In a year’s time, when you’re sitting in front of your Xbox Scorpio/Playstation 4 Pro marveling at the impossibly shiny, next-gen goodness and a loved one stroll by and says something uninformed like ‘that doesn’t look any different from the last system you bought,’ what’s the first image you’ll think of? You might immediately respond with a jovial comment like ‘I’ll remember that the next time you buy yet another rom-com starring Hugh Grant’. Or you may start to reminisce about exactly just how many brilliant titles the last few years have heralded.

One of my friends would hark back straight away to Dark Souls, Starcraft 2 and Halo Wars. Another mate I know would envisage either Blur or Forza 3. For me, whenever anyone asks what the biggest games of the last ten years have been I pull up a large list that ranges from Bioshock to The Orange Box. We’ve been blessed with quality gaming for more than half a decade (sometimes it’s hard to keep up with just how many great titles there have been-2017 is going even better). But, in 2006 if you were a gamer, you owned an Xbox 360 (and you’d finished Oblivion) there was only one game you were anticipating; Gears of War.

Man, ’06 was a slow year. Yea, there was the World Cup (spoiler alert-England lost) and yea we all had Batman Begins, Sin City and War of the Worlds on DVD but, Xbox-wise there was precious little on offer. After the initial influx of release titles (Perfect Dark Zero and Condemned were the stand outs for me) you really had only two choices post-Elder Scrolls; Just Cause or Saints Row. It seems ridiculous now to think if you were a third-person shooter fan you would be limited to two, seven-out-of-ten at best games but, such was the reality. Just Cause was fun…big, brash fun. Asking you to run, drive, fly and parachute across shiny sandy beaches and up impossibly high cliff faces, the game was a pastiche of every B-movie in the business (complete with an Enrique Iglesias-inspired protagonist). Saints Row was also a pastiche; a mirror image of GTA III (the radio adverts/conversations weren’t as witty and the story wasn’t as alluring but, with GTA IV still two years away it did the trick).

So there you were; you felt dejected because you had this awesome new sparkling white plaything that sat beautifully under your 28” standard definition TV (yes we didn’t always have HD) yet only a scarce amount of software to play on it. But…lying in bed one night (alone, mainly because you still couldn’t get over the fact that your girlfriend left you twelve months earlier and you insisted on polluting all your friends with that information constantly) you suddenly remembered something: an announcement at E3. An action game. You’d chosen not to fork out on Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon as it sounded too difficult, but there was this other title…it was glossy yet gritty, tactical yet story-driven. And it was made by Epic Games! Gears of Wars! That’s what it was called!

Gears of War was released in Europe on November 17^th. Allow me to be blunt; this was the game that Microsoft leveraged everything on. With no Halo until 2007, Assassin’s Creed being multiplatform and Mass Effect still under development this was the exclusive they were hoping would set their lineup apart from Sony’s forthcoming catalogue; the game they were hoping would sit proudly on your shelf next to Master Chief’s exploits like the second finger in a Playstation 2-directed flicking of the ‘V’. Ladies and gentleman…it so totally was.

Gears of War did not even pretend to know the meaning of the word ‘subtle’. Right out of the gate you were alleviated from incarceration, thrown into a firefight with some ugly-looking Locus, all the while shouting four-letter expletives as you went (and no mum, I’m not talking about words like ‘gosh’ or ‘darn’). The tone was set immediately; the brown and grey-tinted cities were littered with rubble and defaced architecture, a poignant backdrop to the carnage you were inflicting in the foreground. And carnage was indeed the name of the game. Your band of four merry men went from conflict to conflict, the action coming thick and fast, seldom giving way to a few minutes of conversation as rich as ‘open that door!’ and ‘Marcus…get the f**k down!’ (That asterisked word there was ‘funk’ by the way…I promise). Playing as Marcus Phoenix was in no way original but he had a rugged, stereotypical charm. His muscles bulged, his gun chainsawed people in half and his face stayed permanently scowled. He was an action hero in the ‘80’s mould (and that most definitely wasn’t a bad thing). As for your team they were the developer’s attempt to appeal to every demographic possible; whether you wanted to see a blonde-haired guy, giant footballer or South American (I think) do battle with man-sized beasts you were fairly well catered for.

However for all the ill-advised machismo and Stallone-inspired dialogue the game zipped along at a brilliant pace, peppering your skirmishes with some epic set pieces/semi-boss fights. Encountering the blind and enraged Berserker for the first time; outwitting Commander Ram on a speeding train; reeking havoc with the overly powerful Hammer of Dawn. With each new weapon or encounter the enjoyment seemed to ratchet up another notch (as did the body count). Thinking back, Gears of War was never afraid of flaunting its excessiveness. I think I may have skipped over this too freely earlier but chainsawing people in half was undeniably cool. The copious amount of bloodshed coupled with the uncannily realistic sound effects made any occasion when you held down the ‘B’ button a visceral one. (I’m so surprised that the game only received a 15 certificate it’s like all four Rambo films put together!).

The single-player was engaging and didn’t seem to outstay its welcome (even on the third play through) but, as with so many titles these days, it was the multiplayer that kept us hooked still a year later. Gears of War turned the usual team death matches from simple thrills to tense and tactical affairs that shredded your nerves as well as testing your trigger finger. You felt an increasing sense of dread each time another member of your team bit the dust and if ever a match meandered its way to the point where it was one-on-one, you could feel your companions by your side willing your last participant to obliterate the opposition (preferably with a stomp to the head to finish off with). There was a sense of camaraderie that few games exhibit and even fewer can match.

And now we come to the detrimental side of things; the point where I try and isolate any number of faults a game may have perpetrated. In truth, there weren’t many at all- Gears of War was a steady combination of its various components. My only problem with it was the inevitable hype that followed; letters of fanboys screaming from the heavens that it was the best thing ever and no other game came close. It got old quick, as did countless beatings handed out from adolescents online who had too much free time on their hands (we’ve all been there). But these are minor grips.

To this day Gears of War is a class package; a bloodthirsty, bullet-laden romp that doesn’t feel the need to apologise for its superficial qualities. It packs a vigorous punch however many times you play it and, as far as I’m aware, it’s one of those rare commodities that Sony has not managed to (and may never will) get their hands on…