorite youtubers, the gundam drew me in, but even the other series you cover are right up my alley > keep dropping bangers!

[@Retcon404]

Thanks man! I appreciate it

[@bigbadbox6023]

Same

[@imbetter599]

​@@Retcon404R

[@tokyosmash]

Man I remember playing Gears for the first time and being floored

[@analogman6610]

gotta agree that this was one of the most important games of that era. i remember playing it with friends at a LAN party and we ended up destroying the campaign in two co op games. along with that we all assigned each other one of the characters as our dude and i ended up with carmine since i died so much lol.

[@joshuacalebroman478]

Gears of War holds such a special place for me. My cousin showed it to me in 2006, and I played hours upon hours of multiplayer online with my friends in high school. I even went to a midnight release of Gears of War 2 in 2008. Thanks for this video! Between gundam, Escaflowne and this, so much nerdy nostalgic goodness on your channel!

[@joshuacalebroman478]

Also, that Theron guard fight at the resonator deployment site was just murderous on Insane. Took me and my friend hours to get that done when we were young.

[@MomoKanjaki]

Yes! Escaflowne and Gears of War are my top favorites from anime and video games, and I still engage in both to this day! But man, were these the days when I first saw them for the 1st time as a little kid!

[@mattmaddogwheaton4724]

You've already become one of my favorite KZbinrs, the Gundam drew me in, but you're also giving a lot of props to other classics like Gunbuster, Vampire Hunter D, and especially Macross and VOTOMS. The fact you also cover classic games is also a nice touch.

[@12LoLproductions]

It was the last game I ever played with my dad before he gave up gaming entirely, I'll always remember him telling me I turned pale when the first Berserker tore that random Gear apart

[@Tripledashhh_]

24:08 lol that was you throwing your own grenade at yourself 😂😂😂

[@Retcon404]

Yes, as you can see I am the best gamer lol

[@eddieg877]

Gears 1 was the first game that i got ADDICTED to....even more than Halo or Cod. It will always hold a special place in my heart.

[@t0xcn253]

Of the two people I live with, one loves halo, one loves gears of war, and then... there's me. The one who still considers "64" to be "the real Doom 3". Seriously tho, I think you'd enjoy the channel "Thor High Heels" take on the impact that GoW had on the industry, mostly the ensuing "Dark Age of Japanese Game Development" which is the title of his vid. You should check it out!

[@Retcon404]

Way ahead of you, I have loved Thor High Heels since like 2016 hahah. DOOM 64 is kind of awesome though that's true.

[@t0xcn253]

@@Retcon404 NICE, I'm glad to hear that you are a fan. As someone who spent their entire childhood (and adolescence, and adulthood...) wishing I could be a Final Fantasy character, his love of that art style and early cgi aesthetics in general made me sub to his channel pretty early on. Since then he just keeps getting better, defo one of the most unique and entertaining video game youtubers on the platform.

[@korbengaming2126]

I know im 10 months late, but its good to see people cover old games that have fallen out of the spotlight, and give them the recognition they deserve.

[@alej6568]

I still remember graduating 5th grade and my mom had a brand new 360 wrapped in my room I started crying

[@Retcon404]

thats awesome, what a great start to a childhood summer

[@aldo1814]

That's a great memory, man! I'm really close with my three sons, so it pained me to deploy to Afghanistan in 2012...I sent them a 360 for Christmas and Skype'd them all the time while they showed me what they were playing 🤗

[@dantexpcd]

i love your channel from your gundam retrospective, im actually finishing the whole gundam series

[@fernandozavaletabustos205]

The Gears of War franchise is HUGE in Latin America because it was one of the first videogames to offer high quality dubs for the region. I and millions here prefer the Mexican voices over the English ones!

[@edenromanov]

Bro going through your reviews I don't know how I didn't realize you also reviewed games and they're just as great as your show reviews, love your takes on reviews, very relatable, your editing, intonation and overall presence in your reviews is great, turning on notifications so I can catch your videos more often!

[@primusvsunicron1]

You covering all the GoW titles

[@Retcon404]

Possibly, I would like to do at least the original trilogy.

[@ibchillin4899]

I really dig the video game topic video. I love gundam and u got me back into it but I hope u do more video game videos like this

[@philosopherkingzant2037]

Gears of War's commercial was magic

[@deathdealer9054]

This game together with halo made xbox big

[@zoeyoneohone]

Great video man. I have been saying forever that for all the analysis' on KZbin GOW gets over looked like no other. Thanks for getting the word out there.

[@mavrick195]

@13:55 I remember playing this as a kid and thing "shit just got real" when carmine went down. And in the sequel I was absolutely DEVASTATED when I saw what happen to his younger brother

[@vladlock]

I loved Crimson Skies multiplayer on the xbox

[@Retcon404]

Fuck yeah Crimson Skies is awesome, I still have my disc.

[@turdwallet8840]

Great video! I hope that Gears 2 video is still in development

[@bishowgaming]

Hello my friend, great content

[@Retcon404]

Thank you

[@ashharkausar413]

The great days of couch gaming! I was in high school at the time and I would hang out with my friends at their place and I'd watch em play. Gears was also a huge edition to the infant esports community at the time. Esports was in development and the biggest contributors to it were CSGO, Halo and Gears.

[@Retcon404]

Gears had SUCH competitive online back in the day. Something about the original Gears only really having elimination modes made it super sweaty, great fun though. I think overall Gears 2 might be my favorite in the series cause it just had so much content with the campaign, multiplayer and horde. Then of course Gears 3 was just more good content on top of that. What a series.

[@Ryan3d]

More videogames ! This was an awesome video !

[@ninebreaker6438]

Dropped so many hours in horde mode. I wish more games had a horde mode. It was like a 3rd person shooter tower defense 4player co op mode. Carmine was also my multi player character

[@Retcon404]

Carmine's "awww cmonnnn not again.." when you fail a reload in multiplayer breaks my heart every time haha.

[@Thenewbagman]

In fact, the cover system came from Operation winback on the N64. Winback 2 on xbox was only the refined version

[@charlesmaclellan8124]

Halo and Gears is why I'm STILL an Xbox player, even though their more recent games have been... ... ... I did play Gears 5 for a year and a half nonstop for Horde alone though. I absolutely love these franchises for their co op though. Remember that guy sitting on the toilet multiplayer easter egg in Gears 1?

[@happyhavoc-]

The first Gears of war was the reason I got xbox live. I met some of my most important friends in my life online from this game! I learnt glitching, esports and making youtube videos on sony vegas hahaha, the first ever montage I ever watched was Gears1

[@Retcon404]

This video was edited with Sony Vegas hahahah

[@itzturtlexd1721]

It’s hilarious you said exactly what I was thinking about the frame rate. I’ve gamed at 240fps for years now and there is no going back. It is now my baseline and a 60fps experience is unacceptable yet when you were pointing out that the fps in this game is 30 and drops often I immediately thought it was hilarious that I never noticed as a kid and apparently neither did you. Lol

[@llorenstorrespr4409]

The best looking Gears game out of the first 4 titles.

[@bombomos]

One of my favorite games. I played this shit for days on end. Hell I still sometimes boot up the old servers and chainsaw the fuck out of sniper weiners

[@StoneTheCr0w]

CliffyB abandoned Unreal to bring this to life and in retrospect I don't believe it was worth it. I'm glad the console fans got a cool series but it came at the expense of my childhood series, Unreal Tournament. They cut dev resources focused on Unreal Tournament 3 to create Gears. Forever bitter 😅

[@zoeyoneohone]

Hey man, while I respect this opinion I feel like it was kind of inevitable. At the time arena shooters were kind of on their way out of popularity. I too loved the Unreal series but I don't know that they could have had a real place in modern gaming for the same reasons that make arena shooters unpopular now. Not saying it couldn't have been good or whatever but idk.. I kind of feel like it was for the best.

[@darrenheideman2546]

Gears of War 2, the only time I actually took part in a midnight release event.

[@datharo5]

This is a really good video. I'm not into video games, but listening to the story of it is really interesting. Looking forward to more!

[@chopinthehouse1438]

Please do all of the gears if you can 😭

[@chopinthehouse1438]

I will even volunteer my time to play the coop with you.

[@MrRobeStern64]

16:57 I just wanna say as child this scene and the level go into after this traumatized me to the point I skipped this game and went straight into the sequel

[@DanielLopez-vt1bu]

I just couldn’t get into GOW even tho my closest friends were really into it. At the time the pull from Halo and Splinter Cell was too strong.

[@Retcon404]

Halo was another favorite, and I JUST found a copy of Splinter Cell double agent at a local store. Loved that game as a kid.

[@jl8060]

I was never around for the 7th gen console days, but I did manage to play the first Gears a while back. While it doesn't have the same aura of something like Halo does, nothing beats your first love. The first Gears is still surprisingly decent, but the Kryll vehicle section and that final boss fight aren't that great. I can see the appeal that it has though. While I've only played this and 2, it does pain me to see how these Xbox franchises have fallen to the wayside. I tried doing co-op with some friends who had never played it, but they didn't seem that interested in it, nevertheless, I do think the first Gears is still important just to see why everyone wanted to emulate third person cover shooters so much during this time.

[@williamkeiser7562]

I played through this game so many times back then. Even did self imposed challenges like no ammo boxes. Also remembering taking down the berserkers with grenades. All you had to do was do a quick hot with the hammer then grenade tag it. Berserker battle over in seconds. I played the multiplayer so much too and was hooked on it. Als funny how you said gears 2 multiplayer was your favorite because it was the exact opposite for me. I played it on launch, and it was absolutely broken. All blind fires went straight to the ground and blind firing a boom shot always killed yourself. Smoke grenades stunning people to a ragdoll was terrible too as they flew everywhere. Picking skorge was the worst character too because his ragdoll would clip him through the ground and lead to death. I just couldn't get into it after playing it like that and it never felt the same fast paced gameplay of one that I loved. Voting for game type also ruined the game for me when it launched. I absolutely hated execution and it would get voted a lot. I eventually just started restarting my game Everytime it was voted because I hated it so much.

[@PHILIPWATSON82]

MAKE GOW GREAT AGAIN ⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️⚙️

[@MrMintyfreshsmell]

First. It's not a well thought out comment but a comment for the algorithm god's!

[@garylococo2401]

Gears of war is still one of my favorite series besides halo

[@TheSlenderGent88]

I was a Sony Family Boy until gears of War 3 made me buy an Xbox 360

[@ThomasTheAlphaAndOmega8509]

This game is the only reason I ever bought an Xbox.

[@Spiqaro]

Dude, why the snarky comment about Gears of War 3 at 28:05? You make it sound like a soulless cash grab when it's an amazing end for the trilogy and has one of the most heartbreaking moments in gamer bro history.