Halo saved the Xbox. Prior to its arrival, the gaming console was an also-ran; afterwards it was the definitive reason to buy Microsoft’s PlayStation competitor. Gears of War may be the Xbox 360’s Halo.

Like Halo, Gears of War features humanity fighting a desperate, last-ditch war against alien destroyers. As the game opens, the far-off human colony world of Sera has been decimated by the Locust, bipedal horrors that emerged from deep underground 15 years ago and sacked most of mankind’s cities and nations. As humanity’s last city teeters near collapse, an elite group of soldiers known as “Gears of War” show up at a maximum security prison to break out one Marcus Fenix, a former soldier imprisoned years earlier for going against orders and attempting to save his father from the Locust. Now it turns out that his father may have had the key to defeating the alien menace … and Fenix has to help find it.