Gears of War first impressions

(feel the power of the spoilers)
I'm currently borrowing Gears of War. I'd heard such great things about this game: it was awesome, really fun, and a brand new franchise. Though lately if a game is released that doesn't become a franchise it tends to be looked down upon (but that horrible trend is another post).

I was very excited when I started Gears of War. Yea the characters look weird and steroid-pumped, but it's a style. I like games that have a style and don't just try to emulate real life. I live in real life; I want to play somewhere else. The story seemed very thin at first. It's a war. I'm in prison and some guy got me out. Okay. Well, wait, who am I? Fenix? Oh god that's lame. Am I going to rise from the ashes now? But whatever, it's not as bad as it could be.

So I walk around and the controls seem okay. Tutorial time seems to go okay, until the firefight at the end.

I like fps games, I just like them single player. I don't have the desire to go online and fight against other people for points; I want to be in a story, experience it, and then move on to another story. I like Half-Life, and Prey, and most PC fps's. I'm not the best, but I can strafe and get a head shot occasionally. But console games tend to not have strafing, most of them have auto-target and lots of armor.

Gears of War doesn't. You hide behind a bit of rock, you pop your head up and it feels like it takes forever to target the bad guys. I haven't yet increased my control stick speed, but I'm not sure it will help. I crouch behind a rock, poke my head up with makes me completely vulnerable, and have to maneuver this little target to the bad guys. I'm very slow with a control stick and I miss my mouse/keyboard. It feels slow and if I speed it up it will just get harder to pinpoint anyone.

After many deaths I finally am getting more used to it, but I still feel a little frustrated. It's more about me growing up on mouse/keyboards instead of console controllers than the game I think. I read a gameFaq to get some tips and got a sad review from the writer. He described shooters as games where you stand there and shoot and try to kill the other guy before your health is gone. What? I would hate a shooter like that. Maybe that's why I can't get into Halo very much. This writer said that Gears of War was so good because you had to hide and shoot the bad guys, instead of standing there and shoot them. If this is the philosophy that people have now regarding shooters, then I don't really want to play any of the new shooters. That isn't fun to me, which might be why it's hard for me to get into Gears of War.

But it is getting better, easier, less cheap feeling. I have so much experience with games, yet I have no patience with this. A lot annoyance: Why can't I swap out my pistol? I don't want to use it, please let me drop it on the ground. Every time I have to swap a shotgun for the Hammer of Dawn I swear loudly, because I could keep it on me if I could just drop this stupid pistol.

I've finished Act 1, and I've been playing the whole game on Hardcore.