Gears of War: The Board Game review

(i might as well do a quick review of this while i have this tab open, so here goes:)

i must admit, i was pretty skeptical when i first heard that Gears of War was being ported to the old school board game. so, i picked it up, unpacked it, and looked at the monstrous pile of bits and pieces the box held. the game comes with a bunch of map tiles (this is the board, which is randomly put together each game by a deck of cards that controls which pieces are put down in what order), a large bag of figurines (which are my personal favorite out of the whole thing, they're extremely detailed little pieces), about 5 or 6 separate decks of cards: one to control the Locust AI (this is a strictly co-op game, for 1-4 players), black and red die to figure up the attack and defense values (respectively), a small mountain of tokens (symbolizing ammunition and grenade counts), and a good sized instruction manual; among other things.

like i said before, the board is made up of individual tiles which vary according to the mission you choose to play (the missions are based off Gears 1 & 2, perhaps there will be an expansion pack to cover the recent third Gears game) and are put together randomly each game by what order you draw the cards in. after the board is assembled, Locust enemies are spawned in the right locations (the specific ones based off the number of players), cards are distributed (each player has a hand of 6 cards, except the one playing as Marcus; they get up to 7), and the game begins.

remember when i said this would be a quick review? here's why: i've only gotten to play this game twice so far, both times ending in defeat. (the second time we made it farther.) it all boils down to the roll of the dice and lucky drawing of cards. i haven't even thought of trying the "Insane mode" rules, because the first mission (supposedly the easiest one of all) still has yet to be beaten. Insane is supposed to be just as masochistic as the console games are on that difficulty.

from what i've played of the game, it's just as fun as playing it with a controller. Horde mode even made its way here, but that'll have to wait also until the first mission is won. sorry if this review is a little lacking, this game is just so massive compared to any other board game i've ever played.

***RATING***- 5/5

(here's a picture of what the game actually looks like when it's being played. not sure which mission this is.)