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The Lancer is one of the most recognisable video game weapons ever designed - an improbable hybrid worthy of Jekyll and Hyde, which sums up at a glance Gears of War's oddly persuasive mixture of styles and tones. It is barbaric yet precise, a clownish torture device that doubles as an unpretentious assault rifle with a generous magazine. It's also the meat on the hook of a terrible trap. When the first Gears stormed E3 in 2006, the Lancer was all anybody would talk about. Epic fought hard with a squeamish Microsoft for the weapon's inclusion, and previewers were only too delighted to put its chainsaw bayonet to use. What more complete and primeval an expression of macho petulance, after all, than to rip a foe open from collar to crotch? Phwoar. I still recall the first time I tried out the Lancer's underslung surprise in multiplayer - during a round of Execution on the charming Mansion map. Having drawn first blood and driven my opponent into the shadow of a pillar, I scurried out to administer the coup de grace, or at least coup de gib, scattering hipfire as I ran to keep the target suppressed. And it was then that I learned a punishing lesson. The Lancer might be Gears of War's feature weapon, its rockstar frontman, but as many a would-be butcher has discovered, the Gnasher is where the real power lies.
We're all accustomed to the role shotguns play in shooters, but there's something especially harrowing about how bodies react to a point-blank Gnasher blast in the first Gears of War. They don't simply fly back in a shower of gore. They fall apart at your feet. It's as though each character model were actually a precarious armful of shopping, or an ineptly assembled bookcase from Argos.
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