Gears of War 3 Review

The Gears Trilogy comes to an end with its final installment. The game picks up 18 months after Gears 2 and the sinking of Jacinto. The remaining COG have divided and are living on ships and remote islands. The Lambent are spreading and the Locust are in retreat. The game opens with a bit of deja vu as Marcus is awoken in prison again and called into action. What is revealed as a dream state retells the battle at the Phoenix Mansion which sees Adam Phoenix apparently killed by the Locust. Upon awakening Marcus rejoins Dom and two new character, Jay and a now battle ready Anya. The addition of women in the game is one of the new features, which in the end really changes nothing except for those that may enjoy seeing them mutilated in multiplayer. After gathering, chairman Prescott makes his return followed by a full scale attack by the Lambent.

The Lambent prove to be interesting enemies with a few fun variants (lambent berserker, genius) but untimely prove to be a lot less difficult than the previous locusts. With the new four player co-op mode there is an added sense of fun and camaraderie and is awesome. It is a lot more handy to have three other players to recover you after you’ve fallen and was initially a bit of a turn-off for me in Hardcore mode as it actually made the game incredibly easy. I must have died only a handful of times and only due to charging blindly into battle. Other than maybe the Berserker, there is no Lambent that will finish you off if you go down. Thankfully, Insane Mode offers the real challenge hardcore gamers are looking for.

Kudos to Epic for putting in some great oversized boss battles. Even though its not a boss, Xbox 360 players are finally able to go toe to toe with a Brumack. The PC version of Gears 1 included a Brumack fight that made for some great bragging to non PC players. Gears 2 was weak on the boss fights especially with the final Lambent Brumack which had to be one of the worst boss battles in gaming history. Gears 3 makes up for this with a final boss battle much more along the awesome lines set in Gears 1 with the final fight against General Raam. This final fight balances itself well between extremely annoying and extremely challenging (insane mode only, any other is just annoying till you figure out how to just move faster).

Multiplayer is back and is as fun as ever with the inclusion of Horde 2.0 with new battlement options and a new Beast mode which gives us the satisfaction of taking out of few COGS and stranded with your favorite Locust. Being able to take control of a Bloodmount is incredibly satisfying after the incredible frustrations they’ve given in Horde mode.

I give Gears 3 a 8.5/10, I would give it a 9 but I’m still extremely pissed the Locust Queens origins or the Locust Origins still remain unexplained. I’m sure this isn’t the last we’ll see of the COG on Sera.