After Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine left a big smile on my face, I was wondering what Gears of War 3 will offer to up the ante. I never was a fan of Gears of War’s cover and shoot mechanic, so coming into the third installment of the series I was hoping to find something fresh and new to keep my interest up. 

Continuing the story of the first two games (there is an optional video to explain what happened before 3 if you haven’t played the first two), the planet Sera has been devastated after the events of Gears of War 2, people are living in shambles, feral locust are trying to regroup after the destruction of their underground empire, and hints that Fenix’s father is still alive. The game is divided into two stories divided by squads of 4, Fenix’s and Cole’s and the game transitions in between the two throughout the game and have some moments together.

The Unreal engine has come a long way, the game looks above and beyond what the first two games have achieved. While Gears has been the unreal flagship of what the engine is capable of, Gears 3 looks the least experimental and focuses on its strong points and it shows. Everything still looks as gritty, but the level of detail is great the third time around. The locations look genuinely ravaged and does not look like very obvious.

While the game does flex some serious presentation muscle, I wish it trained its gameplay as thoroughly. The gameplay is the exact same with the obvious new refinements to polish the game more, the controls are tighter than ever but the lack of variety sure does leave much to be desired, for me at least. While the campaign does show a lot of variety in the locations of the game, the duck and cover shooting enemies in closeted areas remains as prominent part of the game.

If there’s anything to praise the game for is its online component, clearly the game was not designed to be played alone, people can jump in and out of the campaign to take part in your game and co-op definitely makes any game a lot more entertaining, especially when supporting AI has the intelligence of an undercooked salmon fillet. I may sound a bit of of a new comer to the matchmaking that Xbox does, but it pretty much shines here when making a co-op game. It’s easy to get friends into a private game and it’s much easier to host a public one.

Multiplayer deathmatch is pretty much the same if you are familiar to the older Gears of War, except that there is more of an unlocking system that I found very familiar to the one in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Most, if not all the unlockable characters play the same, they are just different cosmetically. There are still guns to unlock that add more replayablity, and those are definitely not cosmetic.

There is a whole lot of game here for fans of the series, 4 player coop, horde mode, multiplayer is just enough to keep the fans happy.

What we think: As polished and chock full of content this game is, I didn’t enjoy what I played mainly because I’m not a big fan of cover shooting. Fans of the series enjoy what’s in store for them in this game, but people like myself who did not enjoy the first game , will pretty much glaze this game over. If cover shooting is not your cup of tea, might I suggest Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine?