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Weapon Selection
You’ve got a number of different weapons to choose from in Gears of War, from a lowly pistol to the mighty Hammer of Dawn. You can only pick up two weapons at a time, though; you’ll be familiar with this mechanic if you’ve ever played Halo. (You will have a separate slot for pistols, though.) Here are quick descriptions of all of the major choices.
Lancer
The Lancer is the famous chainsaw-machinegun combination that we’ve seen in so many trailers and promo videos for Gears of War. It’s the one weapon you should pretty much always have in your inventory, mostly due to its accuracy when used in aimed mode; you can direct a tight stream of fire at almost any enemy you spot, with the accuracy only fading away at long distances.
The chainsaw attachment is cool, but it’ll get you into trouble if you try to use it too often, since getting shot while revving the blade will stun you momentarily and normally ensure your death. It’s best to use it on wretches, which can’t fire at you and will thus run right into you and get sliced. For other enemies, you can use it when someone is crouching on the other side of a piece of cover and jumps over to your position, or when an enemy is firing on one of your teammates and doesn’t see you coming. It’s an instant kill, obviously, but you’re locked into place while it cuts, which can let other enemies pile on the hurt.
Gnasher
Your standard shotgun. Doesn’t do anything at medium or long range, except throw a bunch of metal at everything but your target, but close up, this is capable of completely gibbing your foes. Let your foes get close, then bust a round or two into their bodies to finish them off. The reload time can be substantial, so try your best to obtain an active reload.
Torque Bow
A tricky weapon to use accurately. Much like Rambo’s famous rocket bow, the torque bow fires explosive-tipped arrows which can attach themselves to enemies, resulting in an instant kill when they detonate a second later. The trick here is that you have to prime the weapon by holding down the attack button; after a couple of seconds, the reticule will change from blue to red, indicating that the arrow is ready for impaction. (If you fire the arrow before it’s fully charged, it’ll simply bounce off of whatever it hits, but it will still detonate.)
The bow can be used as a means of indirect fire. If you know an enemy is crouching behind some cover, firing an arrow at the ground nearby can convince him to move on, or kill him. The drawback is that you’ll constantly have to be charging up arrows. You can’t just hold down the button, either; if you do so you’ll automatically launch an arrow after a few seconds.
Perfect active reloads will let you prime arrows much more quickly, so be sure to attempt them if you’re in a tight spot. This is arguably the worst weapon for close-up encounters, since even the sniper rifle can be snap-fired at close range with a good chance of hitting.
Boomshot
The Boomshot is the rocket launcher/grenade launcher that's dropped by the Boomer enemies in the game. In areas where you encounter multiple Boomers, you can accumulate a good amount of ammo for it, but normally ammo (as well as the weapon itself) will be scarce, as the only way to obtain it is off of dead Boomers. When fired, it'll launch a shell a good distance away, but these shells do have a dip in their trajectory when fired, making it sometimes difficult to hit your target accurately. (Oddly enough, when Boomers fire this weapon, their shells go perfectly straight.) Just keep in mind that launching a shell at a nearby enemy will result in you taking splash damage, as well.
Hammerburst
This is the locust machinegun, the weapon you use in the tutorial section of the single-player campaign. It’s a decent enough weapon, but its burst-fire mechanism will prevent you from quickly laying fire on enemies that leave cover. When you start Act I, you’ll have the Lancer and will likely only use the Hammerburst until you find something more suitable to pick up. It reportedly deals more damage than the Lancer, though, even when you account for the gap between bursts of fire, so it may be a better choice for use on higher difficulty levels.
Longshot
The game’s sniper rifle is named the Longshot. It’s...a sniper rifle. You can aim it with the left trigger, then zoom in by clicking on the right analog stick. BOOM headshot! The reload time on this is rather drastic, so be sure to get a perfect active reload for even more damage on your next shot.
The Hammer Of Dawn
The Hammer of Dawn (sounds like it should be a ship name from Halo) is a situational weapon that you’ll use from time to time in Gears of War. You don’t fire it, so much as you paint a target with the laser pointer that pops out; a few seconds later, the military satellites will blast the area you’ve painted with pure energy, killing anything around. (You can only lock on to enemies or their immediate area; you can’t just fire at any random point on the ground.) The Hammer is required to kill some of the bigger enemies, like Seeders or Berserkers, but does a heck of a job against drones and other weak enemies, assuming you can fire it off before they kill you. It can also seal emergence holes when fired into them.
Cogtags
You may notice that there are plenty of glowing blue Cogtags scattered around the areas of the single-player game. These are the tags of fallen soldiers, and represent the game’s nod towards a collection scheme. Many of them are fairly obvious to find; all are located near the red Gears markers that you'll spot as you play through the game. Many of them are located underneath furniture, so if you're hunting for yourself, chop through desks, sofas, and other wooden items with your chainsaw or melee attacks to reveal what lies beneath.
At any rate, the Cogtags are only worth collecting if you’re interested in getting achievement points; they don’t offer up any kind of real in-game benefit to you like you might expect from collections in games like Grand Theft Auto. That said, you should be able to earn two of the achievements (out of three) by following our walkthrough. If we discover where the extra ten Cogtags are, we’ll update the guide.
Blindfiring and Blindthrowing
Getting behind cover is a basic technique in Gears of War; when you’re behind a wall or low barricade, you can tap A to duck behind it to grab some cover from the advancing alien horde. While you’re behind cover, you can hold the left analog trigger to pop up and aim your weapon at anything you like; you’ll get good accuracy, but you’ll be exposing yourself to return fire.
If you want, though, you can simply hit the right trigger to fire your weapon without popping out. This is known as blindfiring, in that you can technically fire your weapon, but will be doing so without seeing where you’re aiming at. Of course, since this is a third-person game, you can actually see where your bullets are hitting. The impact of blindfiring, though, is that your bullets will be a lot less accurate than they normally would be; the spread will be bad enough to make this only deal light damage to any enemy beyond a few meters’ distance.
That said, the Lancer will put out enough rounds to make blindfiring with it sometimes a handy course of action, especially on enemies that aren’t too far away. The Boomshot, though, can be quite powerful when blindfired if the enemy is only a short distance away. Since blindfiring can be pulled off much more quickly than regular firing, you can snap off a shotgun round into the face of anyone waiting on the other side of the cover you’re behind and stand a good chance of popping the head off of your target.
Aiming a grenade is a laborious process, and one that doesn’t often work out properly anyway; you’ll get a guideline indicating where the grenade will likely wind up, but more often than not, the grenade will bounce off a corpse or an enemy that runs in its path and wind up far afield of where you wanted it. If you blindthrow a grenade, though, you can launch them out way more quickly than you can when you aim them, and do so without exposing yourself to fire. They might not always kill your enemies, but if you get used to throwing in this manner, you can often chuck the grenade near an enemy or group of foes, forcing them to dive out of cover. Be sure to quickly switch over to your Lancer and finish them off while they run!
You’ve got a number of different weapons to choose from in Gears of War, from a lowly pistol to the mighty Hammer of Dawn. You can only pick up two weapons at a time, though; you’ll be familiar with this mechanic if you’ve ever played Halo. (You will have a separate slot for pistols, though.) Here are quick descriptions of all of the major choices.
Lancer
The Lancer is the famous chainsaw-machinegun combination that we’ve seen in so many trailers and promo videos for Gears of War. It’s the one weapon you should pretty much always have in your inventory, mostly due to its accuracy when used in aimed mode; you can direct a tight stream of fire at almost any enemy you spot, with the accuracy only fading away at long distances.
The chainsaw attachment is cool, but it’ll get you into trouble if you try to use it too often, since getting shot while revving the blade will stun you momentarily and normally ensure your death. It’s best to use it on wretches, which can’t fire at you and will thus run right into you and get sliced. For other enemies, you can use it when someone is crouching on the other side of a piece of cover and jumps over to your position, or when an enemy is firing on one of your teammates and doesn’t see you coming. It’s an instant kill, obviously, but you’re locked into place while it cuts, which can let other enemies pile on the hurt.
Gnasher
Your standard shotgun. Doesn’t do anything at medium or long range, except throw a bunch of metal at everything but your target, but close up, this is capable of completely gibbing your foes. Let your foes get close, then bust a round or two into their bodies to finish them off. The reload time can be substantial, so try your best to obtain an active reload.
Torque Bow
A tricky weapon to use accurately. Much like Rambo’s famous rocket bow, the torque bow fires explosive-tipped arrows which can attach themselves to enemies, resulting in an instant kill when they detonate a second later. The trick here is that you have to prime the weapon by holding down the attack button; after a couple of seconds, the reticule will change from blue to red, indicating that the arrow is ready for impaction. (If you fire the arrow before it’s fully charged, it’ll simply bounce off of whatever it hits, but it will still detonate.)
The bow can be used as a means of indirect fire. If you know an enemy is crouching behind some cover, firing an arrow at the ground nearby can convince him to move on, or kill him. The drawback is that you’ll constantly have to be charging up arrows. You can’t just hold down the button, either; if you do so you’ll automatically launch an arrow after a few seconds.
Perfect active reloads will let you prime arrows much more quickly, so be sure to attempt them if you’re in a tight spot. This is arguably the worst weapon for close-up encounters, since even the sniper rifle can be snap-fired at close range with a good chance of hitting.
Boomshot
The Boomshot is the rocket launcher/grenade launcher that's dropped by the Boomer enemies in the game. In areas where you encounter multiple Boomers, you can accumulate a good amount of ammo for it, but normally ammo (as well as the weapon itself) will be scarce, as the only way to obtain it is off of dead Boomers. When fired, it'll launch a shell a good distance away, but these shells do have a dip in their trajectory when fired, making it sometimes difficult to hit your target accurately. (Oddly enough, when Boomers fire this weapon, their shells go perfectly straight.) Just keep in mind that launching a shell at a nearby enemy will result in you taking splash damage, as well.
Hammerburst
This is the locust machinegun, the weapon you use in the tutorial section of the single-player campaign. It’s a decent enough weapon, but its burst-fire mechanism will prevent you from quickly laying fire on enemies that leave cover. When you start Act I, you’ll have the Lancer and will likely only use the Hammerburst until you find something more suitable to pick up. It reportedly deals more damage than the Lancer, though, even when you account for the gap between bursts of fire, so it may be a better choice for use on higher difficulty levels.
Longshot
The game’s sniper rifle is named the Longshot. It’s...a sniper rifle. You can aim it with the left trigger, then zoom in by clicking on the right analog stick. BOOM headshot! The reload time on this is rather drastic, so be sure to get a perfect active reload for even more damage on your next shot.
The Hammer Of Dawn
The Hammer of Dawn (sounds like it should be a ship name from Halo) is a situational weapon that you’ll use from time to time in Gears of War. You don’t fire it, so much as you paint a target with the laser pointer that pops out; a few seconds later, the military satellites will blast the area you’ve painted with pure energy, killing anything around. (You can only lock on to enemies or their immediate area; you can’t just fire at any random point on the ground.) The Hammer is required to kill some of the bigger enemies, like Seeders or Berserkers, but does a heck of a job against drones and other weak enemies, assuming you can fire it off before they kill you. It can also seal emergence holes when fired into them.
Cogtags
You may notice that there are plenty of glowing blue Cogtags scattered around the areas of the single-player game. These are the tags of fallen soldiers, and represent the game’s nod towards a collection scheme. Many of them are fairly obvious to find; all are located near the red Gears markers that you'll spot as you play through the game. Many of them are located underneath furniture, so if you're hunting for yourself, chop through desks, sofas, and other wooden items with your chainsaw or melee attacks to reveal what lies beneath.
At any rate, the Cogtags are only worth collecting if you’re interested in getting achievement points; they don’t offer up any kind of real in-game benefit to you like you might expect from collections in games like Grand Theft Auto. That said, you should be able to earn two of the achievements (out of three) by following our walkthrough. If we discover where the extra ten Cogtags are, we’ll update the guide.
Blindfiring and Blindthrowing
Getting behind cover is a basic technique in Gears of War; when you’re behind a wall or low barricade, you can tap A to duck behind it to grab some cover from the advancing alien horde. While you’re behind cover, you can hold the left analog trigger to pop up and aim your weapon at anything you like; you’ll get good accuracy, but you’ll be exposing yourself to return fire.
If you want, though, you can simply hit the right trigger to fire your weapon without popping out. This is known as blindfiring, in that you can technically fire your weapon, but will be doing so without seeing where you’re aiming at. Of course, since this is a third-person game, you can actually see where your bullets are hitting. The impact of blindfiring, though, is that your bullets will be a lot less accurate than they normally would be; the spread will be bad enough to make this only deal light damage to any enemy beyond a few meters’ distance.
That said, the Lancer will put out enough rounds to make blindfiring with it sometimes a handy course of action, especially on enemies that aren’t too far away. The Boomshot, though, can be quite powerful when blindfired if the enemy is only a short distance away. Since blindfiring can be pulled off much more quickly than regular firing, you can snap off a shotgun round into the face of anyone waiting on the other side of the cover you’re behind and stand a good chance of popping the head off of your target.
Aiming a grenade is a laborious process, and one that doesn’t often work out properly anyway; you’ll get a guideline indicating where the grenade will likely wind up, but more often than not, the grenade will bounce off a corpse or an enemy that runs in its path and wind up far afield of where you wanted it. If you blindthrow a grenade, though, you can launch them out way more quickly than you can when you aim them, and do so without exposing yourself to fire. They might not always kill your enemies, but if you get used to throwing in this manner, you can often chuck the grenade near an enemy or group of foes, forcing them to dive out of cover. Be sure to quickly switch over to your Lancer and finish them off while they run!