QotD: Every FPS you've ever played

You've seen stuff like this a bazillion times before. Gears of War is yet another first-person shooter in which you blunder through the post-apocalyptic boneyard of civilization, repetitively slaughtering a bunch of hulking, gibbering aliens. Creepy things lurk in the dark; fresh ammo packs are scattered improbably in open sight; and as the guts paint the hallways red, your teammates curse like a bunch of Tarantino wannabes. Name every single war-weary cliché of the run-and-gun genre, and Gears of War dutifully ticks it off.

And the game really is awesome. Indeed, it is staggeringly, derangedly so. I popped Gears of War into my Xbox 360 and sat in a cybernetic haze for three straight hours, emerging with my stomach in fist-size knots, so emotionally and cognitively depleted that I had to consult the instructions on the side of the box before I was able to cook a bag of microwave popcorn -- which, come to think of it, was my only meal for the rest of the evening because I had to go back and play until I collapsed.

Clive Thompson, "Why Gears of War Rocks", Wired News, 2006-12-04