Gears of War 3 XBOX 360 Review

Gears of War is a series that was mainly created to showcase what could be done with the unreal engine on the XBOX 360. The story was paper thin, but the multiplayer was one of the most fun and engaging spectacles since the original Unreal Tournament. The ending was left open and Epic Games hinted at the start of a new trilogy. Gears of War 2 continued the story of the humans struggling to survive against the Locust army and the counterattack launched by the Locust horde. Multiplayer in Gears of War 2 added new multiplayer elements, but the game had a horrible matchmaking system and lag. In September 2011, Gears of War 3 was released and brought the series to an epic closing. Gears of War 3 has wonderful climactic precipices throughout the story, especially with the death/suicide of one of the beloved characters.

Gears of War 3 consists of 6 acts broken up into 4-6 chapters each. Every type of creature known to the Gears of War universe is within the game, including the Locust Queen and a few new enemies, mainly Lambent hybrids of Locust and humans. The single player campaign can easily be finished within less than 8 hours on normal difficulty and has up to 4 player online coop. It is highly recommended to play coop for the harder difficulties, as the AI is horrendous in assisting the player or each other even on normal difficulty. There are numerous locations to traverse, from a ship, to a bridge, to a secluded island refuge. Gameplay mainly consists of the usual run and gun, but intersperses a land based vehicle level, a dirigible flying level and an underwater submersible level to spice up the variety. Adding the vehicle variety to the game breaks up the monotony of Point A to Point B movement. There are 4 new weapons added to the players arsenal. There is a Sawed-Off Shotgun that is a one shot kill within melee range, but a turtle for reloading and useless at any other range. A Retro Lancer with a horrendous kickback but deadly damage and a nice melee charge that impales the enemy.
Another fun weapon is the Digger, basically a projectile that goes under the ground and through a wall to burrow within the enemy and explode, for instant death. It is easy to dodge from even a short distance, but great to surprise enemies behind cover. There is also a gun called the One Shot, which is basically an enhanced sniper rifle with laser sighting that will spell instant death for an enemy caught in the crosshairs.

Multiplayer consists of 8 multiplayer maps and 7 multiplayer modes, with the classic Gridlock map making a comeback. Multiplayer modes consist of the usual Warzone, Execution, Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill, Horde, and two new modes called Wingman and Beast. Wingman pits 5 teams of two players each against each other simultaneously to see which team survives. Beast mode is a take on the Horde mode, but with players taking on the role of Locust creatures fighting the humans. Each successful round gives players money to purchase tougher locust creatures to play as in the next round. Both Horde and Beast mode have up to 50 levels of mayhem to endure. Multiplayer now allows for 5 versus 5 gameplay and is hosted by external servers rather than hosted by players, which gave the host an unfair advantage in previous games and created lag in some cases. Also, there is cooperative multiplayer where up to 4 players can play through the campaign and competitive cooperative where up to 4 players compete in the campaign mode to see who can net the highest score.

Gears of War 3 brings the series back to the glory of the first game in terms of multiplayer and improves upon a story that was sorely lacking in the last two games. Players will actually feel emotion for the characters for the first time, although the extra characters Anya, Jayce, and Samantha are very hollow. The death of one of the characters added a sense of believability that most games these days fail to accomplish. The multiplayer is solid, but there is one major gripe that delayed our review and made us take away one star from having a perfect score. Multiplayer allows for dead to living talk even in ranked matches. This defeats the purpose of ranked matches as players will ghost through the map and tell their living comrades where the enemy player is. It becomes quite frustrating when the enemy player magically knows your every move. In player matches no one cares as it is not ranked, but in ranked gaming matches dead to living talk should be disabled and party talk should be disabled as it is also a work around for dead to living talk. Otherwise, Gears of War 3 is a great game that everyone should go out and buy.