Beginning today is our occasional look at a single videogame feature that we believe that other game creators should borrow, copy or steal. Why? Because these features are so engaging that they ought to become standard. First up is Epic Games and Microsoft's million-selling Gears of War (which has rightly won praise for itself stealing and improving upon a feature that we very much enjoyed: the cover and blind fire system in Namco's little-known game Kill Switch.)

In most shooters, you can reload manually; the game can automatically reload for you; or both. Gears cleverly goes one step further with its Active Reload system. Here's how it works. Hitting the right-side bumper on your Xbox 360 brings up a a horizontal meter just below your weapon and ammo indicators in the upper right hand corner of the screen. There are two highlighted areas inside the meter, and a bright cursor that sweeps across the meter (see for yourself in the video below.) If you tap the right-side bumper again while the cursor is within the larger of the two highlighted areas, you'll re-arm faster than the game's automatic reload. And if you manage to tap the right-side bumper when the cursor is positioned over the smaller highlighted section, you'll both reload faster and your blasts will do more damage. But if you miss both highlighted areas, your gun will jam. And it will take you even longer to re-arm than would an automatic reload, leaving you vulnerable to enemy attack.

What Epic has done is taken a fairly passive part of the shooter experience and turned it into an interactive mini-game that rewards you for paying closer attention to your ammo--but only if you so choose. As Gears' lead designer Cliff "Cliffyb" Bleszinski told the Web site CVG: "The Active Reload came out of the desire to take passive gameplay and make it active. When I'm reloading I'm just looking the screen. But I know soldiers practice reloading their guns on a regular basis. In the heat of battle that's the difference between life and death." Well said, Cliffyb. And very well done.