For nearly every week since its release (every week except one to be exact) Gears of War has ruled the haloed ( pun semi-intended) proverbial virtual halls of Xbox Live. It’s found itself in my 360’s DVD drive time after time, even with the thought of more than likely playing with a little kid who hasn’t gone through puberty yet. All games suffer from this in some way, but now that the infamous Halo 3 is only hours or minutes away depending on when this is read, something tells me that Halo’s reputation will without a shadow of a doubt be exactly the same as it has always been when it comes to the same situation. After all, Halo did write the little kid screaming or singing in you ear book.

No more armory clanking to the bodies of COG or the insanely annoying asthma ridden breathing of the locust. No more shotgun blast to the face that result in your virtual counterparts head disappearing in a watermelon breaking sort of fashion. No more crabwalking, backflipping, or chainsawing glitching. Halo itself surely isn’t a stranger to glitching, but time will only tell with how long it takes for it to become rampant once more.

Before Gears of War was the defacto game of choice it was Halo 2 and now that this day has finally come, everything has come back around on itself once more with Halo 3 to take its throne back. With more features and tons more to do, hopefully Halo 3 will so to become my new go to game. Either way, it hasn’t been a full year yet since its release, so I salute Gears of War in all of its glory, good or bad, for we hardly got the chance to know ye. Now get to work on another Epic!

-William “thewilleffect” Bell-