Gears Of War 3 - Review by StubbyMite

Gears of War 3 is a military science fiction third-person shooter video game developed by Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios.

Overview

Story

The story for the new game was written by science fiction author Karen Traviss, who has authored four Gears novels and is working on the next one – Does this mean we will get a new game?

The game centres around Marcus Fenix and his gears compatriots of the old Delta Squad. It is hard to believe that it has been five years since the story of the cog soldiers and the locust horde started. The newest incarnation of the game is it’s best story to date and you get a real sense of what the characters are going through and the struggles that they are encountering. If like me you have not played through the full stories of all of the games, if you watch the previously on gears from the start menu this shows you what has happened in the previous stories.

Along the way in the story you get a real mixed bag of levels and enemies to encounter. With the loader suits and different ride on’s that you get to use you get a real variety to the game. With the locust horde and the glowie masses bearing down on you I found this game quite hard in some points and on the harder difficulties I can see some of the bosses being a lot harder to handle.

I don’t want to go into to much detail with the story as we all may not have fully played through the game as of yet, but in the story you really start to feel for the characters and it is one of the best stories that I have played through in any game. The story really deserves all the plaudits that it has already received and will also get a big thumbs up from me.

The new campaign allows players to play through by yourself or play with up to four players online. Certain areas of the story require you to split up with squad members and play as different characters. This is a great improvement in the game and you get a great sense of what each character is going through in the story and the different sides that we have never seen from some characters.

In the story there is more of a history and a past that our characters had this is something that is not normally seen in games, we don’t always see from where our character started or why they are on this journey but epic have worked well to get this into the story.



New Features

There are many new features that have made it into the new game these include weapons, levels and vehicles.

There are new incarnations of some weapons which include the Double Barrel Shotgun, Retro Lancer and one of my favorites the Digger.

Along with the new weapons, there are new and quite exciting levels that have been added. Since the first game epic have worked well towards the new game that we are playing today the new levels are much more open with a lot more to explore, not just the usual run here, press that switch etc. Some of the levels that they have developed have great back drops and not just where you are walking can be seen, you get a great sense of depth to the level and how much they have developed the game from the original gears of war.

Another new feature during gameplay is the ability to tag enemies. This helps a lot during the story, horde or beast mode as there may be an enemy that is getting a bit to close for comfort. When an enemy is tagged your allies know to concentrate the fire on that enemy first.

The other new feature of the game is the ability to swap weapons and ammo with your team members during battle, a feature that is a great addition to the game because I have found myself many a time playing gears of war 2 trying to beat down a butcher with a pistol.



Graphics

The graphics in the game at points really are awe inspiring if we think where the game has come from. The graphics in the game help to tell the story so well and you get a real sense of the wasteland in which the characters are taking you through.

With the new lambent enemies and the new light effects on the gears epic have shown that they have developed there skills from the first games that we saw. Within the first two games epic were using graphics that were quite dark and they fitted in well with the story. In this game a lot more colours have been used in the levels, I think that this gives a much better overall look to the game.



Multiplayer

There are a few different modes that can be played in multiplayer some that we have seen before and others that are new to the series.

Some of the ones that we have seen before are:

• Team Deathmatch – This is straight out kills, obviously the team with most amount of kills wins. The only draw back with this is that you have a set number of kills to complete the round with. The team that losses the kills the quickest losses the game.

• King Of The Hill – This is a land grab game where each team have to occupy a piece of land until they are killed or the other team take the land.

• Warzone – Each player in the team only has one life and that is it. Once you are dead its all over you have to hope someone else in the team does not die

• Execution - This mode is very similar to that of warzone, you only have the one life but you are killed by execution only. You cant be killed from close up this is a close quarters kind of game mode

• Capture the Leader – The clue to the game mode is in the title, capture the enemy leader. You have to use them as a meatshield and keep them for a certain amount of time before you are declared the winner.

• Wingman – The last versus multiplayer mode is the wingman game mode. This is two of you fighting along side each other in the hope that you and your partner can wipe out the opposing teams

The other two multiplayer modes are the utterly addictive horde mode and a new game mode to the franchise which is called beast mode.

Horde mode sees you fighting against wave after wave of the lambent and locust horde and your team trying to wipe them out. New additions have been made to horde mode, the changes include being able to construct barriers, gun turrets and also being able to prop up a cardboard cutout which is used as a decoy (all I can say is the lambent and locust can’t be clever if they think we look like cardboard ).

The new beast mode sees us using the enemy to kill the cog soldiers and cog helpers. The game mode lets us use the different enemies that you encounter throughout the game to kill the cog soldiers. One of my favorite parts of this game mode is being able to use the ticker, sneaking up behind people and being able to blow them up.

There are some changes that you will notice in the horde and beast modes. These include earning money towards buying upgrades for barriers and different creatures in beast mode. This is a great way of rewarding the player for taking part and getting involved in the mode rather than standing around and bagging the xp.



Achievements

The achievements in the game are fairly spread out over the different modes a lot of which are attached to the story this time. Progressing through acts within the campaign will see you earn a big bulk of the achievements throughout the game. There a three achievements for also completing the game on the three difficulty levels.

There are some achievements for playing all of the online game modes and playing through the first levels of horde and beast mode.
There are achievements that will be difficult for some players to obtain and for others will take weeks of gaming. The achievements are for obtaining onyx medals, these include playing through thousand of rounds in a certain online mode and set number of kills.

There is a plus point to playing through the different versions of the game in that this all helps towards your final level achievements in the game.

Opinion

In my opinion the game truly is a great new addition to the gears franchise and will leave people wanting more. The story mode really drags you in and gets you feeling for the characters and wanting to know what is going to happen next into the next scene. The new and old multiplayer modes have been changed to keep the game new and fresh to appeal to people that will be new to the series. The new beast mode is a real change that lets you play as the enemy rather than the hero all the time. The changes to horde mode are a welcome change in my book and make the game harder to complete rather than just grinding out killing enemeies.

In my view the game really is a great addition to the series and I have loved all that I have played of it so far and I cant wait for more. I have found myself playing little bits at a time just so I can enjoy the game for what it is. All I can say that if you have not bought this game why?

It really is brilliant and thats why it deserves a stellar 10 out of 10.

Great review dude, and i agree about the gameplay but I think the story seemed a bit rushed in the end. The fact that the Locust queen looks human is skipped over (which has been puzzling players since Gears 2) as are some other major plot revelations involving the locust and the Lambent. They may well have covered this in the novels (I don't know myself) but surely this are points that could have least been cleared up in a pick up or the like!

Nevertheless great work dude!

Super Dooper Mr Stubby! Well done mate!

I reckon there may be more than one piece of story related DLC for this, and hopefully more retail Gears titles to come.

Nice review Stubby

I agree with Tenlo though about the story, I didn't do much for me, the Locust queen was the only question I really wanted answering and we got no explanation at all.

Apart from that there's only a couple of things that dissappointed me about this game, I think the sawn off shotgun needs a few adjustments, a couple of the maps like sandbar and overpass really don't work too well in versus and they removed this awesome execution which was in the beta.

Nice review Stubby.
A definite 10 in my book as well.

Nice review mate
@Ninja- that execution IS in the game and any asshole wielding a sawn off at me will be receiving said execution

Great review mate, I will be playing this tonight

Markav wrote:Nice review mate
@Ninja- that execution IS in the game and any asshole wielding a sawn off at me will be receiving said execution

No, there were 2 locust beat down executions in the beta, the one in the video and a slower one, the slower one is the only one that made it into the full game, try it yourself next time you get the chance. The one in the game is nowhere near as good as the one in that video.

Agree with what u said in the review mate. Good work. I can see myself playing this for the next few months, loving it!

Great review Stubbs, I think this my game of the year so far.

Really enjoyed the story, and i've already played through the campaign 3 times. The multiplayer side of it feels to flow much better and faster.

A couple of achievements are still gonna be a grind (seriously 3.0) but hopefully it won't feel like such a chore, with the onyx medals meaning your going to have to play all the different modes etc.

Good review Stubby, I agree its a 10/10, my only problem with it is the ''difficulty'' of the single player campaign. Anything below Insane is too easy.

I find the multiplayer far more enjoyable if you shout the following comment before every match.
"There's a rumour that only people with small penice's use the sawed off shotgun"
I should be charging for these top gaming tip's

I dont see what all the fuss is about with the sawn off shotgun. Yea, ive used it to run up to someone shoot them dead then run away as it takes so long to reload, but then i found out i could do the same thing using the lancers chainsaw and no reload time. The only advantage the sawn off has over the chainsaw is that it doesnt take a couple of seconds of sawing action to get the job done. I still prefer the chainsaw though as it doesnt run out of ammo and you have less chance of missing a shot like with the sawn off as you can just hold down the saw button while moving around the victim in circles.

I never said there was anything wrong with the sawed off though did I?
I just feel dirty using it and I feel cheated when killed by it. I have never had problem with being chainsawed and never will BTW

You can't do this with a chainsaw either, ridiculous I say!