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Epic Games Delivers Complete Package with Gears of War 3 (Review)

09.10.11

The Gears of War franchise has been a massive success from the beginning. The first game was the killer app for Xbox 360. The game perfected cover-based shooting, had a fantastic co-op mode, and featured huge action set pieces; however, was held back by a broken multiplayer mode. The second game improved on the first with bigger set piece moments, a better told story, and finally what has become a staple in the shooter genre, Horde Mode; a survival mode where you keep going through endlessly improving waves of enemies. Later on, bugs were found and once again a lack of dedicated servers stopped it from competing with Call of Duty or Halo for the most-played game on Xbox Live. Now the third game is here promising to fix the issues of the past and more, does it deliver? Read more to find out!

Yes! Gears of War 3 is everything a quality sequel should be; the story starts out roughly a year and a half after the second game. The lambent have taken over the land and humanity while the locust have taken to the sea and are setting up outposts on the land defending themselves from the lambent. While living on one of the remaining warships, what is left of the COG (Coalition of Ordered Governments) receives a radio call from a helicopter. Turns out to be their former leader that abandoned them when the lambent came. His name is Chairmen Prescott and he is asking to land; claiming he has important information that could end the war. Marcus Fenix, the protagonist from the past games, gives him the go ahead. What the team finds out from Prescott is that Adam Fenix, Marcus's father, is still alive and may have a solution to end the war between humanity, the locust, and the lambent. This takes you all over the planet Sera looking for assistance and tracking down Adam Fenix. Along the way, you will see the home towns of the men and women of the COG, they will have flashbacks to their previous life and because of such good characterization over the past two titles, you really feel them yearning to get the war over with. One moment that really stands out to me is Augustus Cole or “The Cole Train”, an ex-trashball (basically football) player, returning to the stadium and reliving his glory days. There is another moment like this with Dom that I don't want to spoil, but it nearly brings a tear to the eye. Overall, the plot is pretty standard and has some cheesy moments, but good humor and writing keeps it interesting.

Source: The Gamer Access