Review: Gears of War 3

Gears of War 3 is a third-person shooter for the Xbox 360. It was developed by Epic Games.

Marcus Fenix shooting a mutated Lambent Locust.

On the planet Sera, two years after the events of Gears of War 2, the remnants of the Coalition of Ordered Governments live in ruined settlements, trying to survive while fighting off their old enemy, the Locust Horde, and a new enemy, mutated Locust known as the Lambent. One day COG soldier Marcus Fenix receives a message from his father that says he has found a way to destroy the Lambent, but is being held captive by the Locust. Fenix, along with his comrades, set off to find his dad.

Gears of War 3 is a cover-based shooter. Fenix and co. peak out from behind walls to shoot at the Locust and Lambent. The player presses the “A” button to make Fenix press up against cover, and “A” again to jump between or leap over cover. Fenix does not have to use cover, and could probably withstand one Locust attack, but multiple enemies will kill him quickly.

Fenix can hold two large guns, one pistol, and some grenades. You can replace Fenix’s weapons with ones found in the levels if you do not like the ones he is carrying, but most of the pistols are useless, only the frag grenades are useful grenades, and, besides weapons that fire explosives, it is hard to find a more useful heavy weapon than Fenix’s standard assault rifle.

There is an interesting gimmick where, when Fenix is reloading, if you press the reload button at the right time your weapon will hurt more, but if you press it at the wrong time it will jam. Makes reloading in a fight slightly more exciting.

Fenix has regenerating health. When it runs out Fenix will lie on the ground and call out for help. If one of his teammates gets to Fenix in time, he will revive instantly, otherwise he will bleed out. Unless he is blown up, which is an instant kill.

Enemy AI is pretty bad. Enemies will hide behind cover right up until Fenix is beside them instead of retreating; will only move out of the player’s line of sight some of the time, and crowd together instead of spreading out. They are really only dangerous if you get too cocky, or when they start to outnumber Fenix and his friends and have explosive firepower.

Friendly AI is pretty bad too. Allies will often run into a group of enemies and get knocked out, and do not have great aim. At least they are good at reviving Fenix.

Level design is good in that the areas Fenix and his friends go through are not just long straight roads or buildings. During the game the group defends an old ship, treks through the desert, and explores cities that are at different levels of annihilated. The only thing that might get annoying is if you really do not like post-apocalyptic settings, which all the levels are differing variations of.

The plot is a pretty boring “Going from point A to point B” story, and is rather short. If Fenix and co. did not get sidetracked all the time the single-player would be over in less than five hours. Anyone who has not played the first two Gears of War games is not going to understand what is going on. Fenix and his friends make the story more tolerable though, by being a good combination of badass and snarky.

But single-player is not why people play Gears of War, multiplayer is. Unfortunately I bought Gears of War 3 used, which I believe is why I could not access most of the different multiplayer modes.

I could play casual team deathmatch. Like other games with team deathmatch, you and a bunch of other players, or some computer-controlled players if not enough people can be found, fight each other in different arenas. It has the problem of people memorizing where overpowered weapons are located and using them all the time, but this problem is mitigated somewhat by limited ammo.

I could access two other multiplayer modes: Horde and Beast.

In Horde, a team of players fights off waves of Locust. It is fifty rounds long, assuming everyone does not die in a round. The players can set up defenses to stop the Locust, like barbed wire and turrets. Killing Locust gets you more money at the end of a round to buy more defenses and weapons for the next round. The strength of the Horde increases in size and power with each wave.

A player setting up an electric fence in preperation for an incoming wave of enemies.

In Beast, a team of players play as the Locust and try to slaughter all the humans in a level. You can choose to be either a regular Locust solider, or one of their more monstrous creatures, if you have enough money. One game is twelve rounds long, and each round has a really strict time limit. Killing humans extends the time limit and gets you more money to buy stronger Locust to replace yours when you die.

Both modes are fun, because they are easy to get into and understand, and you are working together to deal with nice, semi-predicatble somputer-controlled enemies, so you can easily work with other people to accomplish a goal without being a burden or mess up someone else's strategy. I found Horde more enjoyable than Beast because it was easier to watch each other’s back, instead of Beast where everyone just tried to kill the humans themselves and did not work together. I do not know if the multiplayer justifies the full price of the game, but they certainly extend the gameplay a long time.

Gears of War 3 is a combination of average single-player and decent multiplayer, and is best bought by someone who for some reason really needs a new multiplayer game to play.