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Games: Dueling shooters

Look out, Master Chief, there’s a new sheriff in town.

His name is Marcus Fenix, and if you’ve never heard of him, you’ve been away from the gaming world for too long. In the weeks since Fenix and company emerged on the scene in the new action shooter “Gears of War,” virtual mercenaries the world over have been scrambling to find out what all of the buzz is about.

Within a week of its Nov. 7 launch, “Gears” toppled the famous Master Chief and the “Halo 2” faithful to become the most-played multiplayer game on Microsoft’s Xbox Live network.

Why all the love? With the new PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii consoles in short supply, the readily available Xbox 360 is the only option many gamers have if they’re ready for a next-generation console.

And since “Gears” is only available for the 360, it makes sense that Microsoft’s new supergame would be racing up the sales charts.

But, like Yoda said, there is another.

Fighting to be heard over the spinning of the “Gears” is a worthy challenger. Once the king of all shooter franchises, it now struggles to take the hill.

You know it as “Call of Duty 3.”

Only a year ago, “Call of Duty 2” was the must-own game of the holiday season, setting sales records and blowing the socks off all comers.

But that was then. While “Call of Duty 2” remains in fourth place on the Xbox 360 charts, its successor has not fared so well. “Call of Duty 3” is stuck in 16th place on that same chart.

Mainstream game reviewers, perhaps too busy playing “Gears” to try anything else, are slow to even give it a spin. Those who have played it appear to be looking at the World War II shooter through hype-stained, history-weary glasses.

Having invested hours in both games, we’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly of each offering.

Maybe all our years of following troops across training ranges and battlefields have made us a little jaded, but we hold our shooter games to a pretty high standard. We prefer some substance with our style.

So here’s the straight scoop on both games from where we sit, standing watch on the border between all things military and all things fun. Enjoy.

Back story

Gears of War: Good luck trying to figure out what the heck is going on. All you get for history is 150 words on the first page of the instruction booklet, then they break your guy out of jail and it’s off to the front lines of the war against the Locust Horde. What was Fenix in for? He got 40 years for “dereliction of duty” during the early stages of the war. (Kinda harsh — be glad Microsoft doesn’t script real courts-martial. Sheesh.) Bottom line, unless you plan on researching the story behind this sci-fi shooter on the Internet, you’ll have to wait for the sequel and hope for more details to come.

Call of Duty 3: If you paid even a little attention during high school history, or watched the film “Saving Private Ryan,” you’re already aware of the Allied invasion of Normandy, the World War II mission that began the liberation of France from the Germans. “Call of Duty 3” picks up during the breakout at Normandy following the massive amphibious assault. You’ll see the operation from a variety of viewpoints — and you might even learn a few things about the war.

Small arms

Gears: Even in the future, it seems, small arms revolve around putting steel on target. You and your buddies will choose from an arsenal of human and alien weapons, but don’t expect to be blown away. It still just comes down to pistols, shotguns, bazookas and assault or sniper rifles. Unlike many futuristic games, which offer progressively better weapons as you go, the standard assault rifle you start with will be your trusted friend for most of the game. The only bright spots in your make-believe gun rack are the Torque Bow, which fires explosive arrows a la Bo and Luke Duke, and the Hammer of Dawn, a laser designator that brings a death ray down on its target — assuming the satellite isn’t offline, which it generally is, and you have an open sky, which you generally don’t.

COD 3: Historically accurate weapons of all sizes and shapes are at your disposal, including the M1911 Colt .45 pistol, M1A1 Thompson submachine gun and the Browning Automatic Rifle. Tired of old U.S.-made weapons? Feel free to take a Karabiner 98k or Maschinepistole 44 off a dead German and try that out for size. Sure, they’re nothing special, and you’ll eventually long for an M16 outfitted with an M203 grenade launcher, but there’s something interesting about stepping back in time for a few hours.

Grenades

Gears: Can’t live without them, can’t figure out how to use them correctly. In fact, you’ll play half the game before you figure out how to effectively aim grenades. While a skilled player will use them to close “warp holes” before more baddies creep out, the grenade-challenged will find it faster to just kill everything that moves. Plus, you can’t throw smoke grenades in the single-player campaign; thanks for hanging us out to dry. You can, however, hang a grenade on an opponent during hand-to-hand fighting and watch him go boom, assuming you let one get that close.

COD 3: Still necessary, both smoke and frag. As an added bonus this time, you can pick up an enemy grenade and chuck it back before it goes off. Worried that your own grenades might get tossed back? Let them cook off for a couple seconds, then toss.

Availability

Gears: Available only for Microsoft’s Xbox 360. “Halo” used to be like that, before Microsoft finally came out with a PC version.

COD 3: Available for the Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii, PS2 and PS3, though not all features are available in every game. (The version for Nintendo’s Wii, for instance, makes use of that console’s interesting motion-sensitive controllers, but isn’t in high-def.) No PC version this time around, which is odd considering that the franchise got its start there.

Cover

Gears: If there’s anything that sets “Gears” apart from the shooter pack, it’s the amazing array of cover and concealment options. Everything here is a shield, and if you don’t learn to use cover effectively, consider yourself toast. From crouching behind walls to sliding and rolling to your next position, the moves allow for some of the most tactically sound (but still fun) gaming yet. Our only criticism? You use the same button to run and crouch behind cover — a terrible thing when you’re trying to get away from a rampaging alien beast and accidentally lock into crouch mode by a wall just as he gets close enough to strike.

COD 3: Though not nearly as important here, using cover still means the difference between success and failure. New this time are massively destroyable environments, so you can get to the enemy no matter where he attempts to hide. “Gears” does it better, but then, that’s its claim to fame. Hopefully the “Call of Duty 4” designers are taking notes.

Language

Gears: That “M” for Mature rating isn’t just because of the blood and gore. The, well, “f”rankness of the language adds to the realism, but probably isn’t appropriate for younger players.

COD 3: Rated “T” for Teen, mostly because of the violence. Our kids hear worse language watching “Family Guy.”

Hand-to-hand

Gears: If you’re slugging it out with the Locust fighters up close, you’re probably doing something wrong. Bad day for them, though, because your assault rifle comes complete with a chainsaw bayonet. Sure, ripping a Locust in half and watching the blood splatter is good for shock value, but mostly it means you aren’t shooting and scooting properly.

COD 3: Sneak up on the enemy and bash him with your rifle and he’ll drop like a stone. All too easy, frankly, considering that when you’re shooting, you might have to plug him a couple of times to get the same effect. New this time is a hand-to-hand mini-game in which you struggle against an enemy trying to take your weapon. Win the fight and you’ll knock his lights out. It’s an interesting diversion to the mission, but they call it a “shooter” for a reason. If we wanted boxing, we’d play “Fight Night.”

Multiplayer

Gears: Microsoft reports that Xbox Live subscriptions are way up, thanks to the flood of people lining up to lay waste to one another in “Gears.” Up to eight players can square off in three different battle modes, or you can campaign with a friend in cooperative mode.

COD 3: With room for 24 players across six battle modes, no one gets left out. There are seven player classes available in some modes, each with unique abilities.

Bottom line

Gears: Quickly becoming a pop-culture phenomenon, “Gears” is here to stay. The story is interesting, the graphics are amazing and the pacing is fantastic. But mostly, we find it trying desperately to fill the space that “Halo 3” will eventually occupy.

If you typically play such games (and we’re not 100 percent convinced that this one is better than “Prey,” the gravity-defying sci-fi shooter that actually brought something new to the table), you’ll find that “Gears” isn’t radically different from “Quake 4” or “Halo 2.” It’s just prettier, and that doesn’t really matter if you’re not playing on a nice high-def television.

Still, it’s solid and we enjoyed it. We’ll move in there for a while, but we aren’t married to it.

COD 3: Maybe the World War II genre is finally played out? Bad news for “Brothers in Arms” and “Medal of Honor,” both of which have new games in the works.

Honestly, “Call of Duty 3” brings many of the same elements as “Gears of War,” including plenty of opportunities to duck for cover and kill or be killed. It’s just as beautiful and just as interesting. If anything, it’s more of a challenge to make a historical game fun, considering that fictional, futuristic games aren’t bound by the textbooks and can do anything they want. But the previous successes of the franchise are a liability, and this one is mostly just the same stuff, different day.

Isn’t too much of a good thing a great thing? We like to think so.

Gears of War. 4 stars. Xbox 360. $59.99. Rated “M” for Mature. www.gearsofwar.com

Call of Duty 3. 4 stars. PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii. $59.99 (PS3, Xbox 360), $49.99 (PS2, Xbox, Wii). Rated “T” for Teen. www.callofduty.com