Gears of War 3

To be a Gear in the COG you have to be either mad or extremely passionate. These 6,5ft tall tanks wearing powered armour, designed with some rare metal that offers maximum resistance while still offering flexibility, found on the planet Sera, having only a few rules to follow. The number one rule being: Take cover or die, that being the ‘golden rule’ and the only thing keeping you alive in most parts of Gears of War. Sounds tough right?

So to start off our story, you are Marcus Fenix, ex-convict who was freed from prison to help out Delta Squad, basically your team for the whole game, some NPC heroes come in and out but it’s mostly Marcus, you control him, his fate belongs to you, no biggie. If you’ve played the other two Gears of Wars, you’ll understand the story quite quickly, I don’t want to give too many spoilers, but you do need to know the story before you play Gears 3, even a run through over Wikipedia of Gears 1 and 2 will help you tremendously because it gets very intricate as the game goes on.

First of all you need to know the climaxes of the last two games, in number one it is the dropping of the Light Mass Bomb, basically a nuke, on the poor Locusts. The climax of the second one is a bit trickier, early in the game you discover the Light Mass Bomb did do massive damage, but not enough to destroy the Locust, all it did is fuel their rage more. In Gears 2 you learn that the Locust are only attacking the humans because they are being attacked as well, by the Lambent Locust, a new mutated breed born from Imulsion, the fuel source on Sera.

The humans blow up their last fortress, Jacinto, so that a waterway can form and flood the Hollow, the home of the Locust horde, it works but not completely, prompting a counterattack by the Locust. The game ends after killing a Lambent Brumak and escaping. This is where Gears 3 starts, on a converted helicopter carrier, what you call base, where the COG has moved to after losing their home. As you can tell, you start playing the game at an extremely bleak time for the COG, the war almost being lost and all. Being on the carrier was extremely risky as its completely open to attack, 360 degrees clearing, which is exactly what happened, shortly into the game the carrier is attacked by Lambent Locust which starts off the campaign and Marcus final push to find his dad.

This all leads to the best bit of the game, the part that tops the storyline, tops the characters and tops the beautifully polished voice acting. The fighting. It is absolutely incredible the amount of detail that Epic has put into it, if you thought it was done well in the previous instalments, you’ll be completely taken back, the blood and guts have even been polished, when you’re taking your Mk2 Lancer chainblade and sawing up some Grubs to nailing them with the sniper, you’ll have no choice but to notice the immense amount of detail that has been put into the games fighting, the physics of the game feel much more precise in general, instead of completely redoing something they’ve improved everything steadily, added some new features which will please anybody’s sweet tooth. The lighting has been redone, allowing patches of light to breakthrough ruins illuminating certain sections of your view, combine this with the new sections of colour makes them stick out beautifully, take your eyes for a ride next time you play and watch the beauty of it, you can’t miss it. Everything is just refined and beautiful, compared from the various shades of grey, blue and red in the last games to the all-new palette that the developers probably only realised they had recently.

Then comes the multiplayer, I’m going to make a broad statement here and say that 90% of people who buy this game buy it mainly for the multiplayer, there, I said it, give me flak later. The multiplayer is flawless, from horde mode to beast mode, controlling a COG to controlling a Locust, shoving your Retro Bayonet into another players face could not be more satisfying, levelling is set, meaning you can play any gamemode and still earn XP, no matter what. Most of the fun will come from horde or beast mode where you play as a member of selected faction and you kill the opposite side, wave after wave it gets more difficult, prompting different tactics to work in a team, every player is crucial to the team, Gears in a COG, see what I did there?

In the end Gears of War 3 is an amazing game, with polished visuals and extremely rewarding gameplay you will quickly get addicted, disappointed when you finish the campaign, and then addicted again to the multiplayer.