Space Marine "Rips Off" Gears of War

Diddy_Mao

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In the interest of full disclosure let me preface this by stating that I am an admitted Warhammer 40K fan

To be fair, Gears of War is currently the big elephant in the room that any game like this is going to eventually have to face and Space Marine does borrow quite a bit from GoW's interface...then again I seem to recall more than one person make a lot of the same comparisons about the Ghostbusters game so take from that what you will.

For my money I think the games play very differently.
Although I've heard that you CAN play Gears of war as an CQC slasher using your lancer as your primary weapon of choice, the game didn't really seem to be designed for it. The enemy seemed to be content with the cover/return fire method and for the most part that's how I played.

Space Marine allows you to get some pot shots in from cover or while the Orkish hordes are advancing but that's ultimately like fighting a Tank with a Toothpick, eventually you're up to your Gene-Seed in a bloodthirsty Orkish WAAAGH and the only thing to do is carve into it with your melee weapon of choice.

To a fan of the franchise this game is a lot of fun and I sincerely hope that some of the non-fans who pick up this title will be intrigued enough to look further into what it has to offer.
With that said, at the end of the day a 7/10 is hardly a damning indictment of Space Marine's incompetence.
Despite 40k's popularity your average video game player is probably not too familiar with it and approaching this game on it's own merits rather than those of a 40K fan I'd probably give it a similar score. It's a competent action/shooter with a fun story, an enjoyable setting and a unique visual style...but other than it's approach to combat healing it doesn't bring anything new to the table in terms of game play.
 

Skops

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Gears is a cover based TPS (third person shooter), Space Marine is a third person hack'n slash with the option to soften the mob up with gunfire before you literally eviserate them all.

I see nothing the same except the camera angle and they both shoot guns. The main focus is changed.
 

rcs619

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Zhukov said:
Uh, yeah... it does exactly that.

Sure, WH40K obviously beat GoW to the whole grunty-men-with-no-personailty-killing-aliens-while-dressed-as-trucks thing. But the gameplay? Yeah, it's blatantly obvious that they were looking over Epic's shoulder.

Whether you consider that a bad thing or not is another matter. Games grabbing ideas from one another is hardly new. Hell, the whole industry basically runs on inspiration/plagiarism.
Pretty much. I mean, Gears of War stole its whole cover-system from Kill.Switch, which came out on the PS2 (That's the first cover-heavy TPS I remember, anyways).

Some points in the review are valid, other seem nit-picky.

"The weapons are mostly to blame: they're agreeably chunky but also unadventurous."

Its Warhammer 40k, the weapons have been around for 20 years. Any 40k fan can name the arsenal before a game comes out. Not to mention the bolter is a .75cal micro-rocket launcher. Its not like you're shooting a SMG or something. This is the first game that's actually got the bolter right, in my opinion.

I think the biggest issue with the review is its length. Its an absolutely tiny review, and it has about a third of it devoted to one big paragraph about how Space Marine is a poor clone of Gears.

The whole "this game is a clone" argument really gets old. All TPS's are a GoW clone. All FPS's are Halo or CoD clones. It really serves to undercut a game's merits when the only observations you make are to say "So and so did this, but better". Especially since Space Marine isn't trying to be a GoW clone. The ONLY resemblance it has is that it happens to be an over-the-shoulder shooter. It has no cover mechanic (and with how much the enemies spam grenades and rockets, cover would be BAD), and you only regain health by killing harder. Its not a cover-based TPS, its an action-game with TPS elements.

As for the multiplayer, yeah, its fun but not great. Honestly though, who plays a 40k game for the multiplayer? Its about the single-player ride and actually getting to experience the 40k universe. MP is a nice touch, but hardly necissary.

Honestly, considering its for OXM, I can't help but wonder how much the upcoming release of GoWIII might be affecting this review. I mean, really, do you want a multiplatform TPS to get a good review weeks before the next game in one of Xbox's big exclusive franchises comes out?

Sure, 7/10 isn't a bad score by any means, but it really felt like the whole point of this review was "Yeah, its not terrible... But Gears of War is better and you should save your money for that".
 

Jennacide

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SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
U mad bro?

Seriously though, the reviewer gave it a 7/10 and all his points were more than valid. Could you point me to the place where he said, literally, that its a "gears ripoff"? Maybe im missing it. Because all I can find is this:

At its simplest, Space Marine is a Gears clone with a hair-raising health system which sees you healing by performing execution kills. Given how flagrantly Relic apes the Epic juggernaut elsewhere - weapons are swapped via the same D-pad system - being unable to stick to cover feels unnatural at first, but you soon acclimatise. New cannons and a Fury mode unlock at half-hourly intervals as you progress through corridors and arenas, nabbing Servo Skulls (Warhammer's audio diary of choice) to flesh out the plot's few secrets.
Which is... Well... PERFECTLY VALID AND COMPLETELY FUCKING RIGHT.
You're funny. They open with calling it a clone, and then give only one reason how the game "apes the Epic juggernaut" by having weapon select on the d-pad. It's not a cover based game. It has way more movement and is heavily sided to melee combat. The only thing you could claim is that it steals Gears visual style, which is bullshit since it's the artstyle of Warhammer 40k and was around long before Gears.
 

Tiger Sora

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That image sums up my thoughts. You can whine and ***** all you want, but we will never care.

And it's not like gears isn't using elements from other games. Cover based shooting has been done before I'm sure.
 

WhiteandNeardy99

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When I first played the demo my reaction was very much the same in as much as I thought this is like playing Gears of War. But to be honest most games now borrow from each other and some do blatantly 'rip off' other games but a games story is a huge factor that has to grab a player far more than how a game just looks, plays or 'feels'.
 

ChaosReaver

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Simalacrum said:
Now, I hate to be the naysayer here... BUT:

While Space Marines certainly came up with the whole "big menacing man ripping everything apart" thing before Gears of War, the gameplay style of third person shooting was refined by Gears of War before Space Marines. I think this is what most people are bitching about, really.
Then how come FPS games aren't compared to Doom or other early First Person Shooters? It's a petty thing to complain/avoid a game about. Not that I'm saying you are.


To everyone else: I've played the game (beaten it too), and having played both GoW and Wh40k:SM, I can safe say that they're play style isn't the same. Your health doesn't recover over time, unless you're really low, in which case it will go back up to a degree but will stop at a certain point. If you play the Inquisitor demo level, and only the Inquistor demo level, yes, you will get that GoW feeling. If you play the Battlements level (the one with the jump pack) the game instantly takes on an entirely different feel. The first level of the actual game has you starting off with nothing more than your basic bolt pistol and combat knife. If the reviewer really had a problem with using the d pad to switch weapons, what else could the developers have done? Gears isn't the first game to do this, and it won't be the last. That's just a petty thing to gripe about.

Multiplayer is very balanced, a level 1 guy can go head to head against a level 41 guy due to the copy equipment load outs. I will agree that melee at times can be clunky and awkward though.

To be frank though, a lot of the charm will probably be lost on those unfamiliar with the 40k universe (which is obvious by the amount of times Space Marine is called a GOW clone). But it's still a lot of fun, and a great way to waste time.
 

MrLumber

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SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
snip

Besides that, maybe you SHOULD play Space Marine and Gears Of War before you even start making posts like that. Im assuming you havent played both, because if you had the obvious similarities in gameplay would be familiar to you. I can sling around valid as much as I like because my opinion is just that - I have played both Gears and Space Marine, and read the review. Someone who has likely never played Gears, never played Space Marine and didnt bother reading the review but still feels the need to hate because its the cool thing to do on the other hand... Not so much.

(Last sentence not directed at you, but its the vibe im getting from 90% of the thread).
Real quick, I never actually said YOUR arguments are invalid. My point was that the reviewer actually never made any genuine comparisons between the two games outside of the D-pad association and minor bit about how 'at its heart its a GoW clone' bit. So its not really an established conclusion as he doesn't provide any arguments for which to make his statement valid.

Interestingly, this blatantly contradicts the OP's original statement in claiming that the review was nothing more than the reviewer stating that its a Gears clone.

Anyway, people always interpret things that best suit their interests. For whatever reason that seems to be they get offended or upset.

People are weird >.>
 

Simeon Ivanov

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Ok, so you Xbox user out there don't buy the game because it "rips off" GoW. Meanwhile, us PS3 and PC users will have a blast.
 

Magicman10893

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As someone who has played the Space Marine demo, Gears of War and has played Warhammer 40K before the original Xbox was released, I will say that I felt that the Space Marine demo felt like a Gears of War clone... for about 10 minutes. At first, the controls, art style, the gameplay and such felt like a Gears of War clone. Then as time went on that feeling went away and it felt more like a hack and slash and I completely forgot that I had a gun until there were enemies that were out of melee range.

I definitely understand the feeling of similarity (big men wearing a car for armor using big guns and massive amounts of gore from a third person shooter perspective) and yes, I understand Warhammer has been around much longer, it has been said here more times than necessary.
 
Jul 9, 2010
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Wow, a game similar to another game, thats insanity!!

Oh wait, it's happened a thousand times before.

Really though, I'm a massive 40k fanboy but I can see the resemblance, though I played the demo on my laptop so it's not as obvious. Really the comparison is only drawn because of the control system, and a slight resemblance of how the characters look as when you look deeper and see what makes the characters who they are then the differences shine through.

Gameplay wise there's no cover in Space Marine and you don't regenerate health by hiding behind it, two integral parts of GoW. As for guns, well even a Space Marine can only carry so many.

So yes, there are similarities if only in that they are a similar genre, but there are differences too.
 

Sarukin

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I hate anyone who says Space Marine is a Gears clone.
More to the point if its a "clone" then it would have more similar gameplay set up.
Here are the similarities between Gears and SM, There are Chainsaws, its 3rd person, you use the D-pad to change weapons, you shoot aliens. Thats it.

If anything it should be Space Marine is a clone of Gears but it does it WAAAAAAY better.
I have Gears 1 and 2, I have played the SM demo more then I have played both Gears together, you know why? because its FUN.
Allow me to explain what SM has done better than Gears;
1. The heros are actually believable in the sense of what your doing, Space Marines are 8 foot monsters that are the pinical of Mankind, genetically altered to be the ultimate killing machine of the entire freaking galaxy, one Marine can stand against a thousand Orks, that is the basic lore, in Gears you play a regular guy in a cars worth of armour- I cannot believe he can take on an army by himself or with his 'bro' because they are just human.
2. Cover based combat is for the WEAK, you are a Space Marine good sir! your job is to run at those guys and kill them quickly and ignore any bullets you shoot at you, not have a mindless firefight for 10 minutes in which the Locust ALWAYS get reinforcements, increasing the length of the boring firefight.
3. Melee is actually a viable combat method, your Chainsword is your main weapon and you are rewarded for using it in all its glee and blood, the Chainsaw bayonet in Gears is quite cool but is really just a gimmick, I know aboslutely no one that bothers using the Chainsaw online because it is freaking useless unless your enemy drops to his knees- throws his weapon aside- and yells "I can't live on! Please kill me with all your generic rage!"
4. Regenerating health is for the weak, even Space Marine cannot heal cannonballs to the chest by sucking their thumbs, thus Health bars gives you a feeling of caution and forces you not to act stupid. Meanwhile in retard brigade stand behind a magical chest high wall and your limbs and blood will regenerate no matter how bad your wounds are, apparently in Gears humans are all Wolverine.
5. The Characters are likeable, unlike Gears Marcus Pheonix (THATS HOW ITS SPELT EPIC GAMES) Captain Titus of the Ultramarines doesn't swear like its going out of fashion and never, ever, broods like some teenaged fuckwit, while this may be seen as 'Emotionless' that is the entire point, Marine are trained to control their emotions and such never act like a dutchbag, something Marcus has to figure out and grow some testicles over.
 
Jul 9, 2010
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ChaosReaver said:
Then how come FPS games aren't compared to Doom or other early First Person Shooters?
Bahahahahahahaha!!

Seriously though, they were, its just people stopped about fifteen-twenty years ago when they realised it was becoming a genre of its own.
 

Daffy F

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SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
Soviet Heavy said:
SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
U mad bro?

Seriously though, the reviewer gave it a 7/10 and all his points were more than valid. Could you point me to the place where he said, literally, that its a "gears ripoff"? Maybe im missing it. Because all I can find is this:

At its simplest, Space Marine is a Gears clone with a hair-raising health system which sees you healing by performing execution kills. Given how flagrantly Relic apes the Epic juggernaut elsewhere - weapons are swapped via the same D-pad system - being unable to stick to cover feels unnatural at first, but you soon acclimatise. New cannons and a Fury mode unlock at half-hourly intervals as you progress through corridors and arenas, nabbing Servo Skulls (Warhammer's audio diary of choice) to flesh out the plot's few secrets.
Which is... Well... PERFECTLY VALID AND COMPLETELY FUCKING RIGHT.

TL;DR: Stop whining, write your own review if you disagree, dont write off a reviewer just because he doesnt like a game you do, or rather, just because he doesnt like it as much.

Fucking hell, he gave it a 7/10 for fucks sake. If you seriously think that Space Marine deserves more than that... Jesus.
You don't think that the review complaining about a controls setup isn't being even a little petty?
He mentioned it in passing. Fucking wow. Thats exactly what I expect from a written review, small flaws tend to get pointed out. But I guess because its precious fucking Space Marine thats simply not right anymore, is it? Look at the end of the review, where he actually gives it a score. No word of controls.

Also, I love the guys who are saying HURR WARHAMMER WAS THERE B4 GEARS DERP. That not the point. Are you guys really incapable of forming a coherent thought? Hes saying the gameplay is similar. Which is also a completely fucking valid point.

Ah, fuck it, everyone here is determined to blindly hate on any reviewer who doesnt welcome Space Marine as the second coming of Christ, what can you do. Is the Escapist review out yet? I bet they score it somewhere in that range too, make the same points and everyone praises them for the fair an unbiased critic.
Wow. You ruined your point by being aggresive.
OT: I like both franchises. Trouble is, here it seems to be fanboys fighting. My main problem is this: Space Marine doesn't look as much fun as Gears of War... It just doesn't. it's a huge shame, because I love playing Warhammer...