Review: Gears of War 3 is like Band of Brothers with lady warriors and real closure

Multiplayer combat

Originally, Microsoft planned to release the game in April, 2011. But it decided to postpone the release so that the game could be more polished and it could incorporate feedback from a large-scale multiplayer beta test. That probably cost it a lot of money in extra development time, but it was likely a smart decision for the sake of the brand. After all, if this game really is the last in the series, the multiplayer combat is the way that this game will live on in the future.

In multiplayer, you can play as the Locust horde or the humans. In the Team Deathmatch mode, every team has 20 lives per round. When the lives run out, the players can’t respawn anymore. The dead players have to watch as their comrades try to survive as long as possible on their last life.

I tried a few rounds last night on multiplayer, where you can choose casual, standard or hardcore modes. I found that you need to use cover even more in multiplayer and tread carefully. In every one-on-one duel, you have to have split-second reflexes or lose out. And you have to shoot only when you know you will hit something. Shotguns are very effective for one-shot kills at close range, but they have a very limited range.

When you get wounded, it’s embarrassing to crawl around on the floor until you are revived or someone stomps on your head. I haven’t explored all of the maps yet, but they’re usually contained in a smaller space with a lot of cover. That’s because the Gears-style fighting is all about close combat and getting the drop on someone who is just a few yards away from you. It’s nice that the maps are colorful, in contrast to past Gears games.

You can play in the Horde mode, where you cooperate with other players and try to survive as long as possible. You can also now play in Beast mode, where you play the enemies of humanity and try to take down a small group of Gears. And you can play through the single-player game in arcade mode, where you are scored on how well you do and can compare that to how your friends do.

In conclusion

By the end of the game, the player will get through 32 chapters. To Epic’s credit, there is a huge amount of variety to the game play. But some of the scenes get tiring when you have to go round up four or five things in order to progress to the next level. As I put down the controller and finished the last level, I felt like the game did justice to the gravity of the ending. I felt like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. It was an emotional ending that, along with the intense game play, had drained me of energy.

It’s only logical that this game is getting higher ratings, as it is Epic Games’ third title on the same piece of hardware, the Xbox 360. That’s a rarity in the console business, and it says a lot about how long this generation of consoles is lasting.

I remember when the first Gears of War game was just a rumor. It has been interesting to watch Epic Games’ long journey into a mature company with such a valuable brand as Gears. A decade ago, it would have been a total surprise to see a game like this coming from the combination of Microsoft, the publisher, and Epic Games.

Early on, Gears of War was a very risky endeavor, coming from a development team that had not specialized in campaign games and which was wandering in the wilderness for a while. Microsoft had made a lot of big bets on the Xbox game console, but only Halo and Project Gotham Racing had paid off as huge multi-game franchises. The development team started with the dream of designer Cliff Bleszinski and no more than 25 people.Today, the Gears team is still less than 100 people, but Epic is known as one of the best developers in the business.

So far, the game has a 91 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic. I give it a rating of 88. To me, the cinematic style and approach to the story make it slightly better as a game than Sony’s Resistance 3, which we reviewed last week. While Resistance 3 is prettier and has more variety to its game play, Gears delivers a better story. Since I rated Resistance 3 at 87 out of 100, I’m splitting hairs here, as both games are awesome. Call me a sucker for a good story. Hopefully, Epic Games will now move on to bigger things. Meanwhile, I hope that the blockbuster-packed fall season will just keep on getting better from here on out.

Here’s a last treat. We have a souvenir plastic statue of Marcus Fenix from Microsoft. We’ll ship the statue to anyone who leaves the best comment at the end of this story. We’ll leave the winning name in the comments a week from today and will ship it out after that.