November 22, 2006 - Chalk one up for Microsoft and Epic. Gears of War lives up to the hype. It is a beautiful game, lush with superb textures, animations and special effects. It's a fast and frenetic shooter that blends Epic's deep FPS heritage with tactical shooting and a simplified, accessible control scheme. The roadie camera? Soon to be copied by developers across the world. The story? Heh. It's missing a whole of story. In fact, the story hardly makes any sense at all. So it's best you really not think too much about it or it'll wipe away some of that sheen. And it's also eight-player online, co-op off and online (take that, Halo), and set-up for local play co-op and multiplayer gaming. Gears has it all. Sure, sure, we agree; it's got problems. It's not perfect, it's not a 10. But it's easily a contender for game of the year, if not flat out game of the 2006.

I almost missed out on it all. The Thursday before the game shipped, my wife and my baby arrived early. Little Genevieve Perry was born by C-section in Sacramento, Ca. and I spent the next nine days with her in the hospital. Needless to say, having that baby was the biggest thing to happen in my life since, I don't know…ever (my first kiss? My first lay? Playing harmonica with my first blues band on stage?). It's big.

So, compared to missing the GOW launch, I had an easy decision to make. Genevieve won over Gears of War. But Gears didn't slip my mind. The week prior to the review (October 28 or something) Microsoft invited us to play Gears in San Francisco for as long as we wanted to get a feel for the online component. I got the bug badly. I wanted to play that game so bad I could feel it every day. I'd see my little daughter in the ICU unit, wonder about her future, talk to my wife, and then when it was time to go to sleep, I just sat there in the dark in bed thinking about how and when I would get to play Gears of War.

For a guy who has played a million games and reviewed a million more, that's saying something. A sickness? Slightly unhealthy? Obsessed? I don't think so. I live and breathe games, so why wouldn't I value playing one of the biggest games of the year? People love movies, spent enormous amounts of money at the opera, eat at ridiculously fancy restaurants. They have things they really want. On the sixth day while reading the newspaper and waiting in between sessions to see our baby at the hospital I realized Miriam, my wife, and I needed some clean clothes. We had been at the hospital for five days and might stay for another five, so unless we planned on re-wearing the same underwear over again… so I suggested to my wife I drive down to Redwood City where we live and get some new clothes, see the boys (my step-son and his friend who were taking care of the house), take them to dinner, and drive back the next day. And of course, in the back of my mind, I could rush a bunch of game stores and buy Gears of War.

So I blazed down Highway 5, made the appropriate highway connections, and when I arrived in Redwood City, I took care of business. Cleaned up the house, took care of some bills, and once the work was done, I went as fast as possible to GameStop. When I got there, I was unfortunately disappointed.

"No, I don't want a subscription to Game Informer, thanks. I want Gears of War."

"Do you have a pre-order?"

I didn't. I made the assumption that Microsoft would send us a copy of Gears, but instead the only way to get them from MS was to attend their Gears party, which I couldn't attend because of my baby. Life was already getting complicated. So I told the guy no, he sent me packing, and I drove straight to Best Buy. They not only had it in store without prescriptions, but I bought the Collector's Edition. Ten minutes after seeing the extras I was not sure why I did that. Destroyed Beauty was not worth $10 extra. Sorry Cliffy! And the box, while sweet, is bulky and not so useable (though it's an icon of efficiency compared to Viva Pinata collector's box. What a mess!)

That was it. I took boys to dinner, saw, Borat (two naked dudes wrestling and running through the hotel had me in stitches), and the rest of the night I played two-player split-screen co-op with my son's friend and then went online 'til 4 am. It was the best game orgasm in a long time. It was a "Gear-gasm." Did I feel guilty? Did I cheat on my wife and my new little daughter by playing Gears? Nah. I did have to take care of business and get clean clothes. And the boys were happy I had returned to restore some order in the household. More importantly, I had just previewed the next two years of my life. Figuring out when to play games now that I had a baby was going to be more of a challenge than ever.