I actually liked Gears of War 1.
It was a 3rd person shooter, back when those were rare, and I personally enjoy the 3rd person point of view much more than the 1st person point of view (It always feels like you're just a floating disembodied hand holding a gun to me). The cover mechanism of Gear of War was also relatively new. I'm not a big enough fan of shooter to know if this GoW was the innovator here, but it certainly was the trend setter. And while I know Yahtzee and many others really dislike the 'chest high wall shooter', I personally like them. It feels a bit more realistic and more tactical than the run & gun approach of older shooters - you have to find good cover and you have to try and outmaneuver the opponent (and in the case of the Mass Effect series, you need to use your allies to provide cover fire/distraction) and I find that a lot more engaging than running in a room and hope you're quick enough on the trigger to kill everything before they kill you.
That being said, I skipped Gear of War 2 (and haven't bought GoW3) mainly because I feel like I've gotten my shooter fix (that's how big of a shooter fan I am - i.e. not very) in between it and the few shooters I've played over the years.
One of the thing that struck me as odd in Yatzhee's review is that he says 'GoW3 is the vestige of a dying age' or something to that effect... but then praises and begs for the return to an older formula. For one thing, the GoW age isn't that old... and we're still in it. For another, seem counter productive to just want to go back to the way things were.
